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What is the radiation level of vr, is there potential long term health effects to using VR?

gluebag
Protege
anyone know or could point me at a document? Thanks
33 REPLIES 33

Roaster
Rising Star
As expected, a Geiger tube detector shows no radiation above background with my CV1 turned on and screens lit.

i7-5820K @ 4.2Ghz, water cooled, Asus X99-Pro USB 3.1, 48 Gb DDR4 2400, Samsung 950 pro M.2 SSD, GTX 980 Ti SC, 750w psu

Anonymous
Not applicable

Roaster said:

As expected, a Geiger tube detector shows no radiation above background with my CV1 turned on and screens lit.



That would be ionising radiation. Or perhaps X-Ray or gamma. Not the only kind of radiation there is ;).

Not, as I've said, that I think the Rift poses any significant health risk. Frankly, if you're the sort of person to live in a city (particulate and other air pollution), eat fried, grilled, roast or toasted food (carcinogens) or drive a car (violent sudden death or crippling injury), then you're happy to accept much higher risks in your life - and in normal human terms even those risks aren't all that high.

To be honest, I'd be happy to say that the biggest risk with using a Rift is long periods of sitting in a chair. Roll on Touch :D!

Anonymous
Not applicable
Well, the radiation emitted is overall quite high, because visible light is radiation.  You see things by absorbing radiation emitted by or reflected from objects in your environment, so every monitor or display has to emit radiation in order to form a visible image.

Now, if you mean HARMFUL radiation, probably zero.  Any LED display essentially gives off only three frequencies of light (fairly narrow peaks of red, green, and blue, at around 610 nm, 550 nm, and 450 nm respectively).  Due to how LEDs work, they have a pretty narrow emission spectrum.  It's not like CRTs that used an electron beam to ionize phosphors, which could also produce other ionizing radiation.

Of course even visible light is dangerous to your eyes in sufficiently high intensities - that's why you don't shine a laser pointer in someone's eyes.  That said, I don't think anyone has shown that this is actually harmful in the intensities typical of a display.  The thing with visible light is that it becomes irritatingly bright before it actually deals damage, so you're much more likely to feel uncomfortable and stop before you get actual retinal harm.  UV light is dangerous mainly because you can't detect it, so a very bright UV source can burn your retina without you feeling any discomfort or any reflex to close your eyes or narrow your pupils to reduce the light entering.

Greenfire32
Heroic Explorer
I would say that the radiation levels the Rift gives off are no more harmful than the ones your phone gives off. Blue light, however, is something you might want to be worried about. (Yeah I know, blue light is a kind of radiation, but I think the OP meant the standard kind of radiation that all electronics give off)

Regular screens give off blue light too, but it's usually not an issue because of the distance of the screens to your eye. The blue light usually has enough time to bounce around and spread thin by the time it gets to you. Inside the Rift, though, the screens are less than an inch from your eye and so blue light becomes a much more *serious matter as the light will bounce around inside your eye instead of dissipating like it normally would. Not only is it harmful on your eyes, but your circadian rhythm (the thing that controls when you get tired and sleep) uses the level of blue light to determine it's schedule. If you bombard yourself with harmful blue light, you might find it hard to go to sleep or stay asleep.

It's the same reason why those new street lights are causing all sorts of problems. Our ancestors evolved around the fire ring and we evolved to get tired when it's dark out during the lack of blue light and stay awake when there's an abundance of blue light (blue sky) during the day. It's also the same reason why a lot of people find it difficult to sleep in rooms that have lots of blue LED displays ( CD players, on-indicators, etc).

Even if you don't need glasses, I would consider getting non-prescription lenses with a blue light filter from places like VR Lens Lab to reduce the effects.

*It's not like the Rift is going to fry your eyes, but after years and years of continued Rift use, you might start experiencing eye problems due to the harmful blue light.

Anonymous
Not applicable


I would say that the radiation levels the Rift gives off are no more harmful than the ones your phone gives off. Blue light, however, is something you might want to be worried about. (Yeah I know, blue light is a kind of radiation, but I think the OP meant the standard kind of radiation that all electronics give off)

Regular screens give off blue light too, but it's usually not an issue because of the distance of the screens to your eye. The blue light usually has enough time to bounce around and spread thin by the time it gets to you. Inside the Rift, though, the screens are less than an inch from your eye and so blue light becomes a much more *serious matter as the light will bounce around inside your eye instead of dissipating like it normally would. Not only is it harmful on your eyes, but your circadian rhythm (the thing that controls when you get tired and sleep) uses the level of blue light to determine it's schedule. If you bombard yourself with harmful blue light, you might find it hard to go to sleep or stay asleep.

