How can you create a seamless VR experience?

Creating a seamless experience can be challenging to achieve. Some ways we've found success include offering different perspectives for guests to view. One perspective includes natural sounds, while another features educational audio. Additionally, it's crucial to consider motion sickness when setting up experiences, as this is one of the most common issues guests mention experiencing in VR.

Selecting the right headset is crucial for a seamless VR experience. Standalone HMDs with inside-out tracking are preferred if they meet computing needs, offering movement freedom and immersive visual experiences. For shared usage e.g. the Vive XR Elite, with its diopter adjustment, and Quest Pro, known for its glasses-friendly design, stand out. While mobile phone VR solutions provide an easy entry, they fall short in quality compared to standalone headsets. Mixed Reality and hand tracking capabilities further lower the entry barrier (provided by e.g. the Quest 3, Quest Pro, Pico 4, and Vive XR Elite).

Pro tip: Test your experience on lowest end supported hardware. Painful lesson I've had to learn too many times. Also, test with people who haven't experience your app (or better yet VR!). It's enlightening.

I've produced and experienced a ton of prototypes and demos, and I think being really intentional and conscious about both the virtual environment AND the physical environment when you have the opportunity to control it is critical. Splash screens are a no, but fades/eases into scene are a definite yes. You're hijacking the existing mental model of the world and building an entirely new sense of proprioception. This takes time. Consider limiting needed movement (even if you have a slick teleport mechanism) early on to a space small enough that it will map well to the user's physical space. An example: for demos we've used a circular shag rug for tactile feedback and comfort. As long as the user is on the rug, they're physically "safe."

Small but repeated hitches in performance can have an outsized effect on comfort, quickly causing dizziness and nausea for many users. Be sure to profile your apps and maintain a stable frame rate that meets or exceeds your hardware's refresh rate.

There is a huge difference between consumer and enterprise implementations, when it comes to building seamless VR experiences. From an enterprise perspective, an extremely close collaboration between the client and the VR company is essential. An enterprise client (company or academic organization) contributes with its subject matter expertise and test (end) users for the solution that will solve their business need, while the VR team becomes the enabler with its technology expertise to deliver a seamless experience from a design, UX and business objective perspective.