vrnose-640x360Virtual reality sounds like a great tool to help create more immersive experiences, but unfortunately there is also the issue of motion sickness that some players get while wearing the headset. This comes from the disconnect that players feel when their characters in the game moves but their body doesn’t.

Now some companies such as Valve claim to have done away with motion sickness with their HTC Vive VR headset thanks to the use of technology, but it looks like maybe their efforts could have been easily solved by adding a virtual nose to the screen. This is according to a group of researchers from Purdue University who found that by adding a virtual nose that sits at the corners of your vision, it helps to deal with motion sickness in a more efficient way.

Basically the idea is that the nose will act as an anchor so that even if the environment moves and changes, the nose will stay constant. The nose also makes it a more general addition to a virtual reality experience versus a cockpit or a vehicular frame that might only be specific to certain types of games or simulations.

The research involved 43 students where one group had a regular Oculus Rift VR headset while the other had a modified one with the nose placed in it. It was found that the users with the virtual nose lasted 94.2 seconds longer in a walk-around on a Tuscan villa before feeling sick, and 2.2 seconds longer on a roller coaster simulation.

According to Purdue computer graphics Professor David Whittinghill who led the research, there are still some questions remaining, such as whether it has to be a nose or if it can be any anchored object. “Is it the presence of anything in your visual system or does it have to be a nose? Does it have to be like your own nose?… There are a lot of fine details, and it raises a lot of questions. I think we’re going to have our hands full.”

Filed in Gadgets. Read more about and .

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