It's the same reason why those new street lights are causing all sorts of problems. Our ancestors evolved around the fire ring and we evolved to get tired when it's dark out during the lack of blue light and stay awake when there's an abundance of blue light (blue sky) during the day. It's also the same reason why a lot of people find it difficult to sleep in rooms that have lots of blue LED displays ( CD players, on-indicators, etc).

Even if you don't need glasses, I would consider getting non-prescription lenses with a blue light filter from places like VR Lens Lab to reduce the effects.

*It's not like the Rift is going to fry your eyes, but after years and years of continued Rift use, you might start experiencing eye problems due to the harmful blue light.



While it's true that LED displays have a stronger blue spectrum compared to incandescent light which was very reddish, if you compare an LED display to sunlight at the Earth's surface, the primary source of light for our planet for most of our species' history, sunlight is the more blue of the two, and the more overall intense as well by orders of magnitude.  Your eyes can't tell the difference between a 450 nm photon from the sun versus a 450 nm photon from a display, and as any photographer could tell you, an object under direct solar illumination is far, far brighter than a photo of that object on any display.  If we can go out and enjoy the outdoors on a sunny day, we can certainly tolerate a far less intense display.

Circadian rhythm disruptions are a real thing, but they are from just the fact that we illuminate our homes during hours where it would otherwise be dark out, so we shorten the amount of time we spend in the dark.

LejoLaid2007
Honored Guest
I AM ASKING ABOUT RF RADIATION , NOT LED RADIATION! RF RADIATION THAT COMES FROM WIFI, BLUETOOTH, SMARTMETERS, ROUTERS , CELL TOWERS

kevinw729
Honored Visionary
The first studies into proximity and duration usage of head-mounted displays started in 1989. At the time funded by air-force and space corporations and governmental and military. The first studies regarding commercial and consumer application were funded around 1994 - including studies funded by Walt Disney and SGi.

The findings from these early evaluations were using hardware that was compromised compared to the 2000 slew of systems. Sony in Japan linked to the HMZ platform and Glasstron invested in Japanese research projects, and also in the US a number of colleges started (then ceased) health based projects - much of their investment was transferred after the failure of the Oculus R&D investment. 

Currently there are a number of UK, US and Japanese reports that are used regarding the medium and long term health issues. These medical reports call upon 10 to 20 years of exposure and are used are the ground work in many research and development projects. When working on new hardware we like to call from the findings of at least two of these.

This is the basic answer to the OP - but if specific papers and research report names are needed best to PM me.

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Anonymous
Not applicable

Mradr said:

A health document wont be around for a while. This is something that is created over time and not normally release on new products because of "unknowns." 

Older CRT type televisions and monitors used to emit very low energy X-Rays, which are distantly related to Gamma radiation, but it only happened when they were switched on. Since the 1960s emissions of this type have been very strictly regulated but as far as I am aware it was never shown to be harmful. There are no measurable X-Ray emissions from plasma, LCD or OLED flat screen TVs, though like most electronic devices they do produce a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. There’s an on-going debate over the health consequences of this type of non-ionising radiation, particularly with regards to mobile phones, but the general consensus is that TVs, at least as far as electromagnetic radiation is concerned, are harmless.

I would go as far as saying it's safer than your Phone just because it doesn't have the wireless bands that cell phones towers require and that is the most radiation part of the device.

Yes, the lenses would protect you a small amount, but at the end of the day - it'll be already in safe levels. The device also controls how much light is shown making it a control environment allowing your eyes to slowly adjust to the amount of light it receives as well. This blocks UV from coming into the device and causing the most damage to your eyes.

The only effect I know that might turn heads is the fact is it a stereo device. That be something you would want to keep away from your kids till around ages of 10-15+ as the eye is still changing. Another effect is the flicking of the light might cause eye strain. That's one reason to take breaks ever so often. Even thought the FPS is high enough we can't really "see" the different - our eyes and brain still can. 



The only thing that will change ages 10-15 will be their IPD measurement. The eyesight part of a kid's eyes stop developing at around the age of 6 years old. That's why Lazy Eye is so difficult to treat from that age onward.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Didn't realise that this was a necro job! ?

Calibos
Heroic Explorer

snowdog said:

Didn't realise that this was a necro job! ?


...and where the Necromancer had the audacity to change the subject! LOL