How to avoid Motion Sickness in VR

There were many questions on Motion Sickness and how to overcome motion sickness in VR. This post is going to be an overall guide for almost everything you should know about motion sickness that happens after you put on a VR headset.

Although many people comment that they are worried that they would get motion sick while in VR, let’s get to know more about the Motion sickness in VR and if it is something that should hold you back from having the best VR experiences.

Virtual Reality Sickness

While you are in the VR world there is something called as the Virtual Reality sickness which usually happens due to the mismatch in the co ordination of what your eyes see and what your nerves feel. VR is just a simulated environment and when anything goes out of sync it will cause some discomfort to the body because your brain is not used to such a made up environment.

This can also be called as simulator sickness since the environment is simulated and the common symptoms include nausea, sweating, fatigue, and drowsiness.  Other common reasons that this could happen is because of the refresh rates, lower quality of VR headsets and continuous lag that might occur during the gameplay.

There are many simulator games one of them being the flight simulator which makes you believe that you are in charge of a flight and in a first person game you might have to be up in the air flying a jet. If you are already scared of heights then such games will obviously cause some motion sickness because the VR environment is similar to an environment that you would be naturally afraid of.

So, one of the best ways to prevent motion sickness in VR could be to avoid games that if were real would anyway get you motion sick.

Motion Sickness and VR headsets

We all remember the time when development kits were out and not the consumer version of the Rift. The dev kits caused motion sickness and later on, this was taken care of by changing the type of LED screen used. So, we have come a really long way when it comes to dealing with motion sickness.

All the three VR headsets are almost perfect and you would not get motion sick because of the lens quality of any of the three major VR headsets which are the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and the PlayStation VR. However, this did not happen overnight and did take some time but for now, we do not need to worry about the motion sickness when it comes to the quality of these VR headsets.

What it all comes down to the games that you choose. The games you choose have different frame rates and not all games are going to make you motion sick but there are a few that can get you nauseous. There are a few game reviews that you can probably check out in order to figure out if people actually feel nauseous while playing the game or not. Here are a few tips using which you can avoid motion sickness in the case of Vive, Rift, PS VR, Gear VR and Daydream VR.

Avoid motion sickness in Oculus Rift

As discussed above the only way one can avoid motion sickness is by choosing the right game and in the Oculus store, you have games categorized as comfortable, moderate and intense. The ones that are categorized as comfortable are going to induce the least motion sickness.

The moderate ones are going to be slightly more nausea inducing and then you have the intense category where have to prepared for anything that can go down. Although the games are categorized into these three sections, the effect they have on different people is going to be different but the tags do give you a heads up in every game.

Go through the category in which the game you are planning to purchase belongs and then take the buying decision.

Avoid motion sickness in HTC Vive

WHen you get games from the Steam VR sadly there are no categories like the Oculus Rift but you need to just depend on the reviews and opinions of people who have already played the game. Usually, when a game induces motion sickness, reviews go all crazy about it so you can be assured that most of the reviews out there are pretty legit.

However, since there is a lot of VR game development in 2017, motion sickness is something that is not that easily found in VR games. It was a pretty annoying feature back in 2016 when the headsets and the games were newly released but now the situation is way better.

Avoid motion sickness in Samsung Gear VR

SInce the Gear VR has the same developer as the Oculus Rift, even the Gear VR games are categorized similarly. You can always check out the categories before getting a game and be prepared for the intense games. Although there are a few games that can be intense, most of them are usually in the comfortable to moderate category.

Avoid motion sickness in PlayStation VR

Although Sony uses different boards to rate their games, they do not use them like the Oculus Store to notify if the game is going to make you motion sick or not. They have another game ratings which are currently being used and hence we have to again stick to the same game reviews as in the case of the HTC Vive.

Avoid motion sickness in Daydream VR

Daydream VR is relatively new and it surely does not have ratings like the ones you have in the Oculus Rift. Usually, most of the First person games are the ones that cause motion sickness in the case of the major VR headsets. If you are using a mobile VR headset then motion sickness is barely a thing and you can easily get through the game without feeling nauseated.

These are a few things that you should know about to overcome motion sickness in VR. In the case, you have any other information that you think might be useful to the readers then write them down in the comment section below.