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I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

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Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#281

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There are pills you can take against motion sickness, it is a known problem that some people get motion sick easier and throw up from situations normal people handle just fine.

I disagree with your categorization that 20-80% of users who experience motion sickness are not normal. In fact, it would appear that people that actually like VR are in the abnormal category. Now we gotta take anti nausea drugs just to play games? Is that reasonable? I don’t think so.

20%-80%? I wasn't aware the proportion was so high. Of the 12-or-so folks I've put in VR over the past few years for more than 1 hour, only one reported experiencing motion sickness, and that was after about 15 minutes. It's certainly a thing that exists. I'm more on the "iron stomach" end of the spectrum, but I hear that ginger candy can help, and as another commenter suggested, chewing gum. Some folks have reported that having a fan blowing air at them can help as well. Those sorts of measures might not be very attractive if a person hates VR anyway, but if they really enjoy it and want to work around the motion sickness, it might be worth it.

For what it's worth, I don't think this is unique to VR...I used to be a big FPS player back in the day (Quake 1-3 mostly), and I had a friend that got motion sick playing Quake 3, so he couldn't play in our matches. It's certainly the case that I've heard more reports of motion sickness in VR, though.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#282
post #197

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I'm kind of a perpetual skeptic and I probably would have been one of those that dismissed the internet as a toy in its early days had I been old enough to have an opinion. That being said, by being a skeptic, I think I'm right more than I'm wrong. For every "internet" that I've called wrong, there's a "3D TV" or "Segway" that's I've correctly predicted would fail to live up to the hype. These revolutionary technolog…

> the downsides of a false negative and less than the downsides of a false positive As a consumer, yes. As a founder, there is an opportunity cost to not founding the next Googlebook.

There's also an opportunity cost to building a business around a technology that doesn't catch on. Looking only at companies that created "the next big thing" is survivorship bias. For every Elon Musk/Tesla story, you've got multiple people who bet big and lost on something like hydrogen cars.

Also, I'd argue that most business aren't founded on some bleeding edge technology. It's a false dichotomy to think that all successful founders embrace new technology and all skeptical founders are doomed to fail. There are plenty of businesses built around doing the same thing everyone else is doing, just faster, easier, or cheaper. Sure a skeptical founder may not create the next Googlebook, but I don't think that really matters.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#283
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post #209

So they think people will put on a headset in order to shop. Versus me picking up my phone and ordering something within a minute. Or texting someone a simple message. What VR and metaverse miss is that they haven’t solved the asynchronous problem.

You know, I always found it stupid that people thought I would ever use my phone to type messages or worse to write blog posts. I would not rule out radical change of use patterns. People will not put on a headset to shop, they will shop as they play, as they watch videos, etc.

I take it you no longer find those things to be stupid? One of the biggest benefits of Signal over iMessage/SMS for me is that I can use a desktop client for messaging 99% of the time. Is it really remotely common for people to write blog posts on a phone?

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#284
post #138

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> The tech works extremely well at making me feel sick. But you realize this is a you problem, right? Outside the handful of people who get motion sick with VR, the tech is rock solid. Everyone who tries an Index is blown away by how immersive the experience is. > VR chat is about as interesting as second life, and any metaverse that follows will follow the same path. You couldn't be more wrong. There's a reason Face…

The literature says it's 22-80% of people get sick using VR. Much more than a handful https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91573-w

The study was designed to find factors that correlate with VR sickness, and as such, only studied 83 people, all "highly stressed", and showed shaking videos as their methodology. I think it would be a statistical mistake to generalize from this study.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#285
post #165

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Ever tried it with dramamine? I get motion sick in less than twenty minutes but medicine completely eliminated the problem.

Yeah having to take drugs to game sounds like a problem IMHO. Oculus Quest 2: with included Dramamine subscription from FB marketplace. Yeah opt out pls

It's routine for folks that get on a boat to go SCUBA diving or snorkeling to take Dramamine. Many people take it to go on a car ride or fly in an airplane.

I think we see that as "just fine" partly because boating, driving, and flying are seen as "normal". But maybe it's also because if none of those are normally happening that often, so taking the drug is a special event, in some sense. VR might be an everyday thing, so that starts looking pretty dicey - who wants to take a pill before every gaming session, forever I wonder if folks that are trying to gain their "sea legs" could take it as a stop-gap until their body adjusts. I certainly saw this with folks that had extreme sea sickness when they first joined the Navy.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#286

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Just curious how it works: do you touch type and never use mouse?

I just use the MacBook trackpad; works fine for me. And yes I touch type. If I couldn’t I would struggle. When I was in primary school (in the 80s), I had a choice from our municipal in the Netherlands between learning to touch type and something else (I forgot) or nothing as extra curricular. I am still happy I picked touch typing! Gift that keeps on giving.

Nice -- thanks for replying! I mostly touch type, but I sometimes need to glance at the keyboard to find infrequently used keys like Insert.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#287

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> AR on the other hand, either as a small projector or special glasses — that is exciting. Is it? All I have ever seen is floating stuff lagging behind or jumping around. A "proof of concept" level experience, at best.

My car projects stuff onto the windshield. Is that a type of AR?

Yes and I think this is the most useful kind. This tech is going to get much better this decade.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#288
post #223

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>The major issue was not being able to see the keyboard. I came to the conclusion that this was THE issue holding VR productivity (and gaming) back, after a few weeks of using the Quest 2. The passthrough feature they have is like a v0.1 of what's that's really needed for this tech to excel. Haptic gloves look like they might nudge things along a little bit more, but ultimately being able to see your actual keyboard…

This is already possible with the Logitec K830 and the Apple Magic Keyboard https://uploadvr.com/best-wireless-bluetooth-keyboards-for-m...

That looks awesome, had no idea. Thanks for the link!

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#289

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Perhaps could be phrased as “more easily than other users”? Dropping in as a quest 2 user to add anecdata of not feeling sick in most games or for extended periods of time. I’m not used to moving around smoothly using controllers though, flying a racing drone is kind of similar in being vaguely disturbing to begin with. Quest 2 sales over the last few weeks would hint this might not be a fad, though.

Sales… to know if it is a fad or not — we don’t know, at least not yet. Actual numbers of people that use it more than once and put it in a closet? Let’s see.

Steam stats are based on active users iirc - at the moment about 1.93% of all Steam users use VR Headsets, and Half Life Alyx recorded 42k concurrent users. This is keeping in mind Q2 (the current sales winner) is a standalone headset by default. You could argue most of those concurrent users used the headset once and put it away, but that line is getting harder to argue as time goes on and the numbers keep increasing.

If this was 2016-2019 I'd agree it was very touch and go in terms of where it was going. But the investment and interest building around VR now has that here-to-stay feel to it - at least on my sometimes accurate vibe-ometer.

Re: I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

#290

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One of my biggest hobbies is sim racing, and I can tell you that putting on the VR headset is akin to putting on a helmet and setting off on the track. The sweatiness and discomfort is nothing more than a real driver would experience, and turning a wheel feels real without hand tracking. What you're experiencing with disorientation does tend to go away for most people if they're careful about it. And for me, I litera…

Any racing games you can recommend? I couldn't find a good one (without trying them out).

Assetto Corsa's complete edition often goes on sales for ~$5 and can be modded like crazy, and also has reasonable controller support. Wheel and pedals will always be better though.
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