Nausea from Virtual Reality

[zbigi]

In my case, it does not come from limits to growth, but rather from limits to how much I'm willing to work. I prefer to work less and not ever go to e.g. Japan, esp. if I can see it on the Internet instead - and that's considering that a trip to Japan would probably cost a couple days of my labor (tells you how much I dislike working at the jobs I've had). Also, I find tourism very superficial and ultimately disappointing, especially if I don't know the local language - it gives me an experience that's mostly just visual, and I can get that from youtube.

[jacob]

@zbigi - Randers's two predictions are not about limits and not being able to afford it but that there will be too many people who can afford these experiences. The first prediction has to do with a growing and richer global middle class turning what was previously an exclusive experience into a sucky touristic ordeal, e.g. spending hours standing in line to see the Mona Lisa, the crowd/garbage heaps on top of famous mountain peaks, and turning flying into uncomfortably small seats and literally being served [only] peanuts. The second has to do with electronic entertainment becoming very good and eventually preferential to the diminishing "real world" experience above. So technically, in your case, the switch has already happened.

[Sclass]

Interesting.

Another advantage of just watching an oculus walking tour video is it only takes a few minutes. I can go right back to doing what I was doing five minutes before without any switching overhead. Switching overhead is like going to the airport, clearing customs, getting up in my hotel room, walking down to the tour bus, riding to Petra. Getting back on the bus, riding back to the hotel. Getting on a return flight. Clearing customs.

I don’t intend to go to Petra. But I have felt some of the experience of walking around over there. To get to 100% of the experience takes a lot more energy and time.

I go to family reunions where the old people (and recently a few young) go on for hours about their summer trip to Cairo, Versailles, Tower of London, Great Wall, Florence etc. I never plan on doing this in retirement. That is going somewhere I have no connections to visit a tourist trap on a bucket list…so I can talk about it to my relatives. I know, it sounds kind of like a loser thing, just sit in my home with my goggles on. But it is just so much faster and easier.

It is kind of inline with a lot of my frugal activities. My neighbor rolls up on his fancy $20,000 Austrian motorcycle when I’m working on my twenty year old $2000 model. He keeps saying I need to live and just get the exotic motorcycle with the fancy Swedish suspension. And I acknowledge that it is higher performance, lighter and exhilarating to ride. But 10x? I’m having a great time on my twenty year old model and we ride in the same wilderness park on the same trails. Perhaps 75% of the fun for 10% of the money? That’s my kind of deal.

So that’s where this VR tourism fits in. Maybe it’s 30% the experience of walking up to Petra. But it’s 1% the effort. And I can do it when I’m taking breaks from working on something else that may be more immediately productive like fixing my garage door or setting up my Instant Pot.

[Scott 2]

I tried telling my wife this when she wanted to visit Portland. I pulled up Google Street view and we looked at the places. I said "now you've been there!"

She was not convinced. I think the idea of a VR trip as substitute, would be upsetting to many.

[jacob]

... where the old people (and recently a few young) go on for hours about their summer trip to Cairo, Versailles, Tower of London, Great Wall, Florence etc.

A substantial fraction of humanity (70%) (re)live in their memories (Si) or for immediate concrete experiences (Se), where VR would feel like an lowres experience.

Those of us who live in/by our ideas and future goals don't really see the attraction in talking about the past or paying for the hires experience when the difference from the lowres experience doesn't make a difference in our ideas.

In short, while some surely travel to play the status game and some merely travel because they mimic others doing it, for some it is the raw material of their lived experience.

[Jean]

i wish more people would live in vr more.

[thef0x]

I've really enjoyed VR and yes, some games are just intolerable while others with tons of motion are great. Part of it is tech: frame refresh rate needs to approximate human refresh rate or else motion feels laggy and our brain doesn't like that.

If you have a quest, make sure to use max fps (120?) to help.

Modded beat saber is still one of my favorite ways to get 30 minutes of cardio when I can't spare much time before or after to prep/cool down.

Don't let others here shame you for enjoying your life. The lack of creativity of another person not being able to imagine having the fun your having doesn't mean anything about the fun you're having. Make it fit in your life in a healthy way and you're set.

Enjoy your gaming!

[jacob]

I wonder whether adding some motion to align the inner ear with the eyes would help to alleviate the symptoms.

There are different chair-systems, like this https://dofreality.com/ , depending on whether you pretend to be a car, a plane, or a space cadet.

[Sclass]

Likely so. For me it’s the mismatch between what I see in the visor vs. what is physically happening to my body. The worst is in the driving sim where I slam the brakes and the VR image of the view from my windshield pitches downward yet my head stays perfectly stationary. Instant nausea. I do this all the time in a real car but on that VR it’s a completely disconnected sensation.

I’m getting sick just thinking about it.

[jacob]

Looking at their specs/pics, each axis seems to be a 300W (~1/2hp) gearmotor at ~14rpm (<- slow, maybe hard to find) with 25Nm torque (<- that doesn't seem like a lot?!?).

A one-axis motor that dips the chair seems like it would be a good first project. Advantage being that cars always return to neutral. I'm still not sure how e.g. rolls and loops are handled for aircraft. What does the seat do when the plane goes 360?

[Sclass]

Dunno I don’t fly.

Those sound like wimpy motors. The ones on the rides in theme parks like Harry Potter at Universal Studios really toss you around. They really cannot maintain reasonable acceleration for long.

[jacob]

The link above gives a max G effect on some of the fancier chairs above at 0.5-0.8G.

Likely the flight models for the chairs try to simulate perceived gravity rather than trying to orient the chair like the plane itself. If a turn is done correctly (no slip, no skid), the acceleration would remain 1g downwards, so the chair would not bank for example. OTOH, if you roll 90 and fly straight ahead, you'd have gravity from the side. This leads me to believe that "it's complicated" and not fully simulated. That the idea is to provide some motion but not necessarily the physically correct motion.