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Why PSVR 2 is more likely to make you sick than other VR headsets

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https://mixed-news.com/en/why-psvr-2-is-more-likely-to-make-you-sick-than-other-vr-headsets/
Brad Lynch explains in a video why PSVR 2 may cause more nausea for some people and how to mitigate the problem.

The Youtuber and hardware analyst has been using virtual reality for many years with various devices and wondered why the Playstation VR 2 made him uneasy.

Lynch suspected this was due to the PSVR 2‘s high display persistence, and backed up his theory with a high-speed camera and a week-long experiment.

Persistence is the amount of time a VR display is lit during a single frame. The persistence should be as short as possible, otherwise the eye will might perceive motion blur.

Using a technique called low persistence, VR displays produce a sharp image during head movements without having to increase the refresh rate of the VR display. This technique was invented over a decade ago and was one of the most important innovations in the VR industry at the time.

PSVR 2 has higher persistence than the competition​

Lynch filmed the displays of several VR headsets (HTC Vive & Pro, Meta Quest 2 & Pro, Valve Index, and Playstation VR 2) and compared the amount of persistence.

He found that the PSVR 2’s display had longer persistence than the others, even at the lowest hardware brightness levels. Lynch thinks this may be the cause of some of his nausea.



Lynch writes in his Youtube video: “The amount of light emission each pixel gives during the ‘on’ timings are the same. However, less ‘0ff’ timings make you feel it’s brighter, but at the cost of motion clarity.”

Reprojection can also cause motion sickness​

Lynch recommends that people suffering from nausea set the brightness as low as possible (0 to 25 percent) in the headset’s hardware settings.

“This improved my own gameplay immensely and allowed for longer sessions with the device,” Lynch writes. He also says that the lower brightness makes the so-called mura effect, an uneven screen uniformity that can be quite pronounced on the PSVR 2, less noticeable.

To counteract the darker image, some studios (the makers of “Kayak VR: Mirage” and “Song in the Smoke”) have implemented a slider in the game menus to increase the brightness of the games on the software side.



However, the motion blur that occurs with PSVR 2 can have a second cause. I’m talking about the VR headset’s reprojection technology, which artificially doubles the frame rate from 60 to 120 in VR games like Horizon Call of the Mountain.

Only very demanding PSVR 2 games use this technique. Some titles such as The Light Brigade were optimized and subsequently switched from artificial 120 to native 90 frames per second to eliminate the motion blur.

We can only hope that Sony will improve its reprojection via a software update or that studios will optimize to native 90 or 120 hertz in the future.


Here is the video referred to from Brad Lynch,


It seems to be that brad is saying the dynamic diametrics of the lighting persistency (per pixel) may have been done intentionally for marketing purposes (according to the video) but allows for a lack of clarity and a higher frequency of blur, and motion blur, as a side-effect that makes it so for many people, the play experience is not very comfortable.

It gets worse at 120fps as well, so to avoid this devs may need to optimize at 90 to reduce that side-effect as much as possible. But this may be something Sony can at least partially address in software but they haven't done so yet. We will see what they come up with to address this issue later.

In the meantime it's recommended for those who have mixed or uncomfortable experiences, to reduce brightness from 0 to 25%, which may allow you to play for a longer period of time before things get unbearable.
 

Killer8

Member
This mirrors what John at Digital Foundry was saying about putting RE Village to 0% brightness. The level of testing Brad did was useful. Also looks like a much better image anyway in Kayak VR with his tweaks and anything to reduce mura is welcome.

Not sure I agree with "more likely to make you sick" though, as you would need consumer reports and widespread impressions to ascertain that. Motion sickness is not something I have heard being talked about.
 

Fess

Member
I’m thinking it should be less problematic 🤔
Hear me out on that. I tried using a steering wheel in Assetto Corsa in VR yesterday. I sensed no motion sickness at all which surprised me, I started wondering why and I think it’s the force feedback, which could help your physical self to somewhat sense what’s happening on screen. PSVR2’s headset haptics should in theory make things better in similar ways,
No personal experiences though. Too expensive and no demos and I don’t know anyone who bought it.
 

Minsc

Gold Member
This mirrors what John at Digital Foundry was saying about putting RE Village to 0% brightness. The level of testing Brad did was useful. Also looks like a much better image anyway in Kayak VR with his tweaks and anything to reduce mura is welcome.

Not sure I agree with "more likely to make you sick" though, as you would need consumer reports and widespread impressions to ascertain that. Motion sickness is not something I have heard being talked about.

That sounds dumb. 0% brightness and you would have major black crush. Sure maybe the draw time or whatever is better, but I have mine at ~80%, 2 or 3 ticks below max only because everyone was saying it was better and I don't really notice much difference, but I'd never put black crush in the game on purpose.

