Virtual reality is truly incredible. Just ask anyone who's tried it.
Many of those same people, however, might tell you virtual reality isn't quite ready yet.
At its best, virtual reality can transport you to places you've never been before and let you experience things you couldn't otherwise. But right now, virtual reality headsets are still, unfortunately, not for everyone.
They're bulky. There are a lot of wires. There's no great way to interact with the virtual environment just yet. But more importantly, they're really, really expensive — not just the headsets, but the computers needed to power them (either smartphones or high-end gaming PCs).
We've had the Oculus Rift in the Tech Insider office for about a week now, and the three biggest complaints among those who've tried it are headaches, facial redness, and nausea. I've tried VR dozens of times, but last week when my colleague Tim Stenovec and I tried a new Oculus Rift game we'd never tried before, we both got nauseous within seconds.
Things like nausea and headaches are normal for VR, unfortunately. My colleague Ben Gilbert says of the people he's seen try the Oculus Rift, around 70% of people reported nausea and headaches. This common discomfort is the result of what researchers call the "vergence-accomodation conflict," which my colleague Rebecca Harrington described well after talking to UC-Berkeley professor Marty Banks recently.
Convergence is what happens when both of your eyes look at an image to prevent you from seeing double, and accommodation is what your eyes do to keep that image from looking blurry.
Banks says these two processes are linked in the brain so we can see the world around us properly. They have to work together in order to focus on images at different distances.
"On these displays, you have to break that linkage," he says. "You have to accommodate to one distance and converge to another distance. And we believe that need, to kind of break the normal coupling, is what leads to the discomfort."
Right now, companies like Oculus VR, Valve, and Sony are working on ways so VR can trick your eyes into thinking there's no conflict, but this will take time. After all, there are tons of other problems VR needs to solve before it can become what we all want it to be: realistic, lightweight and ergonomic for all-day use. With all the considerable investments around VR, it's likely we'll see many of these problems get solved in as few as five years. But as for right now, you don't need to sweat about not having a VR headset just yet. These devices are incredible right now, but soon, they'll be that much better and more accessible to the general public.
