Valve's VR Headset Aiming to Eliminate Nausea and Vertigo

"Properly designed games in the Vive will get zero percent of the populace sick."

Valve and HTC's VR headset is promising to completely eliminate motion sickness and nausea.

For now motion sickness is one of the biggest problems with virtual reality headsets; the promise of early Oculus Rift prototypes was sometimes overshadowed by user nausea and vertigo. Most people accept motion sickness as an inherent possibility with VR, no matter what the quality of the hardware is, but Valve is aiming for no possibility at all.

That's why the company is helping a team develop a set of sensors that allows the player to walk around naturally, as opposed to using a controller to move a character in a virtual space. Developer Owlchemy Labs is assisting in this process. Alex Schwartz of Owlchemy says that this is integral to his studio's--and Valve's--goals for the Vive. "People instantly think, 'Well, the Oculus said you'll probably be seated, so just hit a button and drive forward,'" he explains. "Cockpit games are gonna be huge, surely. But personally, the direction Owlchemy's taking is a no-nausea approach, period, full stop... Properly designed games in the Vive will get zero percent of the populace sick."

To assist in this process, motion controllers will be "standard and required" for the Vive.