Virtual reality continues to make people sick

THE WHOLE history of fiction shows that alternative realities are an attractive and profitable idea. So back in the 1990s, when electronics had arrived at a point where people could build headsets that blocked off actual reality and replaced it with a virtual version created inside a computer, it looked as if something world-changing might have arrived. Games companies were particularly excited, and Nintendo, Sega and Virtuality duly piled in.

The world, however, stubbornly refused to be changed. It might have put up with the low-resolution images, the choppy scene transitions and the poor controls, for these would surely have got better. It might also have put up with the price (the headsets in question could cost up to $70,000), for that would surely have come down. It could not, though, accommodate the dizziness, nausea, eye strain, vomiting, headaches, sweating and disorientation that many of the technology’s users (more than 60%, according to one study) complained of—a set of symptoms that, collectively, have come to be called “cyber-sickness”. Though not fatal to people, cyber-sickness certainly helped damage the industry, which more or less vanished.