I’ve always had really bad motion sickness. Growing up and riding in a car with my family would always make me feel nauseous. It was no surprise when I immediately felt sick after playing VR for the first time. Games on the oculus store will show a comfort setting, which indicates whether the game has a risk of causing motion sickness. Games like Boneworks or Lone Echo, could be more of a risk, since you’re expected to move around in the VR environment, while games like Beat Saber are much Safer, since you stand in one spot.

When I first started playing, Beat Saber was pretty much the only game I could play comfortably. Any movement within the VR environment, would cause me to feel nauseous immediately.  Trying to walk forward in VRChat would make me feel like falling over. I could only handle about 30 minutes of gameplay in Pavlov, before I needed to lay down.

While I feel like I had it pretty bad, I definitely know there are some people who get it worse than me. I love playing VR, especially at the beginning, so I pushed through the motion sickness and continued playing. It took me about two weeks, of playing everyday, before I really got used to it. Within a month, I was able to play nonstop. Neuroscience News wrote an article about motion sickness in VR where they talk about people overcoming “cybersickness”. If you’re interested, you can read that here.

VR sickness is not fun, but you can overcome it by continuing to play VR. If you’re someone who experiences it, there are tons of safety settings added by developers that can help ease the pain of VR sickness.