What is Virtual Reality Sickness and How to Avoid it?

Based on a small sample study performed by VR Heaven, 57.8% of respondents have experienced VR motion sickness at least once. This is one of the last roadblocks to the widespread adoption of Virtual Reality as a major medium. However, understanding the cause could help to select experiences adjusted to your tolerance level, assuring a pleasant exploration of everything the Metaverses and Hoppin’ have to offer.

What is Virtual Reality Sickness

Virtual reality sickness, also known as simulator sickness or cybersickness, is hypothesized to be due to a sensory conflict between what your eyes see and how your brain interprets it, versus what your body is doing. Recent advancement to VR headset technology (resolution, framerate, head and hand tracking accuracy, etc.) have significantly improved the situation, but content and user habits also play a big part in the problem.

Concretely, VR sickness is similar to motion sickness (being seasick, for example). Symptoms include nausea, dizziness, headache, sweating and excessive salivation. Knowing the various triggers will help you adopt appropriate strategies to mitigate the risk and to select appropriate VR experiences, suited to your tolerance level and your tastes.

What are the VR Sickness Triggers

VR Sickness can be triggered by multiple factors. As mentioned above, lower resolution content and lower framerate of the content will play a part, which is why the Hoppin’ team is in the process of constantly improving our video encoding formula to offer the best experience permitted by the physical limitations of the headsets. 

Motion is also a recurrent culprit. This is why Hoppin’s Chillspots and Mazes are constructed around static points of view (versus a moving camera). Here’s a quotation from a recent study outlining this conclusion: “In contrast, content consisting of low amounts of motion may be less likely to induce VR sickness, as well as in cases where head movement in a fixed position is concordant with what the user would experience in the real world.”

Duration is another factor. The longer a VR session lasts, the higher the chance of experiencing VR sickness. Sex and age are also cited as factors, but findings are mixed in that area. One factor that might explain why women are more vulnerable to VR sickness is that the headset is modelled around the head of men, with a wider interpupillary distance, preventing optimal adjustments on certain models.

How to Use Your VR Headset Without Suffering

If you are new to VR, start with short sessions and increase the duration progressively. Research suggests that some people will build resistance to VR sickness over time with the impact significantly lower on the second session (refer to this paper which outlines the result of multiple research).

Choose the content you consume carefully. Games with a lot of movement and accelerations are better suited to when you understand your personal tolerance. 

UploadVR also suggests a few odd tricks to help you overcome VR sickness. Eating ginger (known to combat nausea) beforehand or aiming a fan at yourself apparently can help mitigate the effects.

Apps and Games Suggestions for new Oculus Quest Users

Here are a few applications that are safer for new VR users on the Quest platform in terms of motion sickness.

Hoppin’

The Hoppin’ team prides itself of being a good introduction to new VR users, due to the static points of view and the high resolution of the video scenes. By teleporting into high quality 360˚ video capture of real-world locations and attractions, we aim to help people relax by chilling and soaking into the ambiance of the various locations with their friends or interesting strangers, while adding new entries to your travel bucket list.

Notes on Blindness

What better way to avoid sensory overload than by sensory deprivation? Notes on blindness is a unique VR experience that puts you in the shoes of a blind person, guided by the musing of John Hull, a British professor who lost sight in 1983 and recorded an audio diary of his experience.

Real VR Fishing

Real VR Fishing combines 360 photography with motion design to create realistic and relaxing environments to experience fishing. It’s the next best thing compared to real life.

Using VR in Tourism

vr in tourism - hoppin

Introduction

In this new world of the Covid-19 pandemic, travel has become almost an impossibility. If you want to keep yourself safe, it’s pretty much out of the question. If you are crazy (yes, crazy) enough to get on a plane for a recreational holiday right now, you had better be ready for biggest hassle of your life.

That’s why VR is carving out a progressively bigger place in tourism. It’s being used more and more every single day, helping people experience other parts of the world that they’d only see if they got on an airplane in the not-so-distant past.

