There is something they warn you about in VR literature: beware of getting used to your own experience and then assuming others will have a similar experience, especially when it concerns dizziness.

I had been working in my environment for about two-three weeks without worrying about how motion-sickness inducing it could be. The color pencil shader I have on the camera reduces the frame rate considerably. It wasn’t until I had my fellow student try it that I realized, like a eureka moment right before she even mentioned it, that it made users light-headed.

This presents me with an opportunity but also with a problem. I could remove the shader, but I believe the design will suffer significantly. The other option is to see if there is any way of optimizing it, taking the opportunity to learn more about increasing frame rates and modifying shaders.

It is worth mentioning there might be another factor contributing to dizziness: touchpad locomotion. Since I have been having issues with using the Steam VR teleport prefab in my projects, I decided to teach myself how to script touchpad navigation. I’m glad I learned how to do this, but I think it is also a reason the user gets dizzy. The movement is smooth and slow, but unnatural.

In terms of critique, beyond the obvious danger of dizziness, I was glad some students thought the experience was beautiful. Going forward, I will see if/how I can optimize the shader and whether the navigation needs to be scrapped, as well. One month to go for this second unit of much exploration.

Below, I have included some snippets from my working script, created in Celtx.