The HTC Vive and other VR headsets have certainly matured over time that motion sickness and nausea are now things of the past. Should you continue to experience such, Valve's Chet Faliszek said developers should get the blame.
"The idea that VR must get you sick is [bullsh*t]," Faliszek told a crowd attending EGX 2015 at Birmingham, as quoted by GameIndustry.biz.
For all those who were eager to try out the HTC Vive demos, there were still plenty who have the misconception that virtual reality will make them sick, according to the Valve employee.
"That expectation is based on either what they've seen before or what they've heard."
Per its official website, the HTC Vive VR now boasts a 1,200 x 1,080p display per eye with a 90Hz refresh rate "eliminating the jitter common to previous VR technologies." For Faliszek, the hardware has advanced far enough that any remaining issues should be blamed on developers.
"As consumers and people in the community hold developers to it," he told the audience. "They shouldn't be making you sick. It's no longer the hardware's fault any more. It's the developers making choices that are making you sick. Tell them that you don't want that."
One way VR induces motion sickness is tying conventional game controls to a VR environment, according to Faliszek. To that end, he said the Vive's "Lighthouse" position-tracking technology makes the experience "exponentially better" as opposed to gamepads, keyboards and other traditional control devices.
As DigitalTrends noted, that's a dig at rival Oculus Rift "which doesn't allow for real-world maneuvering." Instead, the Facebook-owned VR headset has players sitting down with tracking limited to head movements.
Then again, the Rift does have hand-tracking Touch controllers sold separately. Sony also employs a similar solution to its PlayStation VR as an optional extra.
But as GI.biz pointed out, most people getting into VR will be relying with the out-of-the-box experience where a gamepad is the primary input and consequently, "all of the problematic abstractions that brings."
The HTC Vive VR, powered by Valve's SteamVR platform, will debut later this year in limited quantity.
