I‘ll try to sugar up the thread with some vr health related experiences of mine:
First VR injury was with eleven table tennis.
In reality I tend to bump my belly on the table when reaching towards the net. I got so immersed that I did not realize that there actually was no table to bump onto.,and crashed face down. It was a miracle that my OD+ survived that stunt as I felt the bruises for a couple of days.
Another one I‘ll leave for your imagination.
Let‘s say, don‘t smoke real cigarettes or alike in VR as you might tend to forget when to use the ashtray.
I had the issue with misalignment in eye convergence after playing for 3-4 hours in the Pimax 5K+. I also felt a lack of 3D depth in the real world afterwards. These are observations I have made several dozens times.
I needed an hour or two to “recalibrate my eyes” first afterwards.
I thought it was only a weird thing about my eyes, but now I see it wasn’t me personally. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it, maybe because I wished that wasn’t the case. I didn’t have this problem in non-Pimax headsets. Probably not an exclamation people would accept easily on these forums.
I’m not sure that anyone on the planets food safety is lower than ours in the US. Our ingredient panels have more chemicals than actual food. We pretty much don’t buy anything that isn’t a raw ingredient anymore.
I had a similar experience once (long play session) and found my IPD setting had moved slightly. After taking off my headset, my visual alignment was slightly skewed. The effect dissipated within a couple of minutes.
I also found not every game has the same alignment and now carefully dial in my settings for each game.
My vision (wear prescription lenses) has actually improved by 1 diopter in the last few years but this is more a result of my age than VR attribution. This can happen in the short term as the eye’s cell walls weaken with age and the eye changes shapes.
YMMV seems apropos. if not “use with caution and rest eyes frequently”.
The expression “Too much of a good thing” is always worth consideration.
I took my Pimax headset to a convention to show off a developers game and alot of the people there reported the same thing, some of them had double vision for 20+ minutes after using the headset and this was from maybe 10 minutes of play time.
This reminds me of an early time where I discovered I had double vision but only on object more than 10 meters away. Everything in my room was fine and I would never had known my eyes got programmed differently. But I looked out a window and saw a person walk on the side walk across the street and I saw a double image of him, could not get it to go away but everything in my room was fine.
Scared the hell out of me, also took maybe 20 minutes to go away again.
Unfortunately this was some years ago and I don’t remember the details about headset settings anymore…
Yeah, the human optical system is interesting, especially when something goes wrong. Over the years, I’ve seen 4 different types of Visual Auras, which are often associated with migraines. Luckily, mine are pain-free.
While none of mine look quite like these, 2 are similar, and this link will give you the general idea. The important thing to keep in mind is that these are transitory. Usually mine are gone in less than a minute, but I had one that lasted about 45 min (and I’ve only seen that aura type once).
The oddest thing about that last one was that part of the area had no color: not gray, not black, not clear, but literally nothing at all. I’d probably draw it as dark gray, but it was unlike anything I’ve seen before or since. It was a spiral wedge filled with jagged red, yellow, and blue lines which moved extremely quickly and were impossibly thin (with the nothing behind them). This replaced 1/6th of my visual field, like a curved pie slice was missing.
That sounds interesting. I read an article the other day which described some colors which we can observe but don’t actually exist in the color spectrum. Our eyes are indeed pretty cool.
Your weird line things would be a very interesting experience as long as it goes away again.
I once had a large spot of a sort of black and white static like on an old tv go from right to left of my vision in my left eye. Googled it, said it could be some part of my eye detaching. Luckily it went away at the end of the day. Interesting experience too, but no cool colors.
The TV in our living room is old and obsolete, but still works. I think an “accident” like that would be what it takes for my wife to agree that our TV needs to be replaced.
I would believe it. I’ve been convinced for years that just using a computer for a dozen plus hours a day destroyed my eyesight. Having screens nearly touching your eyeballs and going crosseyed is probably a lot more strain than looking at a monitor.
You get massive eyestrain headaches if you play too long for a reason.
When the Oculus Rift was released, Palmer Lucky, John Carmack where stating that people younger than 11 -13 should not use VR. They believe that it could affect eye development. Of course then you will start seeing threads of parent letting their 7 year old playing VR, and down voted for pointing it out
Having screen close (in this context) is irrelevant, the optics will make it appear far (bend the light so it comes as if you were looking at something 1-2m). Also you have separate screen for each eye, no need to go cross-eyed.
Everything (including drinking water or breathing oxygen) can be unhealthy. The question is to what degree and to what percentage of population (some people can’t even go out on the sun).
But it is better if the topic is studied rationally instead of based on feelings or believes. There have been lot of false rumors of all kinds in the past, for example that reading in bad light is will damage the eyesight, which is non-sense (you can get tired and I suppose get some headache from the extra effort in such situation but it has no adverse effect on your “hardware”). Of course there are also true warnings like don’t stare at sun (but not because of bright light, problem is the invisible spectrum like IR and UV).
Anyway I should already be blind now by all the warnings about not staring at computer screens/TV we were given as children. So be cautious, but stay reasonable. And if you think there can be damage then try to understand what would cause it so you can decide for yourself.
In case of VR I think the concern is mostly from the fact that focus distance is different from object distance, also that focus distance is constant and that the perceived motion does not match physical state (sitting/standing still). If you would spend 100 % time in VR I am sure it would have adverse effect at the end. But if you use it few hours a day then I think most people won’t have long term adverse effects, but there are some who will (as with everything - which is why we have the epilepsy warnings and all kinds of take 15 minutes break each hour recommendations in the license agreements etc.).
If you are in doubt, then don’t use it. It took me quite some time and research to make up my mind to watch sun through telescope (with proper filtering of course). Some people will not do it no matter what and that is Ok too.
