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Motion sickness is one of several obstacles virtual reality headset makers have to overcome in their quest to move VR past its niche market of gaming enthusiasts.

The latest remedy is a simple one: as the user moves his or her head, the field of view narrows, making the virtual world less immersive. Columbia University researchers developed a tactic that looks similar to the narrowing dark circle at the end of Looney Tunes cartoons, right before the words "That's All, Folks!"

When the user is completely motionless, he or she sees the entire VR picture. A slight tilt of the head will cause a black border to appear around the image. Intense, sustained motion, like moving through Google Street View images or playing a first-person shooter game will result in an ever-increasing black border.

"It is critical that the experience be both comfortable and compelling, and we think we've found a way," Columbia computer science professor Steven Feiner told the BBC.

Columbia U Combats VR Motion Sickness

The researchers said their field-of-view modification, which they tested on 30 participants in a study, was sufficiently subtle that most users did not notice when it occurred. The technique is most effective during mismatches between physical and virtual motion—when the user's VR character is kicking the ball around a virtual soccer field while the user himself is stationary on the couch, for instance.

Hardware makers, too, are concerned about situations like these. They're imposing frame rate minimums to help increase realism and stop motion sickness from occurring, such as Sony's 60fps minimum for PlayStation VR games, or 90fps for Mozilla's WebVR.

But playing a motion-intensive VR game while sitting still means that even very high frame rates and pixel-dense headset displays do little to combat the effects of motion sickness, the Columbia researchers said.

The Mayo Clinic recently announced another medical advance in curing VR motion sickness, which involves placing sensors on the user's forehead, neck, and ears to tell the VR software exactly where the head is positioned at all times. That approach is intended to eliminate the lag between a user's inner ear and what he or she is seeing on the display.