There is a lot of information on VR out there on the internet, but not always is talked about the biggest drawback – the VR sickness. Like motion sickness, but you’re not really moving. How can you explore a virtual world when you have to vomit after ten minutes? Virtual reality sickness is a problem with your body’s sense of balance. In some cases, what you see doesn’t completely line up with your head movements. It can also stem from when the environment around you moves, but your body stays stationary. This second example could be especially problematic for virtual reality-based video games or just exploring VR environments larger than the room you’re in. Columbia University researchers think they have a solution.

“The system works by recognizing rapid artificial movement during a seated VR experience—like when users press a joystick to rotate their first-person view, or when elevation rapidly changes thanks to objects such as stairs—and then gradually blacking out the peripheral edges of a VR headset’s lenses until that upsetting movement dissipates.” Ars Technica explains.
Simply put, when you’re moving or rotating in the virtual world, the edges of the image in each eye fade to black. The researchers mention that blocking some of the field of view has long been known to alleviate some symptoms of virtual reality sickness: last year, Purdue University researchers could alleviate the symptoms by throwing a fake schnoz into the image the screen.
“The amount of time the nose held off the nausea wasn’t enough”, David Whittinghill, an assistant professor in Purdue University told Wired. Other so-called field of view restriction methods might also decrease the VR headset wearer’s presence, the immersive feeling that they’re in a new world and not just looking at their phone screen really close up.

“VR sickness and general VR discomfort are currently among the biggest hurdles to overcome before VR is comfortably adopted by the mass market,” researcher Ajoy Fernandes told Popular Science. “Many current techniques try to tackle VR sickness, but, in doing so, are easily detected, and often compromise the user’s experience. Our research shows that we can both reduce VR sickness and not detract from the user’s experience.”