VR Games Giving You Motion Sickness? Chewing Gum May Help, According To New Study

thegamer.com:

VR is becoming increasingly popular, especially with continual improvements to the technology. VR headsets in the form of the PSVR, Valve Index, HTC Vive, and the Oculus Quest have meant a greater selection for consumers, making virtual reality technology and especially VR games more mainstream than in yesteryear.

But a problem for many users is VR motion sickness, which has been an obstacle for some time. It even has a proper name: visually induced motion sickness, or VIMS, and is sometimes known as 'cybersickness'. However, new research is proposing a novel solution for this issue.

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In a study published in Experimental Brain Research, researchers found that users would experience less motion sickness if they chewed flavoured gum while they were using head-mounted VR. The study involved 77 adults who each underwent a 15-minute VR experience showing a simulated search and rescue helicopter flight. One group of subjects were given peppermint gum, another group ginger-flavoured gum, while a control group were given no gum.

It was found that those who chewed gum reported much less peak sickness scores while they "flew" in the VR experience - while those who reported increased pleasant feelings with the subjectively better tasting gum experienced corresponding milder VIMS symptoms. This means it might work better with your favourite flavour of gum instead of less preferred tastes.

Motion sickness is caused by a mismatch between signals from your eyes telling the brain there's movement, and your vestibular system, which tracks head movement, which when either in cars or using VR usually stays still. If these two systems don't align then this can cause