VR Flight World

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VR Nausea… Is it Real?

Have you ever wanted to buy a virtual reality headset like the Oculus Rift(Affiliate Link) but didn’t know if it would make you sick… Well, most of us have. For me, motion sickness has never been a problem, as I was the person that could ride the roller coaster while reading a book (theoretically… never attempted). This is not the case for a lot of people and I wanted to try it with someone who is known to get motion sickness. I really wanted to use the “worst case scenario” type person.

Car Sick… but What About VR Sick?

The experiment started with finding the right subject. I wanted to find someone that was known to be car sick. Someone that had trouble holding down there lunch while being a passenger in a car… I knew just the person, my brother. He is the perfect experiment subject. All his life he has been known to get car sick. There have been multiple occasions where we have had to make a extremely fast pit stops in order for him to puke out the side of the car.  He has never flown a plane and has never used any type of VR prior to my experiment. If I have to drive around with him, I know I need to keep the driving tame, unless I want to fill the interior with that delightful smell of vomit.

Using X-Plane 11 with the Oculus Rift

So, I decided to use X-Plane 11 for this experiment. With the new X-Plane 11 with Native VR I get 45 fps, which actually feels very smooth. I find that if I let it drop below 45 fps, then I really start to notice the slow frame rate. I believe that this is one major factor in the VR nausea, so if you are running it slower then 45 fps, you may want to consider upgrading your hardware.

Let’s Put it to the Test

So, the one day he was at my house, I decided that this was going to be the time to conduct this test. I set him up on my flight sim and turned on the Oculus Rift. He put on the Oculus Rift and was immediately amazed by the immersion. We started him out on the active runway with the engine running to make things easy.

He took off and was amazed. He never showed any signs of nausea or sickness.

As he was flying around, I asked him how it made him feel. He said he felt great, however I was still sceptical. I wanted to see how his landing made him feel. As he came around, he spotted his runway. Instead of landing, he ended up increasing the throttle and throwing the plane into a type of barrel roll. I thought for sure he was going to squirm and take off the Oculus Rift, however he did nothing like this. He pulled out of the barrel roll and came around for the landing.

The landing was great, smoothest landing I have ever seen from a beginner on a flight sim. I believe having the flight sim in VR really helped him to naturally land the plane.

Once he was on the ground, instead of the taking the Oculus Rift off, he asked, “can I try it again?”… So off he went again. He was probably flying for a good 15 minutes before he took off the headset.

I asked him how it made him feel and he said he had no ill effects. I said “Even when you did the barrel roll?”. I expected this to have some effect on him, however he felt fine.

Second Attempt with Another Person

I later tried this again on another person.  This person was not known to get sick, however did not enjoy roller coasters.

He threw on the Oculus Rift headset and started up into the air. Just a side note, this is a current student pilot, who is just beginning his flight training in a real plane.

When he first took off he was having trouble maintaining his altitude and in general was having a rough flight. It turned out the problem was the flight control placement. At this time I had been experimenting with my setup. This really threw him off. He flew a circuit and came in for a landing. With the difficulties of the controls, his plane was all over the place, which made for an extremely rough landing. After he got the plane on the ground he took a break from it. He wasn’t necessarily feeling sick, but he had a slight bit of a nauseous feeling.

After a couple minutes, he tried again. This time we had put the controls in a better location. He took off and it was a completely different flight. He came around for the landing and lined it up perfectly. It was a great landing. I asked him, “So, how do you feel?”. He said he felt great and had no nausea or anything. He then took off again and flew for another 30 minutes before ending his flight. He loved the flight, however had a rough start.

Conclusion

So, this was obviously a very small experiment as I only had two subjects. So the results are not going to represent everyone, however I think it does give you an idea on how flight sim in VR can affect you.

It appears that if you practice proper flight techniques, then you will not have an issue, however if you end up bouncing all over the place trying to make a landing, it might make you feel a bit of nauseous.  Again, I also had my sim running at 45 fps, which probably helps. I can only imagine, that if you can manage to get 90 fps out of the sim, then you would not experience the nausea. I would suggest, that if you want to fly a fighter jet or something more agressive, that you opt for a system that can push out the 90 fps, or lower the graphics to get that 90 fps. With general aviation, you will probably be fine with 45 fps. I’ve even ran my sim at 30 fps and felt fine, as long as I wasn’t doing anything crazy with the plane.

As this was a limited experiment, I would love to hear how VR makes you feel. Does anyone have experiences with VR. Please share in the comments.