To fend off motion sickness in virtual reality (VR), most developers choose not to implement screen shaking, and for good reason – rattling their view around will only bring it on. The developers at Zulubo Productions, however, pushed immersion without having the viewer blow chunks, and they’re offering that solution for free.
In 2D games, screen shake is an effect that mimics vibrations and impacts from explosions, falls, and so on in order to sell the weight and bounce of actions happening around the player. However, it typically involves shaking the entire screen. This effect is fine in 2D, but in VR, where there is far less distance between the user and the experience, screen shake is mostly avoided.
The effect that Zulubo employs, though, doesn’t shake the entire screen – just the margins of the screen. This way, the user’s peripheral vision recognizes the effect without obscuring the user’s vision.
“I also shake the screen inwards and outwards only, rather than any positional or rotational shaking,” said Zach Tsiakalis-Brown, founder and programmer at Zulubo Productions. “This means your view never really changes, the effective fov [sic] just changes slightly on the edges. All of this together provides a fairly non-intrusive screen shake effect that makes concussions much more punchy.”
