Investigation of visually induced motion sickness: a comparison of mitigation techniques in real and virtual environments

Abstract

<p>Motion sickness affects almost all users of virtual reality, and can be a limiting factor in the use of virtual reality environments in applications for training, therapy and entertainment. However, some actions can be taken to reduce the severity of the motion sickness, known as mitigation techniques. One of the mitigation techniques examined in this thesis is an active hand-eye coordination task. The other is passive recovery, by way of removing one's self from the sickening stimuli and allowing time to pass, referred to as natural decay. Both tasks were used in physical reality and virtual reality settings, in order to rank the efficacy of each. The hypothesis was that a virtual mitigation task can be as effective as a physical mitigation task. Forty people participated in a within-subjects experimental design over two visits. Responses on the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire served as the measure for their motion sickness symptom severity. The research found significant differences between the physical and virtual hand-eye tasks, but no significant difference between the physical and virtual natural decay tasks. Further investigation of the differences in the physical and virtual hand-eye tasks is necessary to explain the significant differences; more analysis is required to conclude that natural decay while in a virtual environment is as effective as natural decay in the physical world.</p>