With much fanfare and waves of excitement, the year 2016 has been heralded as the long foretold “year of VR.” Each week at least one article appears in the press, creating a market energy not seen since the early days of the digital 3D revolution. Behind the scenes, just as Xpand recently created its VR division, Nuion, other industry stalwarts seem intent on racing to create their own VR content or hardware divisions.
But if you read between the lines—hidden among all the bluster—there’s an ill wind blowing. Please allow me to make my case, prove my point. Notice the contradictions housed in each of these quotations from recent articles covering the emerging VR phenomenon:
“…2016 is the year many of us will have our first experience with VR. Let’s not mince words: VR is awesome. It is also very likely to be nauseating or at least a little disorienting, an effect that hits most folks.”
“A technology might finally have its commercial moment in 2016… [yet] the experience can cause nausea, eyestrain and headaches.”
“It’s marked on 2016 calendars everywhere. Virtual reality finally gets real. ..You may also want some Dramamine.”
”…high-end headsets arriving this year require expensive PCs, while inexpensive smartphone viewers can give users headaches.”
“…with great power comes great responsibility, as particularly intense VR experiences can bring on nausea as easily as empathy.”
In the same breath, really, so much vicissitude? Is virtual reality really such an exciting/destructive technology? And how about this anecdote from the field of education, recorded and verified on-site at the January FETC conference in Orlando:
Twelve schools in one Florida school district were selected as part of the Google VR Expeditions program, which brings VR-based virtual field trips to students along with class sets of Google Cardboard VR viewers. Excited to begin, one of these elementary schools began their efforts with a high visible rollout for their new VR initiative. Google Cardboard viewers in hand, children were excited and wowed by their virtual reality field trip experiences. Except the two children who immediately vomited and had to leave the classroom.
What’s really happening here? Has VR already become—in the minds of the collective—a contranym or auto-antonym? Good and bad in the same package, if you will? A Janus particle of sorts? (‘Janus’ is the name of an ancient Roman God, who had two faces.) I’m really not surprised at all this. That’s because the industry still has not learned a primary lesson from the digital 3D revolution, one we learned quite well in schools.
From an educator’s perspective, there are three reasons why VR may not provide a comfortable viewing experience for all:
The Content. Content can be poorly designed. I am reminded of a display at last year’s InfoComm booth that was making passersby sick. The culprit: they were showing crummy content: poorly constructed stereo—too much swirling, fast action motion, and montage work. Showing furious rollercoaster rides, wild river rapid trips, or spiraling, head-turning motion is simply crazy. The solution: in classrooms, we quickly learned to use only content that was designed well, for comfortable viewing by children.
The Driver. One can easily make teachers or students sick simply by ‘driving’ the viewing experience too fast: rotating images to quickly or zooming in and out too abruptly. In fact, after investigation, this is what caused the two children to vomit in the example above. The students were spinning themselves around wildly, trying to take in the overwhelming visual experience of Google Cardboard at a perilous pace. The solution: an ounce of prevention by taking time to explain students how to comport themselves when wearing VR headgear is worth a pound of cure (or vomit).
Before I continue with our third reason why VR may not provide a comfortable viewing experience for all, let’s mention the mysterious phenomenon of virtual reality sickness. Certainly, sensory conflict arises when our eyes recognize a mismatch to our proprioception and vestibular input. According to leading vision experts, when optical flow is overloaded, interrupted, or confused, a general disorientation will result. And the virtual reality sickness phenomenon may exist, but I don’t believe it relates to the biggest problem we face with VR. My sense of working with young people through the VR experience is that the supposed virtual reality sickness doesn’t affect very many of them. There is still a bigger problem, one that helps explain why VR may not provide a comfortable viewing experience for a larger subset of viewers:
Our Vision. This is actually the elephant in the room. This is the lesson not learned. Any VR experiences that are stereoscopic can induce symptoms such as soreness, dryness of the eyes, fatigue, headache, eye irritation, blurred or double vision, dizziness or nausea. That’s quite a list. Simply stated, if our eyes are unable to see 3D, and these kinds of symptoms occur, it is an indication of an underlying vision issue. It is not necessarily the fault of the content, the VR experience, or the theorized virtual reality sickness phenomenon. It’s your vision. Any student with myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, convergence, alignment, accommodation, tracking, or suppression issues can experience viewing problems with VR. This is a bigger deal than you think; let me quantify it for you. I often demonstrate VR experiences at adult party gatherings, conference workshops, and my own undergraduate classes. In all of these settings, approximately 21% experience discomfort when viewing a stereoscopic virtual reality experience. (Medical experts suggest that the 3D vision syndrome affects anywhere from 14-20% of the population, world-wide. And since I constrain the user viewing approach and my selection of content, this is solid evidence of stereopsis problems, not virtual reality sickness or misguided content.) Also, since most people don’t avail themselves of regular vision care, most people won’t know they have these problems until they strap on their VR headgear.
Every month, I have occasion to meet with many innovators in both the 3D and VR industry—especially with many of the innovators bringing new products, displays, and solutions to the U.S. or Eurasian market. My experience thus far is that they are largely unaware of the seminal work conducted by the American Optometric Association found in See Well, Learn Well. In my experience, most innovators new to the VR scene don’t have a satisfactory answer for the educator or consumer with the concern that “this gives me headaches” or “will this hurt my children?” (The common responses are dismissive: “don’t let those children use the technology”; or “there is no problem at all.”) I continuously ask exhibit hall representatives about this issue, and to date none are able to respond well. Plainly, VR strategists cannot expect success if they are oblivious to vision health issues involving so many customers.
Just because 3D virtual reality headgear is cool, or the auto-stereoscopic 3D 360 content is eye-popping and captivating, that doesn’t make it impervious to what we know about the vision challenges of children or customers. No, the vision issue didn’t just go away with the advent of the next big technology. The takeaway here is your company will never sell VR or other advanced display technologies in a sustained fashion unless you also handle this vision health issue well. You can start by reading or re-reading the American Optometric Association’s seminal report on 3D vision health, See Well, Learn Well. (Len Scrogan is one of the co-authors of the AOA See well, Learn Well Report).
– Len Scrogan
