Cybersickness In Virtual Reality Research Articles

Effects of vection type and postural instability on cybersickness

This study directly compared the novel unexpected vection hypothesis and postural instability-based explanations of cybersickness in virtual reality (VR) using head-mounted displays (HMD) for the first time within a commercial VR game. A total of 40 participants (19 males and 21 females) played an HMD-VR game (Aircar) for up to 14 min, or until their first experience of cybersickness. Based on their self-reports, 24 of these participants were classified as being ‘sick’ during the experiment, with the remainder being classified as ‘well’. Consistent with the unexpected vection hypothesis, we found that: (1) ‘sick’ participants were significantly more likely to report unexpected vection (i.e., an experience of self-motion that was different to what they had been expecting), and (2) sickness severity increased (exponentially) with the strength of any unexpected (but not expected) vection. Our results also supported the predictions of postural instability theory, finding that the onset of cybersickness was typically preceded by an increase in participants’ postural instability. However, when both sway and vection measures were combined, only unexpected vection was found to significantly predict the occurrence of sickness. These findings highlight the importance of unusual vection experiences and postural instability in understanding cybersickness. However, they suggest that developers should be able to make use of expected experiences of vection to safely enhance HMD-VR.

Analysis of cybersickness in virtual nursing simulation: a German longitudinal study

BackgroundInnovative educational approaches such as simulation-based nursing education using virtual reality (VR) technologies provide new opportunities for nursing education. However, there is a lack of information on side effects, especially health-related side effects, of head-mounted displays (HMDs) on the human body when using VR devices for nursing simulation. This study aims to validate the German version of the Virtual Reality Sickness Questionnaire (VRSQ) and to evaluate its associations with sex and age, as reflected in the VRSQG scores (total score, oculomotor, and disorientation) over time.MethodsA longitudinal-sectional study was conducted. In addition to the VRSQG (pre-, post-, and 20 min post-intervention), participants (all nursing students) completed data on personal characteristics. Participants completed a VR simulation of a blood draw. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate whether the measured construct was consistent with the original. In addition to the validity, internal consistency was analyzed and generalized linear models (GLMs) were used for data analysis.ResultsA total of 38 nursing students (mean age 26.8 years; SD = 7.1, 79.0% female) participated. The mean time spent in the VR simulation was 21 min. All participants completed the entire simulation. The CFA indicates (CFI = 0.981, SRMR = 0.040) VRSQG structure is given. Internal consistency showed low values for the subdomain Oculomotor (Cronbach alpha 0.670). For Disorientation and the Total score values showed a sufficient internal consistency. GLMs showed significant between subject associations with age over time with VRSQG total score, oculomotor, and disorientation. Older nursing students start with higher VRSQG-Scores. Over time, an approximation occurs, so that all participants reach a similar level by the final measurement point. No associations were found between sex (male/female) and VRSQG scores.ConclusionsThe VRSQG is a reliable and valid self-assessment for measuring cybersickness in VR based nursing simulations, with cybersickness symptoms positively associated with age. However, in depth-evaluation regarding age-associations with cybersickness should be done. As well as studies to explore additional associations and emphasizes the importance of establishing cut-off values to assess the clinical relevance of the scores.

Cybersickness in Virtual Reality: The Role of Individual Differences, Its Effects on Cognitive Functions and Motor Skills, and Intensity Differences during and after Immersion

