I've had the dev kit for a few months now. My experience has been that it depends highly on the type of demo played. Most people seem to have a lot of difficulty with first person shooters, but fare much better with flight sims. Lunar Flight (http://www.shovsoft.com/) is my favorite so far.
I think everyone's vestibular system is sensitive in different ways. But FPSs in the rift generally feel very "wrong" (not sure how else to describe it), when moving using a controller. Especially when strafing - it produces a sensory response similar to a feeling of drunk stumbling. But in a flight or driving sim, the same kind of movements feel much less wrong, even to the same people. Maybe because similar movement in the real world are also performed via control inputs, and our minds understand that?
I think there are some interesting questions there. In the coming years, an entertainment concept as vague as "immersion" might actually have tangible metrics associated with it, since its exactly that kind of understanding that will be needed to overcome this "VR sickness"
> I think everyone's vestibular system is sensitive in different ways. But FPSs in the rift generally feel very "wrong" (not sure how else to describe it), when moving using a controller. Especially when strafing - it produces a sensory response similar to a feeling of drunk stumbling. But in a flight or driving sim, the same kind of movements feel much less wrong, even to the same people. Maybe because similar movement in the real world are also performed via control inputs, and our minds understand that?
I think that this is a very interesting phenomenon, a physical "uncanny valley" of unnatural movements causing VR sickness. Strafing is definitely something that doesn't occur in real life, there's no way you can move directly sideways at regular walking/running speed. If VR ever becomes popular with FPS games, the genre will have to change or the audience will be limited to people immune to VR sickness.
Another interesting case was one of the Rift demos where you travel on zip lines. The physics of this demo were so incorrect that it made me nauseous. My body was expecting a rapid acceleration downwards but instead the movement on the zip lines was roughly constant velocity.
I would welcome more realistic physics to games even if it weren't for motion sickness. Hollywood physics aren't very interesting gameplay wise although it is visually stunning.
I also got horrible motion sickness from flying in a flight simulator with the Rift dev kit. I have flown a lot of flight simulators but doing so with the rift made me feel awful. I think that improved resolution might help here, the resolution was too blurry to make out the instruments on the panel or see the airfield before it was too late to land.
I definitely think that the translation tracking with the external camera will help. I have been using camera based head tracking (TrackIR) in simulator games and it is excellent.
I very much want Oculus Rift to solve the VR sickness problem. If the Rift catches on, in a few years there's no way you'll be able to be competitive in combat flight simulators without one because everyone using a VR solution will enjoy a better situational awareness. So it is going to be a choice between motion sickness (or defeating it) and being a sitting duck waiting to get shot. A head tracker like TrackIR is almost a prerequisite even today.
I can't wait to try the new Rift prototype and the customer version when it comes out and see if they've solved the problem. But I'm not buying one before I can try one out and see if this problem is fixed.
I think everyone's vestibular system is sensitive in different ways. But FPSs in the rift generally feel very "wrong" (not sure how else to describe it), when moving using a controller. Especially when strafing - it produces a sensory response similar to a feeling of drunk stumbling. But in a flight or driving sim, the same kind of movements feel much less wrong, even to the same people. Maybe because similar movement in the real world are also performed via control inputs, and our minds understand that?
I think there are some interesting questions there. In the coming years, an entertainment concept as vague as "immersion" might actually have tangible metrics associated with it, since its exactly that kind of understanding that will be needed to overcome this "VR sickness"