Keeping Balance in the World of Immersive Virtuality

How to reduce Virtual reality (VR) sickness

Benjamin Arango

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

8 ways to reduce VR sickness

People are individuals with individual mindsets, and have different response behaviors to different type of sickness they encounter. Past experiments have shown that the age group from 2-12 suffers from the sickness and it reportedly decreases till the age of 21. The cycle then starts again in the late 50’s. We are now in a dire need of ways to get rid of the sickness in order to fully experience the VR systems and make them user friendly. According to Popular Science, VR sickness and general VR discomfort are currently among the biggest hurdles to overcome before VR is comfortably adopted by the mass market. Scientists have set their goals upon making the VR system a true hit towards the end of this year. The highlights say that the scientists have found ways to eliminate virtual reality sickness, making 2017 to be ‘the year of Virtual Reality’. Until then we can adopt some careful set of rules to avoid that nauseous feeling during the game.

1. Lock your eyes: When we move around in real life, our eyes do not run in parallel with our body. So the same should happen inside the virtual environment. Locking your eyes at a fixed point while turning in a game can avoid the issue.

2. Chew a gum: To stay in a virtual environment for long, a chewing gum might just help. The repetitive jaw movement can help you tackle some of the effects of virtual reality sickness.

3. **Take a break:**You need to remind your brain that you are not actually moving. Take a break when you are experiencing virtual reality. Stare at the wall or some stationary point. Time to time breaks can put your brain to ease.

4. Deep breaths: No matter how exciting the game is, do not let your body and brain drift along excitement. Control your breathing in order to control the influence of virtual reality sickness.

5. Lower the brightness. Some users say that lowering the brightness can help you reduce the sickness level. Some games have brightness adjuster that you can use to your choice.

6. **Do not to move your head a lot.**Since motion sickness is connected to movement, reducing your head movement left and right and up and down in one place can help you.

7. Avoid moving backwards and strafing. If it’s a fast paced game that you are playing it is quite usual for you to want to use strafing to avoid bullets hitting you.

8. **Properly adjust the head gear.**Make sure your head gear fits you perfectly so there isn’t any calibration problem.

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What is Virtual reality sickness?

All we know about the reality of the real world around us is that it comes from the perception of our sensory organs and their co-relation with the sense-managing system of our brain to generate useful information. Thus if we present our sensory system with the kind of information that really isn’t there our brain would begin to explore it and comprehend it as reality to us. Such a type of self-made information and the resulting outcome is what we call ‘virtual reality’.

You can definitely not deny all the fun you can have with this new technology once you grab on all the cool gadgets and gears. Putting on a virtual reality headset can take you to a completely different world but would it really be fun when you have to vomit after ten minutes? Virtual reality sickness is a big hurdle to the widespread use of the virtual reality technology. The fact that ‘with virtual reality comes the sickness’ has been a major worry factor to the developers and scientists. Virtual Reality sickness brings along symptoms such as headaches, nausea, vomiting, discomfort, sweating, drowsiness, disorientation and apathy. Virtual reality sickness, however, is not a new problem. It has been known since the test pilots, test drivers and astronauts have been practicing their skills in simulators and mock vehicles.

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Why virtual reality make people sickness

Now the question arises, what is really making us sick? Is it the gadgets or gears? Or some manufacturing flaw? The link connecting virtual reality and the sickness, lies within the human body itself. When you are in a virtual environment, in some cases, your body’s sense of balance does not completely line up with the movements of your head. Also, when the environment around you moves, but your body stays stationary you experience dizziness or nausea. Typically, the bigger the mismatch the worse the sickness. According to the statement delivered by a military pilot, when you go inside a simulator, the movements don’t exactly match the same as they do in the real world, and all of a sudden, what you feel is just not right. Another reason causing the problem is based on virtual reality games and other such systems. In such a VR system you experience environment larger than the room you are in. All these factors can ultimately drive you sick!

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Benjamin Arango

Benjamin Arango is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Benjamin Arango