Background: Given that VR is used in multiple domains, understanding the effects of cybersickness on human cognition and motor skills and the factors contributing to cybersickness is becoming increasing important. This study aimed to explore the predictors of cybersickness and its interplay with cognitive and motor skills. Methods: 30 participants, 20–45 years old, completed the MSSQ and the CSQ-VR, and were immersed in VR. During immersion, they were exposed to a roller coaster ride. Before and after the ride, participants responded to the CSQ-VR and performed VR-based cognitive and psychomotor tasks. After the VR session, participants completed the CSQ-VR again. Results: Motion sickness susceptibility, during adulthood, was the most prominent predictor of cybersickness. Pupil dilation emerged as a significant predictor of cybersickness. Experience with videogaming was a significant predictor of cybersickness and cognitive/motor functions. Cybersickness negatively affected visuospatial working memory and psychomotor skills. Overall the intensity of cybersickness’s nausea and vestibular symptoms significantly decreased after removing the VR headset. Conclusions: In order of importance, motion sickness susceptibility and gaming experience are significant predictors of cybersickness. Pupil dilation appears to be a cybersickness biomarker. Cybersickness affects visuospatial working memory and psychomotor skills. Concerning user experience, cybersickness and its effects on performance should be examined during and not after immersion.

The Effects of Auditory, Visual, and Cognitive Distractions on Cybersickness in Virtual Reality.

Cybersickness (CS) is one of the challenges that has hindered the widespread adoption of Virtual Reality (VR). Consequently, researchers continue to explore novel means to mitigate the undesirable effects associated with this affliction, one that may require a combination of remedies as opposed to a solitary stratagem. Inspired by research probing into the use of distractions as a means to control pain, we investigated the efficacy of this countermeasure against CS, studying how the introduction of temporally time-gated distractions affects this malady during a virtual experience featuring active exploration. Downstream of this, we discuss how other aspects of the VR experience are affected by this intervention. We discuss the results of a between-subjects study manipulating the presence, sensory modality, and nature of periodic and short-lived (5-12 seconds) distractor stimuli across 4 experimental conditions: (1) no-distractors (ND); (2) auditory distractors (AD); (3) visual distractors (VD); (4) cognitive distractors (CD). Two of these conditions (VD and AD) formed a yoked control design wherein every matched pair of 'seers' and 'hearers' was periodically exposed to distractors that were identical in terms of content, temporality, duration, and sequence. In the CD condition, each participant had to periodically perform a 2-back working memory task, the duration and temporality of which was matched to distractors presented in each matched pair of the yoked conditions. These three conditions were compared to a baseline control group featuring no distractions. Results indicated that the reported sickness levels were lower in all three distraction groups in comparison to the control group. The intervention was also able to both increase the amount of time users were able to endure the VR simulation, as well as avoid causing detriments to spatial memory and virtual travel efficiency. Overall, it appears that it may be possible to make users less consciously aware and bothered by the symptoms of CS, thereby reducing its perceived severity.

Impacts of Constrained Rotation Axes on Cybersickness in Virtual Reality

Impacts of Constrained Rotation Axes on Cybersickness in Virtual Reality

Exploring quantitative assessment of cybersickness in virtual reality using EEG signals and a CNN-ECA-LSTM network

Cybersickness in the virtual reality (VR) environment presents a significant challenge for user experience. Accurate evaluation methods are essential to mitigate or prevent cybersickness for the users. Compared to traditional subjective user studies such as questionnaires, electroencephalography (EEG) has the advantage of high temporal resolution, enabling more precise real-time evaluation. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid deep learning framework that integrates a convolutional neural network (CNN), efficient channel attention (ECA) module, and long short-term memory (LSTM) to evaluate VR cybersickness using EEG signals quantitatively. A novel experimental paradigm is developed to induce cybersickness through virtual head rotation. A total of thirty-six subjects were recruited for the experiment, and both EEG signals and subjective questionnaire data were collected accordingly to build a cybersickness-EEG dataset. The proposed framework enables a meaningful evaluation of cybersickness, and the experiment demonstrates the framework’s effective ability to decode the correlation between EEG and cybersickness. The relevance between EEG signals and model predictions is also investigated to demonstrate the interpretability and effectiveness of the proposed framework. Our findings reveal a robust correlation between cybersickness and heightened activation intensity in the occipital and temporal areas.

