VR motion sickness, also known as cyber sickness, occurs when the brain receives conflicting signals from various sensory systems. The primary cause of this phenomenon is the mismatch between the visual and vestibular systems. Here’s a more detailed explanation:
- Conflicting Sensory Signals:
- Visual System: In virtualreality, your eyes perceive movement, and your brain interprets this as spatial movement.
- Vestibular System: This system in your inner ear is responsible for sensing balance and movement. In real life, it registers body movement.
In virtual reality, you might see movement, such as walking or riding a virtual vehicle, but your body remains stationary. The vestibular system does not register the expected movement, causing a conflict with the visual signals.
- Symptoms:
- Nausea
- Dizziness
- Sweating
- Fatigue
- Disorientation
- Minimizing Motion Sickness in Our Games:
- In our games, we use physical movement of players in the arena simultaneously with their movement in the virtual environment. This synchronizes visual and vestibular signals, reducing the likelihood of motion sickness.
- Physical movement helps the brain better interpret signals from various sensory systems as consistent, significantly reducing or completely eliminating motion sickness symptoms.
- High frame rates (FPS) and low display latency can reduce discomfort.
- Avoiding sudden camera movements and using smooth transitions when the character moves.
Thus, we combat motion sickness in our games by ensuring that players physically move in tandem with their virtual movement, which helps prevent the onset of motion sickness.