As more and more people engage in VR gaming, an unfortunate side effect has become clear: it can make you feel very dizzy, even to the point of feeling queasy. Why in the metaverse does this happen, and what can help reduce this problem?
Visually-induced vertigo is dizziness that can happen anytime you view a moving object when your head is still. This often crops up when using an ordinary video game with a joystick that moves the visual surroundings on the screen. Even watching a widescreen movie with a lot of motion, like sequences filmed from a banking airplane, can set this off. In these cases, your head is generally not moving, but your eyes see the environment appear to move. This conflict between the motion felt by the eyes and ears generates an inappropriate feeling of movement in the head that is felt as dizziness. While watching movies the feeling can be strong enough that you actually begin to move your body to counter-balance. If the mismatch between the eyes and head motion continues for long enough, it can result in motion sickness with nausea.
Virtual reality gaming creates an additional problem. In these games, your head moves and the visual environment controlled by the game also moves. Unfortunately, when the head moves in the normal environment, the eyes reflexively tend to remain in place momentarily so that vision does not blur with a rapid head turn. This reflex reduces the sensation of motion the eyes pick up, and it is this reduced amount that “feels normal” during a head turn. Virtual reality games interfere with this process; when the visual environment of the game turns, it moves past the eyes of the viewer in a stream that is felt as a much stronger turn than the eyes normally detect during head movement. This again results in the development of motion sickness.
When wearing the VR helmet you can reduce this dizziness by closing your eyes fully or in a series of blinks whenever you move your head. This helps prevent the illusion that the world swims past you during the game. If the helmet screen can blank out the visual world during quick head turns, that also helps. Once nausea develops, however, it may take a few hours to subside fully. Anti-motion sickness medications are also helpful for this kind of dizziness.
Ending Vertigo Today 