Feel sick when you play VR? It's pretty common and this Waterloo researcher wants to know why

When Zubi Khan has friends over to play virtual reality video games, it's not unusual for someone to feel a little sick to their stomach.

"I've had friends come over where they would put a headset on and then, like, almost immediately they'd feel like that sense of vertigo and then they have to take it off," Khan said in a phone interview from a park near his Toronto home.

"For me, I use a motorized wheelchair to get around, so I think part of that has made me kind of, like, immune to getting motion sickness because I'm used to being stationary while I'm moving," said the avid VR gamer and content writer for comic and gaming CGMagazine.

"The only time where I'll feel vertigo or feel kind of dizzy is if I haven't used [VR] in a long period of time."

Feeling sick after entering a VR environment is not uncommon. Similar to motion sickness, it's dubbed cybersickness.

People who get cybersickness may experience a headache, vertigo (when you feel what's around you is moving or spinning), disorientation, eye strain or nausea.

One study published in June 2021 in the journal Nature that looked at predictors of cybersickness reported between 22 and 80 per cent of people who use VR may experience it. The percentages varied widely, depending on the intensity of the game and the headset the person was wearing.

What's not as clear is who will get cybersickness and who won't.

But that's something Michael Barnett-Cowan, a researcher at Ontario's University of Waterloo (UW), wants to figure out because the technology isn't just about gaming. Virtual reality can be used for other applications, such as therapy or training.

LISTEN | Researcher Michael Barnett-Cowan explains importance of knowing why virtual reality can make you feel sick:

Barnett-Cowan is an associate professor in the university's department of kinesiology and health sciences, and director of the Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab. For their research, he and his team collected data from 31 participants, and assessed how the subjects perceived the orientation of vertical lines — or the subjective visual vertical. 

"What we basically found in our research was that after being exposed to a fairly nauseating game in VR, people change the way that they process sensory information," Barnett-Cowan said.

The participants were given a task before playing VR to test how they use different cues for their sense of orientation in the world. Then they'd play a game in virtual reality for 30 minutes and be retested.

"Those that change the way that they process sensory information … those were the ones that didn't get as sick," Barnett-Cowan said.