In the past week, several people reported returning their Vision Pros for a variety of reasons, including issues with headset comfort and illness. The returns are par for the course with any new technology. No matter how polished a first-gen product is at launch, there’s a very real sense in which it functions as a large-scale public beta.
There is a big difference between testing a product with dozens or hundreds of people and actually releasing that product into the world for anyone to use. All product testing has its blind spots, but if you’re lucky, these examples are limited to a few extremes. Motion sickness, however, is arguably not a peak case among the population.
According studies, about a quarter of people suffer from the condition. It can cause nausea, headaches, dizziness, fatigue and vomiting. If you’re lucky enough to have never dealt with it, just believe me when I say it sucks. Very. There’s a good reason tens of millions of units of over-the-counter motion sickness products are sold in the US each year.
Everyone is no doubt familiar with the situation as it pertains to car rides, boat trips, and especially eventful flights (the bag in your seat pocket is not for storing peanuts). Augmented reality motion sickness is a much lesser known phenomenon, due to the low penetration of augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality headsets. It is, however, a very real thing – and certainly not endemic to Apple’s first earphones.
Meta Quest, HTC Vive and PSVR users have all reported experiencing this. Reports of people returning hot new tech products within weeks of purchase will always cause some concern. That’s especially true when Apple releases a device that’s been in the works for the better part of a decade, with an asking price of $3,500.
The company was certainly aware of motion sickness during the R&D phase. Lowering latency and increasing screen resolution help reduce its capabilities. But if there is a method to prevent all motion sickness in all users, no one has found it yet.
“With the emergence of new VR technologies, high-quality stereoscopic [head-mounted displays] they are now able to simulate the visual and spatial properties of the real world,” notes a 2020 paper on the subject. “Despite improvements, current technology still fails to replicate the way humans see and perceive depth under natural viewing conditions. There are software solutions that can help reduce discomfort by introducing motion blur, however, this technique may not be effective for everyone.”
The underlying cause is the same with all these examples. Motion sickness is caused when your brain receives disjointed information from your eyes, body and inner ear. These different senses are processed differently in the current moment. It’s easy to imagine how wearing a headset that’s effectively designed to trick your brain’s perception of reality might cause these symptoms.
Apple was smart enough to know that this would occur to a certain portion of Vision Pro users, and given how many of us are prone to motion sickness in some form, it’s likely that a significant number of people will experience some symptoms. Prior to the release of the Vision Pro, Apple issued Guidelines designed to minimize and treat possible motion sickness.
Before we get into the details of Apple’s guidelines, let me state an obvious fact: The best way to avoid VR sickness is to avoid virtual reality. Speaking from first-hand experience, the second best is to limit your usage. If you’re prone to motion sickness (like I am), don’t expect to make the full-time jump to the infinite desktop any time soon. I tend to keep my sessions between 20-30 minutes. That’s plenty of time to do many of the things you’d want to do with the headset, but it’s far from living in the thing. I’ve also found that I’m much less likely to experience it while sitting.
I didn’t experience motion sickness in my first demos of the Vision Pro. It wasn’t until I got it home and started doing activities that required me to get up and walk that I was hit by a wall of nausea. I overdid it and chose not to wear the headphones for the rest of the day.
Apple similarly advises against wearing the headphones for long stretches and moving around a lot if you’re prone to motion sickness. You might also want to think twice about wearing headphones on a plane for this reason. Apple also suggests reducing “eye movement.” The company writes:
Visual motion can come from applications in which you appear to be moving, or from the movement of objects or content within the application. To reduce eye movement:
Reduce the size of the window or increase the distance from the window.
Decrease the immersion level by rotating the Digital Crown. This helps provide a sense of stability, allowing you to see more space around you.
Turn on Reduce Traffic on your device: Go to Settings > Accessibility > Traffic, then select Reduce Traffic.
One more seemingly obvious tip before I leave you: Try it before you buy it. Go to an Apple store, borrow a friend – get your hands on it first, before you shell out that much money. You may be among the lucky ones who never experience any kind of discomfort from these products. God bless you and see you in whatever the hell we call the metaverse now.
If, however, you’re like me and prone to getting sick on boats and in the back seat of Ubers, proceed with caution. Even the best VR experience can be miserable if your brain and body disagree on the basics of reality.