Frequency-Dependent Reduction of Cybersickness in Virtual Reality by Transcranial Oscillatory Stimulation of the Vestibular Cortex

Virtual reality (VR) applications are pervasive of everyday life, as in working, medical, and entertainment scenarios. There is yet no solution to cybersickness (CS), a disabling vestibular syndrome with nausea, dizziness, and general discomfort that most of VR users undergo, which results from an integration mismatch among visual, proprioceptive, and vestibular information. In a double-blind, controlled trial, we propose an innovative treatment for CS, consisting of online oscillatory imperceptible neuromodulation with transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) at 10 Hz, biophysically modelled to reach the vestibular cortex bilaterally. tACS significantly reduced CS nausea in 37 healthy subjects during a VR rollercoaster experience. The effect was frequency-dependent and placebo-insensitive. Subjective benefits were paralleled by galvanic skin response modulation in 25 subjects, addressing neurovegetative activity. Besides confirming the role of transcranially delivered oscillations in physiologically tuning the vestibular system function (and dysfunction), results open a new way to facilitate the use of VR in different scenarios and possibly to help treating also other vestibular dysfunctions.

Effects of social interaction on virtual reality cybersickness

Cybersickness is a well-known issue that creates barriers to the broad usage of virtual reality (VR) in real-life scenarios. It is essential to explore the factors influencing cybersickness and intervention strategies to alleviate cybersickness. In this study, social interaction is considered a potentially promising approach to addressing cybersickness. A total of 30 participants were recruited to join both social and solitary experimental tasks in VR experiments. The subjective and objective experiences in relation to cybersickness in VR were collected. The results indicated that social interaction could mitigate the sense of cybersickness. Significant differences were observed in verbally rated cybersickness, physiological measurements, and machine learning classifications. Random forest models were constructed to classify the severity of VR cybersickness and identify the feature importance in detecting cybersickness. This study is the first to explore the role of social interaction in VR cybersickness and raises new possibilities for researchers and designers to address this issue.

Identifying Strategies to Mitigate Cybersickness in Virtual Reality Induced by Flying with an Interactive Travel Interface

As Virtual Reality (VR) technology has improved in hardware, accessibility of development and availability of applications, its interest has increased. However, the problem of Cybersickness (CS) still remains, causing uncomfortable symptoms in users. Therefore, this research seeks to identify and understand new CS mitigation strategies that can contribute to developer guidelines. Three hypotheses for strategies were devised and tested in an experiment. This involved a physical travel interface for flying through a Virtual Environment (VE) as a Control (CT) condition. On top of this, three manipulation conditions referred to as Gaze-tracking Vignette (GV), First-person Perspective with members representation (FP) and Fans and Vibration (FV) were applied. The experiment was between subjects, with 37 participants randomly allocated across conditions. According to the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) scores, significant evidence was found that GV and FP made CS worse. Evidence was also found that FV did not have an effect on CS. However, from the physiological data recorded, an overall lowering of heart rate for FV indicated that it might have some effect on the experience, but cannot be strongly linked with CS. Additionally, comments from some participants identified that they experienced symptoms consistent with CS. Amongst these, dizziness was the most common, with a few having issues with the usability of the travel interface. Despite some CS symptoms, most participants reported little negative impact of CS on the overall experience and feelings of immersion.

Predicting cybersickness using individual and task characteristics

The experience of cybersickness in virtual reality (VR) drastically differs between users, likely due to variability in individual and task characteristics, leaving cybersickness as a substantial barrier to the widespread adoption of VR technology. While these characteristics have been connected to cybersickness, analyses do not commonly consider the simultaneous effects of multiple factors on cybersickness. As such, the current research aims to evaluate how multiple individual and task characteristics impact cybersickness, as well as how much variance in cybersickness these characteristics account for. In this study, 150 participants were exposed to the 3D Cybersickness Corn Maze that was designed with cybersickness-inducing stimuli and could choose to exit at any time. Participants completed one of three tasks that varied in mental workload during their exposure. Hierarchical multiple regression models were used to examine how individual characteristics (i.e., motion sickness history, previous VR use, gender, age, and personality) and task characteristics (i.e., workload, presence) impacted cybersickness. Analyses revealed that both individual characteristics (particularly motion sickness history) and task characteristics (particularly workload) were important for predicting cybersickness, accounting for between 43.6% and 47.7% of the variance in cybersickness experiences. This study's results suggest that models of cybersickness that do not include task and individual characteristics can be shown to be lacking by not considering these important factors. Designers of virtual environments may also benefit from evaluating the impact of their tasks and their users' variable characteristics during design.

