Ask HN: Why do so many VR games move the camera now?

6 pointscivicsquid2y ago5 comments

Back when I was doing research in VR about a decade ago, everyone followed the golden rule: do not cause any sudden acceleration!

This was because studies had regularly shown that doing so produced feelings of motion sickness. You could have teleportation or slow acceleration, but not any sudden movements like you would see in console FPS games.

I recently tried a couple of games on the Oculus and was surprised to see how common FPS-style 'walking' is in VR.

It make me pretty sick so I'm wondering: is there new research that refutes the 'golden rule', or did developers just decide to stop following it for some reason?

5 comments

f0e4c2f72y ago

Moving with a joystick rather than 'teleportation' style movement used to make me sick. After practicing it for a while though that eventually went away and I find games are much more fun / playable that way now.

Strangely I don't hear people talking about this as much now and I've wondered why.

One guess is that maybe the higher the quality of the headset the less pronounced the effect.

Another odd thing I'll note is that in the early days of FPS flat screen shooters this also used to happen. I can remember people talking about it at the time, but also if you read Masters of Doom they talk about how early players and developers would play with a trashcan next to their PC and in the middle of the game get so nauseaus they had to puke.

No idea why this effect became less prevalent with flat screen games then, or (seemingly) VR games now.

echeese2y ago

Joystick movement personally never made me feel sick but it would sometimes nearly make me fall over. Turns out having your environment suddenly shift without moving can make your body react appropriately by trying to catch its balance.

TobbenTM2y ago

Purely speculative, but I suspect quite a number of vr players have gotten used to the floating movements. Some vr games are just vastly better using floating movements, especially FPS games. Look at Pavlov VR for example, it's honestly the best movement I've ever used in VR, but it requires the player to overcome the motion sickness introduced by the floating movement. And if players are getting used to it, I'm guessing new games have an easier time utilizing that?

pawelduda2y ago

In RE:Village it's funny that whenever you are thrown onto the ground (you are being thrown around a lot), from your perspective it looks like your body is sank in it, with just head sticking out. I don't think this can be avoided in such cases. Like in this one, the only way to remain synced to what's happening in VR would be to lie down or collapse IRL, I personally don't need this level of immersion. On the contrary, many people said they got used to "VR legs" over time and no longer feel sick - according to them, the key is to be gentle and take a break instead of pushing through it when you feel sick.

akasakahakada2y ago

Wonder what would happen in Rise of the Tomb Raider VR. With that insane amount of camera wobble, no double I will immediately vomit all over the places.

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