(Image from user Steeve, Oculus Forums)

VR Sickness happens when the balance system in your inner ear is sending different messages than your eyes. Your eyes tell you that you’re hurtling down a race track at high-speed, your ears tell on you by sending a message that no, actually, you’re stationary in an office chair. This is the cause of the debilitating motion-sickness type feeling that many VR users have. It can last for hours and include dizziness, headaches and even vomiting.

There has been some progress in reducing VR sickness, from putting a “virtual nose” in the field of view, to reducing screen latency– but that basic discordance between what you see and what you feel is still a problem for VR hardware like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive.

Enter vestibular stimulation (VS) — a simple idea that has been used for decades to help with disorders that affect the balance system. With VS, two electrodes are attached to the mastoids (area behind the ears) and a low voltage current is passed through to the inner ear. A recent study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology documents experiments conducted with an Oculus Rift and a vestibular stimulation rig. By varying the voltage and switching the current between the left and right ears, the experimenters simulated rotation in the environment as well as acceleration. Subjects immersed in the virtual setting could turn their head and feel a sense of rotation in their inner ear.

It may be many years before this technology becomes commercialised in VR products but that hasn’t stopped the home-brew VR crowd from giving it a go. With nothing more than a some old headphones, sponges and a 9-volt battery, brave pioneers have built basic vestibular stimulation units. Constructing the hardware may be the easy part–the hard part is developing an API to connect with the software and applying the right amount of current at the right moment to cause the desired effect.

— I am the creator and community manager of VideoSift.com and write at BrianHouston.org