For those who have been playing or developing VR content for years, it might seem ‘obvious’ what kind of settings are expected to be included for player comfort. Yet for new players and developers alike, the confusing sea of VR comfort terms is far from straightforward. This has lead to situations where players buy a game but find it doesn’t include a comfort setting that’s important to them. So here’s a checklist and glossary of ‘essential’ VR comfort settings that developers should clearly communicate to potential customers about their VR game or experience.

Update July 24th, 2024: Road to VR now offers developers private comfort design audits for XR apps. Your app will get an overall ‘Comfort Grade’ with a straightforward list of comfort issues and suggested fixes. Reach us at consult [at] roadtovr.com for details.

VR Comfort Settings Checklist

Let’s start with the VR comfort settings checklist, using two example games. While it is by no means comprehensive, it covers many of the basic comfort settings employed by VR games today. To be clear, this checklist is not what settings a game should include, it is merely the info that should be communicated so customers know what comfort settings are offered.

Want expert insight on your app’s comfort design? Reach us at consult [at] roadtovr.com to discuss a personalized comfort design audit for your XR app.

We chose these two examples because a game like Beat Saber, despite being an almost universally comfortable VR game, will have many ‘n/a’ on its list because it completely lacks artificial turning & movement. Whereas a game like Half-Life: Alyx uses artificial turning & movement and therefore offers more options for player comfort.

	Half-Life: Alyx	Beat Saber
Turning
Artificial turning
Snap-turn		n/a
Adjustable increments		n/a
Quick-turn		n/a
Adjustable Increments	n/a	n/a
Adjustable speed	n/a	n/a
Smooth-turn		n/a
Adjustable speed		n/a
Movement
Artificial movement
Teleport-move		n/a
Dash-move		n/a
Smooth-move		n/a
Adjustable speed		n/a
Blinders		n/a
Adjustable strength	n/a	n/a
Head-based		n/a
Controller-based		n/a
Swappable movement hand		n/a
Posture
Standing mode
Seated mode		not explicit
Artificial crouch
Real crouch
Accessibility
Subtitles		n/a
Languages	English, French, German […]	n/a
Dialogue audio		n/a
Languages	English	n/a
Adjustable difficulty
Two hands required		For some game modes (optional)
Real crouch required		For some levels (optional)
Hearing required
Adjustable player height

If players are equipped with this information ahead of time, it will help them make a more informed buying decision.

VR Comfort Settings Glossary

For new players, many of these terms might be confusing. Here’s a glossary of basic definitions of each VR comfort setting.

Want expert insight on your app’s comfort design? Reach us at consult [at] roadtovr.com to discuss a personalized comfort design audit for your XR app.

Turning

• Artificial turning – whether or not the game allows the player to rotate their view separately from their real-world orientation within their playspace (also called virtual turning)
  • Snap-turn – comfortable for most
    Instantly rotates the camera view in steps or increments (also called blink-turn)
  • Quick-turn – comfortable for some
    Quickly rotates the camera view in steps or increments (also called fast-turn or dash-turn)
  • Smooth-turn – comfortable for least
    Smoothly rotates the camera view (also called continuous-turn)

Movement

• Artificial movement – whether or not the game allows the player to move through the virtual world separately from their real-world movement within their playspace (also called virtual movement)
  • Teleport-move – comfortable for most
    Instantly moves the player between positions (also called blink-move)
  • Dash-move – comfortable for some
    Quickly moves the player between positions (also called shift-move)
  • Smooth-move – comfortable for least
    Smoothly moves the player through the world (also called continuous-move)
• Head-based – the game considers the player’s head direction as the ‘forward’ direction for artificial movement
• Hand-based – the game considers the player’s hand/controller direction as the ‘forward’ direction for artificial movement
• Swappable movement hand – allows the player to change the artificial movement controller input between the left and right hands
• Blinders – cropping of the headset’s field of view to reduce motion visible in the player’s periphery (also called vignette)

Posture

• Standing mode – supports players playing in a real-world standing position
• Seated mode – supports players playing in a real-world seated position
• Artificial crouch – allows the player to crouch with a button input instead of crouching in the real world (also called virtual crouch)
• Real crouch – allows the player to crouch in the real-world and have it correctly reflected as crouching in the game

Accessibility

• Subtitles – a game that has subtitles for dialogue & interface, and which languages therein
• Audio – a game that has audio dialogue, and which languages therein
• Adjustable difficulty – allows the player to control the difficulty of a game’s mechanics
• Two-hands required – whether two hands are required for core game completion or essential mechanics
• Real-crouch required – a game which requires the player to physically crouch for core completion or essential mechanics (with no comparable artificial crouch option)
• Hearing required – a game which requires the player to be able to hear for core completion or essential mechanics
• Adjustable player height – whether the player can change their in-game height separately from their real world height (distinct from artificial crouching because the adjustment is persistent and may also work in tandem with artificial crouching)

– – — – –

As mentioned, this is not a comprehensive list. VR comfort is a complex topic especially because everyone’s experience is somewhat different, but this is hopefully a useful baseline to help streamline communication between developers and players alike.

For developers exploring various locomotion methods for use in VR content, the Locomotion Vault is a good resource to see real-world examples.

For players with disabilities who want more options for VR game accessibility check out the WalkinVR custom locomotion driver.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney confirmed the hit battle royale shooter Fortnite has “no plans currently” to come to Quest, although he hasn’t ruled it out entirely.

Here’s what Sweeney said in response to X user ‘TheoryDecrypt’:

No plans currently. For it to be successful we’d need a lot of players across all platforms spending a lot of their time on islands whose locomotion mechanics wouldn’t have VR players barfing. We’ve gone from 0 to 1 such popular mechanics but it’s not a critical mass yet.

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) June 30, 2024

It’s pretty clear by now Sweeney doesn’t think VR would work well with Fortnite, as he’s basically echoing a statement he made in 2022 in an interview with The Verge.

“Epic has no plans to build a VR version of Fortnite. Not out of any grand business strategy, but just because the thing that we do in Fortnite every day as gamers is run through an environment rapidly, and it’s the kind of experience that involves intense motion and doesn’t work as well in VR,” Sweeney told The Verge. “And so if we were to ever do anything in VR, it would have to be something that’s really custom tailored for the experience. And it’s not that we have any negative view of that. We just have 101 things to do.”

The whole ‘barfing’ part of his latest statement though feels a little outdated in 2024, making it seem like Sweeney really hasn’t checked back into VR recently. In contrast to the early days of VR, modern games tend to include a number of comfort options as standard, such as variable snap-turn, FOV vignettes, ‘comfort’ cages, and the full gamut of locomotion options. Notably, any of these can be used to render “intense motion” into something stomachable for all, like Meta-owned studio BigBox VR does in its hit battle royale POPULATION: ONE.

Still, Sweeney may be right about VR not being a right fit for Fortnite, and it may be less about nerfing the game’s “intense” locomotion to level the playing field, and more about how VR gameplay is so different from flatscreen in the advantages and disadvantages it brings to the table.

For a VR player, it may be more difficult to rapidly build yourself out of a sticky situation like on flatscreen, but easier to do a host of other actions, like ducking and shooting around corners, going prone behind cover, and doing complex actions flatscreen users simply can’t, like physically catching an extra magazine your teammate throws you.

Whatever the case, we’re hoping Sweeney changes his tune on VR comfort, maybe by reading our handy VR comfort checklist which we use for game reviews.