Developers Race To Develop VR Headsets That Won't Make Users Nauseous

HughPickens.com writes Nick Wingfield reports at the NYT that for the last couple of years, the companies building virtual reality headsets have begged the public for patience as they strive to create virtual environments that don't make people physically sick. "We're going to hang ourselves out there and be judged," says John Carmack, chief technology officer of Oculus, describing what he calls a "nightmare scenario" that has worried him and other Oculus executives. "People like the demo, they take it home, and they start throwing up," says Carmack. "The fear is if a really bad V.R. product comes out, it could send the industry back to the '90s." In that era, virtual reality headsets flopped, disappointing investors and consumers. "It left a huge, smoking crater in the landscape," says Carmack, who is considered an important game designer for his work on Doom and Quake. "We've had people afraid to touch V.R. for 20 years." This time around, the backing for virtual reality is of a different magnitude. Facebook paid $2 billion last year to acquire Oculus. Microsoft is developing its own headset, HoloLens, that mixes elements of virtual reality with augmented reality, a different medium that overlays virtual images on a view of the real world. Google has invested more than $500 million in Magic Leap, a company developing an augmented reality headset. "The challenge is there is so much expectation and anticipation that that could fall away quite quickly if you don't get the type of traction you had hoped," says Neil Young. (More, below.) At least one company, Valve, believes it has solved the discomfort problem with headsets. Gabe Newell says Valve has worked hard on its virtual reality technology to eliminate the discomfort, saying that "zero percent of people get motion sick" when they try its system. According to Newell, the reason why no one has gotten sick yet is thanks to Valve's Lighthouse motion-tracking system, a precise motion-tracking system that is capable of accurately tracking users as they move around a space. In the meantime the next challenge will be convincing media and tech companies to create lots of content to keep users entertained. "Virtual reality has been around for 20 years, and the one thing that has been consistent throughout this is that the technology is not mature enough," says Brian Blau,. "Today there's the possibility for that to change, but it's going to take a while for these app developers to get it right."

Comments

I love my Oculus Rift DK2

[Anonymous Coward]

.....but I get physically ill at just thinking about putting the thing on. It's a love/hate relationship. It's amazing how real the thing feels with good demo or a game. Unfortunately so many demos and many of the games I've played just make me sick to my stomach. I typically can't use it for longer than an hour with Assetto Corsa which is the game I find works best with the Rift. I want to love the thing because it can be really immersive but they really need to figure out how to fix the motion sickness.

Re:Nauseated.

[mothlos]

English dictionaries are not prescriptive, but descriptive of the useage of words. All this is saying is that this is how people are using this word so if you hear someone use it you should consider this definition in trying to understand what has been said.

Also, while I agree on a technical level that words have no intrinsic meaning and are simply tools of communication, I don't think this conflicts with the idea that we should care about language in order to improve its utility and accessibility. It is completely legitimate to prefer that people use nauseated over nauseous as the expanded definition of the latter to include the former can hinder communication and cause confusion.

We certainly should care about our language and quoting dictionaries at people who do so is a high form of anti-thinking which just discourages people from caring.