Important Concepts

Motion Sickness

In VR, motion sickness is caused by your eyes seeing movement while your body doesn’t feel it. It can come quickly, and can completely stop someone from using VR for the rest of the day. There are two factors to motion sickness: preparation and the VR content. Ways to prepare someone for motion sickness include:

Providing air flow

Providing water

Ensuring the person’s headset is properly fitted

Using positive wording; not directly mentioning motion sickness

Ways to account for motion sickness in VR content include:

Keeping movement slow

Keeping the user in control of their actions and view

Making the user feel as immersed as possible

For a full introduction check out:

Motion Sickness⁠

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And almost every tip on this document is solely for preventing motion sickness.

Vergence-Accommodation Conflict (VAC)

In current VR headsets, the VAC is caused by headsets not sending accurate light signals to our eyes when viewing nearby virtual objects. Our brains will adapt to this inaccuracy, however it will always cause eye strain especially over time. To account for this ensure:

Anything closer than about 1.5 meters should not require extended focus

Moving objects should move slowly, and move short distances. It takes the eyes some effort to refocus on objects at different distances away, and the VAC makes this harder

For a full introduction check out:

Vergence-Accommodation Conflict⁠

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Color Distortion

There are two major color distortions that happen in a VR headset: halation and chromatic aberration.

Halation refers to an unintentional glow effect that’s most noticeable in high-contrast situations, like white text on a black background. Seeing this can cause someone to not feel immersed and get slight eye strain. To mitigate this:

Avoid high contrast

Keep colors off-white or off-black

Chromatic Aberration refers to an unintentional lighting effect where excess colors will appear, and is also most noticeable in high contrast situations. To mitigate this:

Avoid high contrast

Keep the focal point near the center of the user’s view

Keep the focal point around 1.5 meters from the user.

Optic Flow

Optic Flow refers to how much motion we perceive. An example of high optic flow is looking at the ground while driving on the freeway.

Experiencing high optic flow in VR contributes to motion sickness, so to avoid this:

Make nearby moving objects simple; minimal details

Limit the user’s field of view when they’re moving quickly past many objects

Independent Visual Background (IVB)

An IVB is a VR 3D environment that is independent from the main environment. IVBs are most useful when the main environment is able to be rotated and moved around- this is not something that happens in the real world, so it causes motion sickness when done in VR.

To implement an IVB, have it appear in the edges of the user’s view when they are adjusting the main environment. This helps them feel anchored, and helps their brain understand why the main environment is able to move so easily.

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Sensory Input, Proprioception

Motion Sickness

Vergence-Accommodation Conflict (VAC)

Color Distortion

Optic Flow

Independent Visual Background (IVB)

Sensory Input, Proprioception

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