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Virtual reality software developer Fantom Fathom has shown off a potential solution to in-game VR motion sickness. The new software solution called Hyper Dash works by making the player of the game move more than they currently do in order to move in-game.
The prevalent theory is that motion sickness, in general, is created by the confusion felt by the brain when your eyes are showing movement, but the body’s sinus system does not sense it. That confusion makes the body believe it is being poisoned and it creates sickness to expel toxins. VR is no different.
At present, the most popular solution to the movement issue in VR is to completely remove it and replace it with a teleport system. This also helps as not everyone has the space or power for a room VR solution like the HTC Vive. However, Santa Monica-based Fantom Fathom believes it has solved this issue with the Hyper Dash software and have released a video of it in action in its upcoming game, APEX Tournament.
The video below shows a demonstration of the Hyper Dash concept in action, but the idea is that the player makes more movement in real life in order to create the movement in-game. The wearer of the headset moves to left or right in order to move quickly across a map, and forward or backwards to move forward or jump in-game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnwaPccP5-Q
How this would work with the light tracking for PSVR and its limited camera field, or the current Oculus sensors is unknown. The demo shows an HTC Vive headset used by the wearer and the room VR sensors that come with the headset give more freedom of movement compared to other headsets. There is also no footage of what the user sees while moving in the headset.
However the company have said the technology will work on any VR platform as it is software and not hardware based. We’ll see more on this when APEX Tournament releases later this year on Steam.
