VR motion sickness
VR motion sickness, also called cybersickness or visually induced motion sickness, is the discomfort that appears during or after headset use when what the eyes see does not match what the inner ear senses (Kennedy and colleagues, 1993). It is measured with the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ), which Kennedy's team built from data on 10 US Navy simulators.
Fyware's XR glossary, with the source behind each definition.
VR motion sickness, also called cybersickness or visually induced motion sickness, is the discomfort that appears during or after headset use when what the eyes see does not match what the inner ear senses (Kennedy and colleagues, 1993). It is measured with the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ), which Kennedy's team built from data on 10 US Navy simulators.
Several names cover overlapping ground. Simulator sickness is the branch studied by the US military in vehicle simulators, and cybersickness was proposed by McCauley and Sharkey in 1992 for any sickness associated with virtual environments, simulator sickness included; Steven LaValle, who recounts both in his book on virtual reality, prefers VR sickness. To explain it, LaValle counts sensory conflict theory among the most relevant tools while noting that no single accepted theory covers it all, and the review by Saredakis and colleagues reads its data the same way, citing Reason and Brand (1975). The conflict that matters most in VR involves accelerations and appears with vection, the sense of self-motion produced by the image, when the eyes register movement that the vestibular system does not. It is the reverse of reading a book as a passenger in a car, where the body feels the acceleration and the eyes see none.
Robert Kennedy, Norman Lane, Kevin Berbaum and Michael Lilienthal published the SSQ in 1993 in The International Journal of Aviation Psychology. They describe simulator sickness as less severe and less frequent than sickness caused by physical motion, and as originating in the visual display and in the interaction between vision and the vestibular system. They derived the questionnaire from more than 1,100 motion sickness questionnaires collected on 10 Navy simulators, and its subscales for nausea, oculomotor symptoms and disorientation add up to a total score. The reference cut-offs were set with military personnel in flight simulators: above 20 points, a simulator counts as a problem. In 2020, Saredakis and colleagues pooled 55 articles that measured headsets with the SSQ, 3,016 participants in all, and found a total mean of 28.00, high against those cut-offs. Across the 46 experiments that reported dropouts, an average of 15.6% of participants dropped out of an experiment because of VR sickness; the authors note the figure may be inflated, since 22 studies did not report dropouts and some of them may have had none. Content weighed in: games gave the highest mean among content types, and controller-driven locomotion the highest among ways of moving. Exposures under 10 minutes had lower nausea and disorientation scores, though the link with time was not linear, and 35% of the articles used earlier generations of headsets.
Latency, the time between a head movement and the updated image (motion-to-photon latency), was for decades named one of the greatest causes of VR sickness. LaValle writes that it is no longer the main problem in most VR systems, thanks to newer tracking and display hardware, and that vection and optical aberrations now weigh more; Fyware's post on VR training for airlines puts modern headsets at 90 to 120 Hz with latency under 20 ms. Frame rate is a separate issue. If the application cannot draw as many frames per second as the headset requires, the rate drops or varies, and that causes discomfort; LaValle gives 90 frames per second for the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive as an example of that requirement.
In training, design decides much of the risk. LaValle recommends experiences with little or no virtual locomotion, because moving the body through the scene produces vection even on an ideally functioning headset, and so the posture of each exercise matters: standing in place, walking on one's own feet and sitting while the scene moves, as in a vehicle simulator, are different exposures. When the headset or the content is new, Meta suggests short sessions and long breaks, at first a maximum of 30 minutes followed by 15 minutes of rest, limiting high-movement experiences and lengthening time gradually. Anyone who feels discomfort takes the headset off and does not go back until it is gone. While symptoms last, Meta says to avoid activities that require unimpaired balance and hand-eye coordination, which on a plant floor includes driving a forklift or working at height. Meta also asks people to see a doctor before use if they are pregnant or elderly, have binocular vision abnormalities, psychiatric disorders or a heart condition, or have had a seizure.
Fyware publishes how it sets up sessions. In its custom training, scenarios are designed short and a long process is split into phases; first-time users start with a brief experience, and anyone can take the headset off whenever they need to. In Fyware Safe, posture and duration change with the exercise: the fire module is done standing and repeats in cycles of just over a minute; the PPE module is done standing, without walking around, in runs of 90 seconds to two and a half minutes; the pedestrian crossing is walked in about 4 minutes; and the forklift module is done seated, in 15 to 20 minutes per operator. At Safety Week, each station has a Fyware technician who guides the participant and watches over their physical safety.
«to originate from elements of visual display and visuo-vestibular interaction»
Kennedy and colleagues developed the SSQ from US Navy simulator data and describe simulator sickness as less severe and less frequent than motion-induced sickness, originating in the visual display and in visuo-vestibular interaction.
«The mean dropout rate reported across 46 experiments due to VR sickness was 15.6%.»
Systematic review and meta-analysis of 55 articles that measured headsets with the SSQ (3,016 participants): pooled total mean of 28.00, highest with games and with controller-based locomotion, and cut-offs taken from military personnel in flight simulators. Across the 46 experiments that reported dropouts, the mean was 15.6%, which the authors consider possibly inflated because 22 studies did not report them.
«was proposed to cover any sickness associated with VR (or virtual environments)»
LaValle traces the terms simulator sickness, cybersickness and VR sickness, explains VR sickness with sensory conflict theory, notes that latency is no longer the main problem in most systems and recommends little or no virtual locomotion.
«a maximum session of 30 minutes and then a break of 15 minutes»
Meta recommends starting with sessions of up to 30 minutes and 15-minute breaks, stopping at any discomfort, avoiding activities that need balance and hand-eye coordination while symptoms last, and seeing a doctor before use in case of pregnancy, older age, binocular vision abnormalities, psychiatric disorders, heart conditions or a history of seizures.
Source: Meta, “Health and Safety Warnings: Meta Quest 3S”, accessed October 23, 2026
Meta says it should be temporary, though it does not always end when the headset comes off. LaValle notes that most users who leave a VR experience with symptoms still feel some, at a lower level, 30 minutes later, and that only a very small number of outliers keep symptoms for hours or days. Meta asks users not to resume until they have fully recovered and to see a doctor if symptoms are serious or last a long time.
Motion sickness comes from physical motion, as on a boat or in a car; cybersickness comes from what the eyes see in a virtual environment while the body stays still or moves differently. Kennedy and colleagues describe simulator sickness as sharing symptoms with motion-induced sickness while being less severe and less frequent, and LaValle points out that the car case is the reverse of VR: there the body feels an acceleration the eyes do not see. Among the symptoms Meta lists are dizziness, disorientation, nausea, unusual sweating, increased salivation, eye strain and blurred vision.
Partly. LaValle explains that regular practice produces adaptation and that most symptoms can be greatly reduced through repeated exposure, and Meta suggests increasing headset time gradually as the person grows used to it. LaValle also warns that if an experience makes most people sick, asking them to power through it a dozen times is a bad idea; in that case the design needs review.
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