The VR and AR market was already worth around $18 billion in 2018. For obvious reasons, this is expected to increase to $209 billion by the time 2022 rolls around. This is exponential growth. If you’re in the travel and tourism industry, VR is set to become a huge part of your life.

Using VR as a Tourism Board – Leverage VR in Tourism

At the moment it’s impossible to travel, but what if you could still give a guided fam trip to people and make them feel completely immersed? That’s what we do at Hoppin.’

If you run a tourist board, you can make VR a major part of its operations. How? By offering Virtual Fam Trips. Fam trips are an important part of any tourism board or tourism business or operation generally, and now you can do them for a much lower cost (while still reaping all the benefits of new clients and more revenue).

When you use VR in tourism, you’re able to save an enormous amount of money and time, bringing people on live personalized guided tours of all the best that your city or destination has to offer in a controlled environment. You won’t have to worry about unexpected weather problems, traffic hassles, or anything else.

Tourism boards and their clients can use VR to bring people directly to the chosen location and make them feel what it’s like to be there in real life. And with Hoppin’, it allows you and your clients to meet as avatars in a virtual space that includes 360° videos and 360° pictures representing the real-world location.

With Hoppin’, you first send your prospect a headset. You’ll then be able to meet them virtually and act as their guide, showing them the location of your choice. At that point, you can close the deal. Just imagine how much you’ll boost your revenue as a result of this opportunity.

VR is a revolutionary tool for travel companies. It means that you can actually give your potential customers the experience of a place rather than just using pictures and videos. All that is needed is a simple setup and VR glasses for yourself and the potential customer.

With VR, you can show potential customers their accommodation options. This is incredibly helpful, as worry and uncertainty about the quality of accommodations is a major factor that makes people hesitant about booking a trip. Now you can overcome this hurdle right from the get-go. Check out this video to get a better idea of what the experience might look like for potential clients when you’re showing them accommodation options virtually.

Using VR as an Experience Provider – Showcase Your Destination

Having 360° pictures or videos of your location means you can better showcase your destination. You have full control of everything your tour group members see, and you can make sure they see all the best the city has to offer.

VR is the tool you need if you’re an experience provider. After all, being able to offer 360° pictures and videos of your location and what you have to offer is the best possible way to showcase the experience you want to sell.

Let’s take a quick look at an example of how you can use VR is if you’re looking for travel agencies to promote and sell your experience. If you’re selling a whale watching expedition, you usually need to bring representatives from several travel agencies to see and experience your offering. With Covid-19, you cannot do this, but what you can do is bring them to experience it virtually.

Using VR as an Aspiring Traveler – Travel Virtually To Plan Your Real Trips

VR is also a revolutionary tool for travelers. In this new world of Covid-19, it’s almost impossible to physically travel long distances anywhere safely. VR makes it possible to have the full travel experience without any of the hassles or dangers.

Check out some of the available VR apps that let you travel from the comfort and safety of your home. Some of the best include Wander, Alcove, AltspaceVR, and Hoppin.’ Even if you don’t have a VR headset, you can still sometimes find 360° content online or on the Hoppin’ website. This site is a new site that will grow with time, so make sure to check periodically.

Take a look at this fantastic demo of what the VR experience with Hoppin’ looks like. As a VR traveler with Hoppin’, you will experience all the sights and sounds of your chosen location.

VR Business Travel – Skip the Plane Rides and Get a Virtual Tour

VR presents an incredible opportunity for businesspeople wanting to set up meetings around the world without having to travel. You can create a live face-to-face meeting with prospects, clients, and collaborators. VR for business meetings can save huge amounts of money and time for you and your clients alike.

When you use the Multi-user Social VR and 360° Videos available from Hoppin’, you enjoy a VRaaS solution that lets you interact with people in your chosen space. Imagine all the prospects you can make into new clients by bringing them to an impressive location quickly and easily via VR.

Conclusion

It’s time to get a Quest headset and go explore the world in a new way, together with friends. After all, that’s what we’re all about at Hoppin’. The Oculus Quest is your All-in-One VR solution. Its system, Oculus Insight, makes sure your movements are always accurately translated into VR. The Quest headset has built-in positional audio, too.