There’s no one item that speaks to the advances in gaming in gaming and entertainment technology these days quite like a VR headset does. It’s such a futuristic thing to see people wearing over their eyes, and the way it adds realism to the experience is something that’s been unmatched up until this time. But maybe for some people it’s a little too much realism for their brain to handle and they get motion sickness from a VR headset. So the question becomes how to stop VR motion sickness. 

Before we get to that let’s go over how motion sickness works briefly. It has everything to do with your eyes, ears, and brain, and miscommunications between the 3. Whenever the body is in motion there are very critical signals that pass along neural pathways between the eyes and ears to the brain. Letting the supercomputer in the skull know that the body is not at rest. People get motion sickness when the body is at rest but the eyes and ears are saying otherwise. Good to know, but not helpful when it comes to how to avoid VR motion sickness. 

But if a person is playing a game or interacting with a VR headset in another way they will only be moving some not travelling in car as would be the case with conventional motion sickness. However, if they’re virtually flying a spacecraft through an asteroid field it can be enough of a sensory overload for the brain and cause people to have motion sickness symptoms. People are fully enamored with this type of gaming though, so it becomes about how to stop VR motion sickness, and here’s what we know about that. 

Imbalance Fix

VR headset motion sickness is very much an issue, and if it only affected a handful of people there wouldn’t be much information online about it. People are obviously searching about how to stop VR motion sickness, and when they get the same information we’ve provided above they know it happens because of brain equilibrium imbalances. There’s a lot of crossover here with what’s known as simulator sickness. The way people who suffer from either condition can relieve themselves of the sickness can start simply – sit down, if that’s possible.  

Sitting down while using a VR headset improves postural stability. Keeping yourself cool by opening a window or having a fan running and directed at you can also help. Other ways for how to stop VR motion sickness include: 

• Choosing the right headset for you – models like the Oculus Quest that have 6DOF are much better for making the body feel more oriented when moving you head and body in a virtual reality environment 

• Lower headset display brightness – this naturally lowers the intensity of sensory input and may be helpful to reduce VR motion sickness while you are gaming  

• Gradually increasing time spent in VR – some people who are first-time VR users and choose to spend long stretches of time in VR right off the bat may have worse motion sickness because of it 

One last mention here – don’t use a VR headset if you have an ear infection.