RE8 does not have any issues like Kayak does with the ghosting anyway, not in my experience with the 2 games. There is mura in the grays, but that's just the headset. Turning all your grays to black so you can't see any detail anymore to avoid mura is kinda silly to me. And the scenes where mura is pretty noticeable aren't super common, they're here and there in RE8, but even still, it's never terrible, just noticeable.

This solution of putting brightness to 0% is like cutting off your arm because you got a splinter in your finger.
 

Crayon

Member
Okay I guess. I hear a lot more about how it is very comfortable and the display is great than it being sick inducing and smeary.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
GIF by South Park
 

sncvsrtoip

Member
psvr1 made me sick, no problems with psvr2 (tough is not comfortabe for longer sessions for me, wating for comfort pack), advising to setup brightnes to 0 is ridiculous, I change 2 or 3 clicks to left from max and Im fine
 
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reinking

Gold Member
There is some good information in there but I have not seen mass reports of motion sickness for PSVR2 compared to any other VR headset. I am working on getting my VR legs back myself but I had stopped playing VR. My anecdotal evidence is that this has been a better experience than PSVR1 in that regard. I just assumed it was because I had previous VR experience even though there was a gap so it is hard for me to know if it is better, same or worse.
 

Zannegan

Member
It's amazing how many little things go into making VR a comfortable experience. Some of them are super counter-intuitive too (never would have guessed that teleportation would be more comfortable for most folks, for example). I love learning about this stuff. The fact that some will use this little point as yet another battlefield in the endless console war doesn't make it any less interesting.

Brad is a big fan of VR technology in general, and as genuine an expert as it is possible to be on the consumer side, so he at least isn't publishing with ulterior motives.
 
Anything PlayStation lol

It's crazy how people make up false narratives with no facts in their heads by pretending other threads don't exist outside what gives them an excuse to join the console war.

I remember like it was yesterday I was called an Xbox fanboy buy the usual suspect who did the same thing you're doing here. Selecting what threads they see that is.
 

midnightAI

Member
Brad Lynch explains in a video why negative PSVR 2 videos gives him views and newsworthy (hah) articles

Oh, and also, funny that seeing as how I've seen more people praise it for the fact that they don;t get motion sickness with PSVR2 whereas they do with other VR headsets.
 

midnightAI

Member
Looks like you never even took a 3 second glance of his channel.
I know this channel I'm just mocking this one video really, my response was meant to be tongue in cheek (i'm more poking fun of news sites being negative towards PSVR 2 for clicks). I dont really hear many people complain about motion sickness with PSVR 2 though, the opposite in fact.
 
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There is some good information in there but I have not seen mass reports of motion sickness for PSVR2 compared to any other VR headset. I am working on getting my VR legs back myself but I had stopped playing VR. My anecdotal evidence is that this has been a better experience than PSVR1 in that regard. I just assumed it was because I had previous VR experience even though there was a gap so it is hard for me to know if it is better, same or worse.

It seems to be quite a personal thing, not just for VR but gaming/screens in general. Years ago a chick I lived with couldn't play Diddy Kong Racing for long because she would get motion sickness or headaches from it. However she could play Mario Kart 4 player couch sessions for hours without issue. I guess it was the slower frame rate or brighter colours of Diddy. I'd imagine VR is much the same, less about the headset and more about the sum of personal "issues" vs specific implementations in hardware or games.
 

Minsc

Gold Member
So basically, this guy did a bunch of tests without actually testing if people were more or less sick than with other headsets, and concluded that some people may have more nausea, again without actually doing any sort of testing involving people who are getting nausea?

Sounds really scientific. They should get a new journalism career. Meanwhile actual people who have actually used multiple headsets such as the PSVR1 and PSVR2 report the PSVR1 being worse, I wonder why that is? Is the image retention even worse on the PSVR1? No, I doubt it. It's most likely some other factor at play. But who knows!
 
Psvr1 and meta 2 I couldn’t use for more than 5-10 minutes. Psvr 2 I have played for more than 1 hour with no issue.

But I do need to fix the headset a lot more between gameplay, sweet spot is lost after seconds 😂
 

Gobjuduck

Banned
I was watching jaboody dubs play the PSVR2, they were excited to play it then felt sick rather quickly during their playthroughs. This is a VR wide issue, but maybe psvr2 is slightly worse?
 

Crayon

Member
I was watching jaboody dubs play the PSVR2, they were excited to play it then felt sick rather quickly during their playthroughs. This is a VR wide issue, but maybe psvr2 is slightly worse?

Motion sickness is a vr wide thing. It's rarely discussed as something that varies between headsets. Usually between games.
 
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