You've most lik🦩ely heard of the phenomenon known as cybersickness by now, which has been a particularly salient issue in the VR scene ever since ꦉthe VR scene was a thing. Unfortunately it can serve as quite a debilitating obstacle, preventing some people who would otherwise love to immerse themselves in VR to do exactly that.
But why does VR cause cybe🥃rsickness, anyway? Perhaps you already know the basics - that it's likely due to a mismatch between visual input and inner-ear input - and that's pretty much the 'how.' But you might not know the really fascinating theories in response to the 'why,' so let's explore that a bit shall we?
Down With The Cybersickness
If you need a refresher on what cybersickness is (or if you're one of those fortunate types ignorant of its effects), it's basically moti🅰on sickness but VR Edition. Symptoms are generally nausea, feelings of disorientat൩ion, and eye strain, and can vary in severity depending on how cursed your genes are.
While some might experience it lightly, ot𝐆hers can be totally debilitated by it and left even after the head-mounted display has beenꦏ removed.
The Vestibular Factor
The prevailing explanation for this annoying phenomenon is that there is a sensory conflict between the motion that you're seeing whilst strapped into your HMD and the lack of mot﷽ion your body is experiencing s🀅imultaneously.
A sensory system that forms part of your inner ear is referred to as the vestibular system, and it's hugely responsible for your . If all is functioning as it should, an intricate arrangement of anatomical components, sensory receptors, electrical impulses, and fluid within the inner ear will let us keep our balance (🤪clumsiness notwithstanding) and feel comfortable with our perception of our body's position in space.
The Vision Factor
Things might not go according to plan in the case of VR, though, because the motion that you're seeing isn't accompanied by the usual physiological sensations that your v🤡estibular system "expects" to feel when such visual𓄧 input comes in. And as a result, your body can be left feeling a bit baffled.
An Annoyingly Adaptive Response
One of the possible reasons for why your body reacts the way 🗹it does (i.e. nausea and/or throwing up) to this sensory conflict is real fascinating. It's possibly an on the part of your body to detect and expel ingested neurotoxic substances that are having a hallucinatory or otherwise poisonous effect on you.
Another possibility is that it's a kind of that goes off when it detects something funky is going on as a result of the actions you're doing, or the environment you're in. The warning system tꩲhen triggers some real unpleasant physio﷽logical effects in order to make you stop whatever weird, maladaptive action you're doing to cause this sensory conflict, and/or to drive you to remove yourself from a potentially harmful environment.
Again, these are still just speculative. But if they're at all accurate, then it feels like our own bodies are just the most annoying overreacting killjoys ever who are preve❀nting us from playing some sweet VR games.
The Role Of Evolution
These hypotheses make a lot of sense 🎃if you consider their evolutionary benefits. Our ancestors would have had that much more of a shot at survival (and subsequent reproduction) if they had bodies that reacted this way. But with technological advancements like VR picking up speed, our landscape of survival is changing in unprecedented ways.
It may be a bit far-fetched, but perhaps those whose bodies don't react negatively to these sensations will start being selected for. In other words, functions like this that were previously adaptive and contributed positively to survival might be rende♕red maladaptive as the technological age picks up more speed.
The Future
Of course, that's all still extreme conjectural at this point. And even if that did start happening, it would take literal millennia for natural selection to properly reflect this new, better-adapted type of human. In other words you, dear reader, certainly won't live longꦡ enough to be a part of that hypothetical world. Sorry.
Until then, us normal folk are just going to have to do whatever we can to mitigate the risks of cybersickness caused by VR. Thankfully, there are a bun♔ch of you can adopt in hopes that you'll prevent the phenomenon from happening. We 𒁃can also place some tempered hope in the hands of the fancy tech people as they continue to make fancier tech that's more streamlined and user-friendly than ever before.
As always, the future of VR is an exciting one.
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