From: ai474@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Farrell McGovern)
Subject: DESIGN: Cyber/Motion/Transition sickness (fomerly Best VR
Date: 8 Apr 1996 16:52:39 GMT
Message-ID: <4kbg8n$fo9@freenet-news.carleton.ca>
Organization: The National Capital FreeNet


From: ai474@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Farrell McGovern)

"Stuart Ralston" (Stuart.Ralston@trimble.co.nz) writes:
> On a general note.  Using low-end helmets with Doom/Heretic where
> speed is of the essence, most users will be using the
> keyboard/Cyberpuck to rotate their field of view.  Doing this
> dramatically increases the chance of Cyber/Motion-sickness and
> headaches associated with visual movement without physical movement.
> If all players are restricted to moving forward and backwards with
> their heads doing the orientation then this will be reduced.

	At Reality Bytes VR Cafe, we are using both the Virtual IO &
Liquid Image helmets, and we find that the game/HMD combo that has the
highest number of cases of Cyber/Motion/Transition sickness is the
Descent & the VIO I-glasses. I can only attribute this to the fact
that this combination gives the user a full stereoscopic view (ie,
they have depth perception), and that the game takes place in a
weightless VR world where they have very few visual queues as to "UP"
and "DOWN". It is due to this that we try and limit people's first
experience in VR, esp the a fore mentioned combo, to 5 minutes. This
seems to be the limit of the more sensative users. We had one user who
said he could handle more time since he had played a great deal of
Descent at home on his home computer...so we let him play 20
minutes...When he pulled off the HMD, he had to be helped to a chair,
and he was unable to stand for about 10 minutes.

	As this technology starts to enter home use, I think that
warnings about the above mentioned potential problems should be noted
on the boxes and literature in the box...so we have less of a chance
of a someone getting injured as of a result of their using VR
equipment.

ttyl
     Farrell