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Comment by specialp | Hacker News Reader

I tried the Playstation VR. It was definitely cool and better than mobile VR solutions but motion sickness is a big problem. I played a really intense space fighter game, and I had a headache for a while after. I am not especially susceptible to motion sickness either. Perhaps after using the headsets for a while I will adapt but then again am I going to pay the $4-500 for the PS VR and take the chance I won't? If it was a sick feeling free experience I would 100% buy it.

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Have you tried a HTC Vive with a decent (GTX 970 or better) graphics card and cpu? Apparently being motion sick is all about the framerate and resolution, and I don't think the Playstation has a graphics card that can handle a framerate that won't make you sick.

The PS4 Pro should easily be able to match the resolution and frame rate for VR to work well.

According to this thread:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-3180987/ps4-pro-equ...

The GPU in the PS4 pro will be the RX480 desktop-equivalent graphics card. This has a slight lower passmark than the Nvidia GTX 970, which is the minimum spec for the HTC Vive.

Of course, it's not like and like - you can't just compare cards like that, and Playstation have the advantage of controlling the hardware and software configurations (which has always been an advantage for consoles), but saying it easily has the resolution and framerate sounds suspect - I expect it will just about have the resolution and framerate.

I'll find out in a week - I'm going to the Playstation Future of Gaming Tour, and I'll be able to compare it to the Vive with a 970.

The PSVR also has lower resolution, so that level of power goes further than it would with the Vive.

I thought the resolution was also tied to motion sickness, but I could be wrong.

I've noticed on benchmarks that the relationship between resolution and framerate is exponential - so a lower resolution will go a long way to a higher framerate.

The PSVR also specs 120 fps (and is capable of it), whereas Oculus and the Vive are at 90.

On average the AMD cards have better DirectX 12 performance. This could make them more future proof.

You can always cut back geometry, etc. I like that Sony is requiring good frame rates.

The bigger issue seems to be game design. There are some things you just can't ever do without causing a huge chunk of people to get sick.

Yup, VR games always seemed so much more constrained in some way.

Yeah, hard to design FPS games where you can't move. Then again, mobile had a similar constraint - a touchscreen is a piss-poor substitute for keyboard and mouse or gamepads... And yet a massive number of games have found good approaches on this. Obviously the big difference is that phone gaming is "free" on that you already paid for the hardware. Not many people would buy a phone just for gaming.

I'm not a VR enthusiast, but I've tried the Oculus with the basic demo app and got sick within 3 minutes. I spent a good 20 minutes playing games on the Vive and felt fine.

That's an interesting data-point because my understanding was that motion-sickness was purely a function of biology. It seems it's at least weakly coupled to something else, in your case. Could it be something other than frame rate?

It's likely he played entirely different demos between the headsets, which is a huge factor in whether one gets motion sickness.

I suspect (speculate) that the issue is with normal vision being a sequence of saccades, wherein you don't actually see anything between point A and point B, vs most VR which is a smooth glissando between points.

I heard of one hack, for minecraft or something, that snapped view angle increments to 30degrees or something like that, and it was helpful. That would simulate saccading.

Expect a lower point of view frame rate (vs animations that don't change point of view) would be helpful. i.e. smoothly move whatever is in your hand, or that pig on the landscape, but turning your head triggers saccade emulation.

> I suspect (speculate) that the issue is with normal vision being a sequence of saccades, wherein you don't actually see anything between point A and point B, vs most VR which is a smooth glissando between points.

Why would your eyes not saccade when wearing a VR headset? The screen isn't the source of saccades. Your eyes are.

because your eyes are looking straight ahead for the most part. It's like seeing the world through a narrow view point like binoculars (sans magnification).

You can dart around within that narrow window, but mostly you are looking around by turning your head. You are subjected to more visual motion than you would in real life.

Your eyes still saccade when you turn your head. If your headset is causing your eyes to stop saccading properly, I'd expect that means it's not rendering fast enough. I also don't see how adding jitter to the turning would fix this. That seems like it would just cause major disorientation. Maybe I'm totally off though.

I was at the mall and had a chance to try out an occulus rift. It was a very pleasant surprise. My speculations were completely wrong, it felt very natural.

In general, when "you" do things in VR that you'd normally expect strong feedback for in your head, and you don't, you feel sick.

Some examples: strafing side to side (try it), going up stairs, any sort of sudden acceleration.

Vive avoids this in room scale VR since you receive the feedback since you're really doing the action.

The best demo/test I've come across for this is Minecraft in VR for the Occulus Rift. It has a "theater"-mode, in which you can play Minecraft on a "big screen" in a room in VR. This mode works great for running around and doing things. And it has a first-person mode, which works great -- for standing still and looking around. But I'm pretty sure the only people that can play and walk/run around in first-person mode, are the 0.5% of US fighter pilots that don't get motion sickness at all.

I think it's a great way to demo the limits that motion sickness places on experiences for the vast majority of people. It's more than just being in control, and there are other effects at work, just like hand-held video footage without image stabilization is painful to look at. But my pet theory is that the big one is working with your body - if your body sits in a chair, your avatar should too (ie: drive a car, fly a spaceship is ok, walking around an art gallery at a leisure pace, not so much).

Probably because of the full room position tracking and using teleportation for longer distances instead of a controller. If the viewport/camera moves but your body doesn't move you may experience motion sickness.

It's not all about framerate and resolution.

People still get sick with Oculus because many of the games involve moving while you're sitting still.

That's why Vive does "room scale" games where it doesn't involve moving the world around you.

Bingo. Motion sickness in the end is about mixed signals from balance and sight, resulting in the "i'm poisoned" reflex kicking in.

How is the view degree in comparison to Oculus and the other ones? I heard it doesn't cover the full view.

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