You know what’s really fun? Being able to move around and interact in a virtual environment. You know what isn’t? Barfing all over your new all birds.

That’s exactly what’s at stake when designing a good VR experience, particularly one that includes movement. When developing for VR it’s important to build a good understanding of “simulator sickness” and what can be done to eliminate, or at the very least, minimise it.

Just like with other forms of motion sickness, simulator sickness affects different people in different ways. As it’s still early days of mainstream VR, there’s still a lot of research to be done into causes and solutions. Having said that there’s also a lot of good material out there that can help you provide a comfortable experience for users.

Some general rules of thumb to follow include:

1. Tightly control the users’ speed and rate of acceleration. Slower speeds are generally more comfortable for users, as is a very high rate of acceleration. Any gradual acceleration at all in VR can trigger simulator sickness so it’s best to keep speed transitions short and infrequent
2. Leave your user in control of their vision. In other words, don’t disconnect what you see from the users head tracking. If you need the user to look in a certain direction use other techniques such as sound or lighting to draw their gaze.
3. Make sure your experience is performant by maintaining a suitable frame rate. 90 FPS is optimal.

The best way to stay on top user comfort is to test things on them as early into development as possible. Ask them questions about their comfort levels and always make sure you let them know to remove the headset right away if they feel any discomfort. After all, The last thing you want is to push a tester to the point of ruining their shoes.