Comparing cybersickness in virtual reality and mixed reality head-mounted displays

Introduction: Defence Research and Development Canada is developing guidance on the use of Mixed Reality head-mounted displays for naval operations in the Royal Canadian Navy. Virtual reality head-mounted displays display graphics to the user in 3D and completely occlude the user’s view of the real world. Mixed Reality head-mounted displays overlay and integrate graphics onto the real world allowing the user to perceive the real world and rich 3D graphic elements simultaneously. Nausea and other debilitating symptoms caused by the use of head-mounted displays, known as ‘cybersickness’, is well documented during Virtual reality head-mounted display exposure and can be quite severe. However, it is not yet clear from the literature on Mixed Reality head-mounted displays whether CS differs in Virtual reality vs. Mixed Reality head-mounted displays. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of MR HMDs on CS.Method: This was done by modulating the quantity of graphics in two Mixed Reality conditions and one Virtual reality condition. Only foreground objects were graphically rendered in the first Mixed Reality condition (called ‘Mixed Reality’ condition), while the entire scene was graphically rendered in the second Mixed Reality condition (called ‘Mixed Reality +’ condition). The Virtual reality condition simulated the Mixed Reality + condition but was displayed in a Virtual reality head-mounted display. Participants observed the virtually rendered scene in one of the three conditions and reported their CS with the simulator sickness questionnaire six times throughout the 30-min experiment. We hypothesized that CS severity would increase as quantity of graphics in the display increased.Results and Discussion: Findings indicated that CS was significantly greater in the ‘Mixed Reality +’ condition compared to the ‘Mixed Reality’ and ‘Virtual reality’ conditions, providing partial evidence for our main hypothesis. Moreover, CS increased significantly and meaningfully after 25 min in the ‘Mixed Reality +’ condition. These findings indicate safe use of Mixed Reality head-mounted displays by the RCN for shore-based applications provided quantity of graphics is limited.

Association of the Big Five Personality Traits with Training Effectiveness, Sense of Presence, and Cybersickness in Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) presents numerous opportunities for training skills and abilities through the technology’s capacity to simulate realistic training scenarios and environments. This can be seen in how newer research has emphasized how VR can be used for creating adaptable training scenarios. Nevertheless, a limited number of studies have examined how personality traits can influence the training effectiveness of participants within VR. To assess individual preferences in a virtual environment, the current study examines the associations of Big Five personality traits with training effectiveness from VR, as well as sense of presence and cybersickness. Our results show that traits of high agreeableness and low conscientiousness are predictors of training transferability in the VR environment in relation to the real world. Furthermore, the results also showed that trainees experiencing higher levels of cybersickness incurred worse training outcomes.

Can the Perceived Timing of Multisensory Events Predict Cybersickness?

Humans are constantly presented with rich sensory information that the central nervous system (CNS) must process to form a coherent perception of the self and its relation to its surroundings. While the CNS is efficient in processing multisensory information in natural environments, virtual reality (VR) poses challenges of temporal discrepancies that the CNS must solve. These temporal discrepancies between information from different sensory modalities leads to inconsistencies in perception of the virtual environment which often causes cybersickness. Here, we investigate whether individual differences in the perceived relative timing of sensory events, specifically parameters of temporal-order judgement (TOJ), can predict cybersickness. Study 1 examined audiovisual (AV) TOJs while Study 2 examined audio-active head movement (AAHM) TOJs. We deduced metrics of the temporal binding window (TBW) and point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) for a total of 50 participants. Cybersickness was quantified using the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). Study 1 results (correlations and multiple regression) show that the oculomotor SSQ shares a significant yet positive correlation with AV PSS and TBW. While there is a positive correlation between the total SSQ scores and the TBW and PSS, these correlations are not significant. Therefore, although these results are promising, we did not find the same effect for AAHM TBW and PSS. We conclude that AV TOJ may serve as a potential tool to predict cybersickness in VR. Such findings will generate a better understanding of cybersickness which can be used for development of VR to help mitigate discomfort and maximize adoption.

