Elite: Dangerous shows you can get sick from a VR game on the HTC Vive

For almost a year, Valve chief executive Gabe Newell and other company representatives have been saying that the HTC Vive won’t make you seasick from motion-sickness, as happens with other virtual reality headsets. I have confirmed that is not true since I got mild motion sickness while playing a preview demo of the space-combat sim Elite: Dangerous for the Vive.

The title from developer Frontier Developments is one of a dozen releases that I saw for the HTC Vive, the VR headset for the PC that debuts in April. The system is Valve and HTC’s bid to be a player in what could be a $30 billion industry by 2020, according to tech advisor Digi-Capital. But of course, if the industry is to reach that size, it better make sure that its experiences don’t make people throw up. Of all of the demos that I tried, only Elite: Dangerous made me sick. And that was the only game that featured a whole lot of motion inside a virtual world. Another journalist who was looking at the game separately also told me that it made him sick.