Easing motion sickness in a non-aligned level

My game features one relatively short section where the level is flipped awkwardly on its side. It doesn't move while the player is in it; its' just statically flipped the whole time, and the player needs to navigate through it, dealing with the challenges of the world not being aligned as it normally is:



Despite the world not moving, some players still feel a bit motion sick during this section. Generally it's not a big enough reaction for them to want to stop playing. Pretty much all players find this section disorienting, but usually in a good/cool way. But I feel bad that it's causing a negative experience for some players.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any specific techniques for possibly helping to reduce the experience of motion sickness in an environment like this. That is, maybe some visual cues, or other details I could possible add.

Here's what I have so far:

• I've placed various cords/cables hanging down under normal gravity, to try to give a sense of the "correct" up/down directions. You can see a rusty cable just above the player's hand in the screenshot. This does seem to help orient people.
• The FPS camera controls are clamped to not allow you to look up or down more than 180 degrees. Meaning, you can always find up/down by pulling back or pushing forward with the mouse. Player seem to realize this and do this automatically when they're trying to figure out which way is "up".
• There's a bunch of broken debris littering the level. You can see a few broken rocks at the bottom of the far wall in the screenshot. Sometimes bits of debris will fall, giving a sense of which way is up/down.
• Players are able to adjust the game's FOV if they want. (I understand that some players prefer higher FOV in FPS-style games to reduce motion sickness.)
• There is a fixed crosshair in the middle of the screen, which I understand helps a lot of people to reduce their motion sickness in FPS games.

I also expect that it would probably help if the level were fully 90 degrees rotated, versus the non-right angle I have it set to. But there are a few different parts that fit together here, none of which are aligned with each other, so there will always be some sections that are "off" from a world axis. And, I think that the imperfect rotation of this section is part of what makes it distinct.

Again, this is a fairly short section, and not a major problem on the whole. But I figured if someone had some ideas on what might help "ground" the player a bit, or reduce the feeling of motion sickness in a non-aligned environment, it's something to consider.

 

A few years back a professor and his students came up with the idea of adding a fixed point of reference like a nose. A major contributor to motion sickness is sensory conflicts and the fixed point helps our brain understand how the world is moving around it.

https://www.wired.com/2015/04/reduce-vr-sickness-just-add-virtual-nose/

 

It was awesome Creation.

 

I read about that "nose" thing just before making my post here. Pretty interesting stuff. Unfortunately, I don't think I can stick a nose on the screen during this level. I'll edit my post above to mention, though, that there is a fixed crosshairs in the middle of the screen at all times, since I know that having a fixed crosshair/reticle/dot on the screen helps with motion sickness as well.

 

Thanks for the recommendation. I've never knew about it before

 

I suffer from video game motion sickness. Adjusting the FOV is a good addition.

Allowing the player to adjust their video settings during this level will also help some people. (For example, in Portal 2 I lowered my graphics settings and removed most of the shadows and it allowed me to play the game. Though I doubt I could play the game now as I've gotten worse over the years.)

A point of reference is also a good idea, but the targeting icon and hand would not be enough for me. I don't play FPS games because there is not enough stationary going on. If you can't normally work something into the screen due to the story or setting, what about an optional setting for people who are getting motion sick to either play this section in third person or perhaps have something the size of an action bar at the bottom that they can turn on? (I use that as an example because I find in some games having the action bar and minimap displayed give my brain what it needs to play the game.)

If you ask people who are prone to video game motion sickness to test for you, always have them test with the thing being tested active before showing them the section without the helper. If the base scene starts to make me motion sick, I'm going to be more prone to react to the scene with the helper even if it might normally be okay or close to okay.

 

Thanks for the personal anecdote. Players can adjust various graphics settings whenever they want (FOV, Motion Blur, Shadows, VSync) which can play some role in alleviating motion sickness. A design challenge, though, is that this might only be necessary for this one level, and it's a bit 4th-wall breaking if I suddenly pop up a message in this one level saying "If this next level makes you motion sick, try X, Y, Z...." But I guess at that point I've ideally shown the player they have some options when it comes to trying to reduce motion sickness, and perhaps they'll just go make use of those settings if this level starts making them feel off.

Adding a 3rd person mode would be problematic for various reasons, and a huge amount of work at this point, but it's interesting to hear that 1st vs 3rd has an impact on motion sickness.

But adding some extra UI objects seems like a simple and interesting approach, assuming it does something. I'll look into that to see if that's generally considered helpful. I'd be happy to have a "Ease my motion sickness mode" which players could turn on, which adds some additional stationary stuff to the screen. I'll just have to go convince myself that's commonly helpful.

 

Is your game set in a space station or similar? Looks kind of like that from the screenshot. For a "just this area" you could have a "low oxygen" or "tainted air" or even just "gravity anomaly" type warning displayed in the bottom center where the 'nose' would be. No flash or juice to it. It would help some of us with the motion sickness. Have a way to turn it 'acknowledge and go away' for the warning perhaps.

Or just have a setting for "turn on gravity anomaly warnings" which is off by default. People with motion sickness could turn them on, or folks who just like how they are in the game.

Just spitballing as I realize that trying to help with motion sickness without breaking the game immersion can be useful. (Which is why I do it in some games by carefully positioning the UI or camera.)


Also: Is this a situation where the player's character is in a helmet or something? Perhaps something around the edge of the screen like "frost" or whatever could help. I suggest this because when I watch some gameplay on YouTube, I will specifically not full-screen it so that there is the rest of the page around the video to help keep my motion sickness from activating.


You will never be able to help all people. I'm just throwing out my own personal anecdote because it's one of those areas where people who don't have the issue don't always realize that X could cause Y. (Like some people can read in the car while it's moving, others simply cannot.) (While not driving hopefully...)

 

If a player is having difficulty with a level, don't they usually just get their big brother or someone to clear it for them?

 

In terms of having freedom to put random stuff on the screen, that's not much of an issue. The player's wearing a helmet with a HUD on it at all times, so I can put whatever I want on the screen. That's an interesting idea to throw some static "ANOMALY" text/icon on the screen at all times during that level. I like that because people might not even notice it's there to help with motion sickness, it's just some info on their visor screen.

I do eventually like the idea of just having an easy "help me with motion sickness" toggle in the game, which turns on all the various features that might help. I know some players do look for "motion sickness" options in game in general.

 

Have you considered giving the player a helmet, visor, or something similar just for this level? This could even show a gravity orientation and/or a pitch HUD similar to in an aircraft HUD, which would help with players having to "find" where up or their effective horizon is.

You mentioned locking up/down angle to 180 degrees. For some players life is easier if you lock it to far less than that so that they can't look far enough away from the horizon to lose it. But that might not help with motion sickness, and might cause visibility issues if you need to navigate vertically in the level.

 

The player actually already wears a helmet/visor at all times during the game. So my currently plan (this whole thing is still on my TODO list...) is to try out some stationary HUD image/s, probably just for this level, but possible all the time if the player opts in. Since there's a HUD, putting something in it is pretty simple. I just need to verify (probably experimentally and anecdotally) whether some extra HUD actually helps players with motion sickness or not. As for a pitch indicator, like an aircraft, that's a cool idea. But I think of those as always being in motion, so I wonder if adding more dynamic HUD elements would potentially worsen the motion sickness...

That's a good point about reducing the range of motion for players to look around. I'll give that some though, but I think I probably can't do that in my game, as being able to aim/fire in any direction is pretty important. I don't know if reducing the range of motion of just one problematic level would be an option, or whether that would cause confusion because now players can't look around like they normally can. It's something to consider. Thanks.