Editorial: Cybersickness in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Editorial: Cybersickness in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Clinical predictors of cybersickness in virtual reality (VR) among highly stressed people

The use of virtual reality (VR) in the treatment of psychiatric disorders is increasing, and cybersickness has emerged as an important obstacle to overcome. However, the clinical factors affecting cybersickness are still not well understood. In this study, we investigated clinical predictors and adaptation effect of cybersickness during VR application in highly stressed people. Eighty-three healthy adult participants with high stress level were recruited. At baseline, we conducted psychiatric, ophthalmologic, and otologic evaluations and extracted physiological parameters. We divided the participants into two groups according to the order of exposure to VR videos with different degrees of shaking and repetitively administered the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) and the Fast Motion sickness Scale (FMS). There was no significant difference in changes in the SSQ or the FMS between groups. The 40–59 years age group showed a greater increase in FMS compared to the 19–39 years age group. Smoking was negatively associated with cybersickness, and a high Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule score was positively associated with cybersickness. In conclusion, changing the intensity of shaking in VR did not affect cybersickness. While smoking was a protective factor, more expression of affect was a risk factor for cybersickness.

First Person and Third Person Perspective in Virtual Reality: Analysis of Cybersickness Symptoms

Advances in technology makes it easier to gain access to the virtual world. This has led to more and more application and games being targeted towards the virtual world. But with the growing popularity of the virtual world, cybersickness has grown in popularity as well. This study aims to evaluate the factors affecting cybersickness in the Virtual Reality (VR) environment. There are few factors causing the effect of cybersickness in VR like duration, field of view, speed, habituation, and susceptibility of said user. Those factors affect differently in first person perspective(1pp) and third person perspective(3pp). To measure the cybersickness, a Virtual Reality Questionnaire (VRSQ) measurement index is utilized. The experiment was conducted with the following settings. The participants consisted of 20 males and 4 females who never used VR before. They performed task using short games. It consisted in total of 4 tasks (2 types of game (action and adventure) x 2 perspective (1pp and 3pp) = 4 tasks). The Latin Square design was used to minimize the effect of order. Then, a questionnaire was conducted after each treatment. Paired Dependent T-Tests was performed to check if there are differences in oculomotor, disorientation and VRSQ total score. There was a significant difference in 1pp and 3pp in both games. It is recommended to use third person perspective to reduce the cybersickness in VR environment.

Evaluation of cybersickness in virtual reality in driving simulator

Virtual reality (VR) devices are becoming a more popular and widespread tool for learning, gaming and entertainment purposes. One of familiar problems of emerging in VR is side effect known as cybersickness, which can be a nuisance for consumers of VR content. This occurrence can be explained as visual and vestibular conflict. The problem with cybersickness lies within the fact that the body is stationary, but eyes perceive motion in virtual reality, also known as vection. Cybersickness symptoms that often occur include blurred vision, headache, vertigo, upset stomach and other. Aim of this research is to observe changes in cybersickness symptoms in two tested conditions (2D display and VR). In this paper, subjective and objective metric of evaluation regarding cybersickness in VR driving simulation are used. Subjective metric is survey and objective metric is electroencephalogram (EEG). Results of the survey indicate which symptoms of cybersickness are more pronounced during driving in virtual environment compared with classic 2D screen experience. Statistically significant difference was found for 6 variables, which include vertigo, blurred vision and headache. Objective metric showed that highest average beta wave was in VR setting, as well as beta/alpha ratio, which is associated with stress and excitement.

