40 to 70 percent of the people that have played vr have experienced vr motion sickness
now these symptoms can include dizziness sweating headaches nausea sometimes vomiting
eye strain and sometimes a lingering sense of movement even after you've stopped playing vr now
vr motion sickness is actually something called cyber sickness i'm going to go over exactly what
that is but more importantly five specific eye tips you can do to prevent vr motion sickness
let's focus in hey howdy everybody this is Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, now the actual cause of
motion sickness is not fully understood there are actually many different theories trying to explain
why we experience motion sickness and one of the most common themes among many of these different
theories is that our visual vestibular system our eyes and ears receive conflicting messages and
that definitely happens in vr vr causes something called vection visual illusions of movement and
it creates an environment perfect for cyber sickness one of the most common theories is a
sensory conflict now our eyes and ears are linked it helps with coordination balance and
you've actually seen this before if you ever spin somebody around and have them stop and look at you
you'll actually see their eyes dart back and forth back and forth when they're dizzy this is because
the fluid in their ears is still spinning around and the eyes are compensating because it's linked
to the ears it's linked in that system now you can think of motion sickness and cyber sickness as two
sides of the same coin with definitely similar symptoms cyber sickness is more specifically
when your eyes are sensing motion they're seeing the vection in vr but your ears aren't sensing
any type of motion or turning at all and that's where the conflict comes from there an example
of motion sickness would be if you're reading in a car and your eyes are at a certain focal point
but your ears are registering motion you're feeling the acceleration the deceleration of a car
the turning but your eyes are at a fixed point and not really registering any motion in your
visual system there's also something called the poison hypothesis where through evolution
we developed this defensive mechanism where if we possibly ingested poison
we can get sick and get rid of that poison and in vr when we're seeing these visual illusions
our body might think that hey you might have ingested poison so it makes you sick so here
are my five tips specifically related to the eyes to help prevent vr motion sickness now
i'm curious if you've tried any of these tips in this video definitely leave a comment below
what helped you the most what didn't help i'm really curious to hear your thoughts these first
two tips i've mentioned in other videos but it still applies here so i wanted to quickly mention
them for this video tip number one is called the 20 20 20 rule every 20 minutes take a 20 second
break looking 20 feet away or six meters now this real more specifically pertains to keeping
your eyes from stringing out from drying out from fatiguing but the important idea here is to take
a break every 20 minutes just help reorient your system recalibrate things this will actually
help grow and strengthen your vr legs tip number two is to make sure that your ipd is set correct
in your vr system like the oculus quest 2. ipd is very important it can reduce blur in your system
but also it can align the optics to your eyes correctly and definitely help with vr motion
sickness or help prevent vr motion sickness now one of the easiest ways to measure ipd is actually
to download the glasses on app for android or iphone it's free and actually fairly accurate
but if you want a manual way to measure ipd i go over that in another video and i'll put
those links in the description below tip number three is actually to wear your visual correction
wear your glasses in vr now this is actually for two reasons number one is that you'll actually
see clearer you'll have less blur less chance of motion sickness now remember in vr they set the
focal point for a little bit further out in the oculus quest 2 it's about 1.3 meters or 4 feet out
so if you wear glasses to see that far out then you definitely want to be wearing glasses
in vr the second reason may not be as obvious there are some people out there that might have
one worse eye or one blurry eye but have one really good eye so when they have both eyes open
they see fine now if you have more of a discrepancy if you have a bigger difference
between the two eyes your depth perception might be a little off and that really makes a difference
in vr so if you have glasses to maybe just correct for one eye even if you don't need it for the
the good eye you definitely want to be wearing them in vr because that will set both of the
eyes on the same playing field it will help with your depth perception and reduce the possibility
of getting vr motion sickness tip number four relates to tip number three and that's to wear
contact lenses or to use vr prescription lens inserts if you can the reason why is not only
are glasses annoying to wear in vr they're really uncomfortable they might scratch your lenses
but if you have a narrow set of glasses sometimes you'll have this weird peripheral jump of vision
where it's in the peripheral vision and then it jumps into your glasses you'll have different
magnifications and different sizes that you're looking at so sometimes those jumps and weird
different sizes might induce or cause vr motion sickness in contact lenses you won't have that
problem because you have a full field of vision of clear vision and you won't have the discrepancy of
different magnification or sizes of images that you're looking at and then in vr prescription
lens inserts you won't necessarily have that problem of having some different sizes outside
of your glasses and they're just a lot easier to use than wearing glasses in vr tip number five
and i actually debated whether i was going to put this in this video because the research is lacking
a little bit but it's ocular motor exercises there is some research that suggests that this possibly
could help with vr motion sickness but really the research is lacking needs way more research
but i thought i'd put it in here it's worth a shot it could help you it might not but it
definitely won't hurt there are four exercises that you want to do about 75 seconds each before
you start playing vr the first one you're gonna have two targets you can use two different pens
you're gonna hold them out in your periphery and you're just going to use your eyes on this
one and look at each target and bounce back and forth for 75 seconds a second exercise
you take one target and you follow it with your eyes back and forth try not to move your head
you go really slow back and forth 75 seconds third exercise you take that same target put it in front
of you and you keep looking at it with your eyes but this time you're going to turn your head back
and forth keep the eyes on the target 75 seconds i look like a weirdo last exercise you're going to
move the target and your head at the same time in opposite directions keeping your eye on the target
and you do this for 75 seconds again i know it's weird research is lacking but there is some data
out there that suggests that it could help so it's worth a shot okay if you've been at this
far in the video i do have some bonus additional tips that can help you out if you can decrease
the fov the field of view that will reduce blur vection some games automatically do this but if
you have an option to turn it on definitely try and do that this will take you out it will kind of
mess with the immersion a little bit but it may help you with the motion sickness a few
other additional settings could also help if you teleport travel instead of smooth travel
or snap turn instead of smooth turn or physically move your head in the game or actually physically
walk in place could also help if you're just getting started with vr and having a hard
time adjusting make sure that you check out the game's comfort rating start with games that have
a more comfortable rating like beat saber that's a good one to start with for sure
now a few additional tips that may help with motion sickness in general you need to make
sure that you stay hydrated you can also use a fan to cool yourself down a lot of people like
a neck fan i'll put a link in the description below for that one it's actually really nice
and a couple other remedies would be chewing mint gum or actually drinking ginger ale can actually
help now remember the eyes play a huge role in vr motion sickness cyber sickness so you need
to make sure that your eyes are healthy tip top shape ready to go make sure you check out my vr
and eyes playlist right there for additional tips I'm Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, stay focused.