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Wearing a VR helmet seems to cause motion sickness in a majority of people and it affects women more frequently than men.
In a test of people playing one virtual reality game using an Oculus Rift headset, more than half felt sick within 15 minutes, a team of scientists at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis reports online December 3 in Experimental Brain Research. Among women, nearly four out of five felt sick.
So-called VR sickness, also known as simulator sickness or cybersickness, has been recognized since the 1980s, when the U.S. military noticed that flight simulators were nauseating its pilots. In recent years, anecdotal reports began trickling in about the new generation of head-mounted virtual reality displays making people sick. Now, with VR making its way into people's homes, there's a steady stream of claims of VR sickness.
"It's a high rate of people that you put in [VR headsets] that are going to experience some level of symptoms," says Eric Muth, an experimental psychologist at Clemson University in South Carolina with expertise in motion sickness. "It's going to mute the 'Wheee!' factor."
Abstract: The virtual reality head-mounted display Oculus Rift induces motion sickness and is sexist in its effects. (DOI: 10.1007/s00221-016-4846-7)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @01:34PM
I was wondering the same thing.
Seasickness is related to the body's physiologic response to poison (uncertain sense of balance, then vomit to get rid of the poison causing it). Women are supposedly more sensitive to the smells of poison or spoilage (and it increases when pregnant), so it may make sense if they were also more sensitive to balance/motion sickness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @06:18PM
While I like the poison theory of motion sickness (as in, it is a good idea to vomit after accidentally eating that magic mushroom...), I don't think there is any proof that this is the only/correct explanation of the problem.
I've been testing driving games (simulators) since the mid-1980's at gaming companies, and never had any simulator sickness. After all those years I thought I was either a tough guy or lucky to be unaffected...until a few years ago when I was in an unfamiliar driving situation behind a big surround screen, high def, very low latency. The nausea hit me like a hammer to the stomach, it took about 24 hours before I was mostly feeling back to normal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @07:07PM
I don't think there is any proof that this is the only/correct explanation of the problem.
You seem to be correct. I guess the only evidence is fMRI of the poison-vomiting-response portion of the brain being active, but it may light-up as a general response.
Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 09 2016, @08:29PM
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday December 09 2016, @08:35PM
If food poisoning caused middle ear infections it would totally be worth it.
Going back to OPs original post WRT sailboating I've noticed no trend WRT male/female seasickness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @10:06PM
> what would be the evolutionary advantage of throwing up
Sorry, I guess mentioning the magic mushroom wasn't clear enough? If you eat something and start to hallucinate or otherwise have vision problems, then your optical sensation is not agreeing with vestibular and haptic/tactile senses -- and you might have been poisoned. Simulators give you one set of optical stimulation and no motion inputs (or incorrect motions in the case of most motion bases). So the theory equates these two situations.
Interestingly, for the professional racing simulators (Formula 1, $M installations), I've heard that when a test driver gets simulator sickness, one common cure is to go outside and ride a bicycle around. On a bike all the visual and motion cues are real and somehow this relieves the symptoms.