Latency and Cybersickness: Impact, Causes, and Measures. A Review

Latency is a key characteristic inherent to any computer system. Motion-to-Photon (MTP) latency describes the time between the movement of a tracked object and its corresponding movement rendered and depicted by computer-generated images on a graphical output screen. High MTP latency can cause a loss of performance in interactive graphics applications and, even worse, can provoke cybersickness in Virtual Reality (VR) applications. Here, cybersickness can degrade VR experiences or may render the experiences completely unusable. It can confound research findings of an otherwise sound experiment. Latency as a contributing factor to cybersickness needs to be properly understood. Its effects need to be analyzed, its sources need to be identified, good measurement methods need to be developed, and proper counter measures need to be developed in order to reduce potentially harmful impacts of latency on the usability and safety of VR systems. Research shows that latency can exhibit intricate timing patterns with various spiking and periodic behavior. These timing behaviors may vary, yet most are found to provoke cybersickness. Overall, latency can differ drastically between different systems interfering with generalization of measurement results. This review article describes the causes and effects of latency with regard to cybersickness. We report on different existing approaches to measure and report latency. Hence, the article provides readers with the knowledge to understand and report latency for their own applications, evaluations, and experiments. It should also help to measure, identify, and finally control and counteract latency and hence gain confidence into the soundness of empirical data collected by VR exposures. Low latency increases the usability and safety of VR systems.

How the Presence and Size of Static Peripheral Blur Affects Cybersickness in Virtual Reality

Cybersickness (CS) is one of the challenges that has hindered the widespread adoption of Virtual Reality and its applications. Consequently, a number of studies have focused on extensively understanding and reducing CS. Inspired by previous work that has sought to reduce CS using foveated rendering and Field of View (FOV) restrictions, we investigated how the presence and size of a static central window in peripheral FOV blurring affects CS. To facilitate this peripheral FOV blur, we applied a Gaussian blur effect in the display peripheral region, provisioning a full-resolution central window. Thirty participants took part in a three-session, within-subjects experiment, performing search and spatial updating tasks in a first-person, slow-walking, maze-traveling scenario. Two different central window sizes (small and large) were tested against a baseline condition that didn’t feature display peripheral blurring. Results revealed that the baseline condition produced higher levels of CS than both conditions with a central window. While there were no significant differences between the small and large windows, we observed interaction effects suggesting an influence of window size on “adaptation to CS.” When the central window is small, adaptation to CS seems to take more time but is more pronounced. The interventions had no effect on spatial updating and presence, but were detectable when the blurred area was larger (small central window). Lower sickness levels observed in both window conditions supports the use of peripheral FOV blurring to reduce CS, reducing our dependence on eye tracking. This being said, researchers must strive to find the right balance between window size and detectability to ensure seamless virtual experiences.

Multisensory integration and the experience of scene instability, presence and cybersickness in virtual environments

Multisensory integration is critical for supporting human spatial perception as we move around our environment. In this study, we used a modern head-mounted display (HMD) as a tool for studying the effects of visual-vestibular conflict on human spatial perception, feelings of presence and cybersickness in virtual reality (VR). Thirty participants were recruited and exposed to different levels of sensory conflict as they moved their heads in pitch. This sensory conflict was generated by artificially delaying updates to the visual representations of their virtual environment. On each trial we measured our participants': 1) perceived scene instability using an angular gauge figure task; 2) spatial presence using a subjective rating scale, and 3) cybersickness severity using the fast motion sickness (FMS) scale. As display lag was increased, perceived scene instability and cybersickness were both found to increase, whereas reported presence decreased. Importantly, the difference in the participant's virtual and physical head orientation (DVP) for the trial was also found to predict reported scene instability and cybersickness. Faster head rotations (at 1.0 Hz compared with 0.5 Hz) amplified both of these adverse effects (presumably due to the increase in DVP). These findings are consistent with the view that measurable low-level visual-vestibular conflicts can account for the cybersickness experienced during HMD VR.