In order to take advantage of the potential offered by the medium of virtual reality (VR), it will be essential to develop an understanding of how to maximize the desirable experience of “presence” in a virtual space (“being there”), and how to minimize the undesirable feeling of “cybersickness” (a constellation of discomfort symptoms experienced in VR). Although there have been frequent reports of a possible link between the observer’s sense of presence and the experience of bodily discomfort in VR, the amount of literature that discusses the nature of the relationship is limited. Recent research has underlined the possibility that these variables have shared causes, and that both factors may be manipulated with a single approach. This review paper summarizes the concepts of presence and cybersickness and highlights the strengths and gaps in our understanding about their relationship. We review studies that have measured the association between presence and cybersickness, and conclude that the balance of evidence favors a negative relationship between the two factors which is driven principally by sensory integration processes. We also discuss how system immersiveness might play a role in modulating both presence and cybersickness. However, we identify a serious absence of high-powered studies that aim to reveal the nature of this relationship. Based on this evidence we propose recommendations for future studies investigating presence, cybersickness, and other related factors.

Immersive technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, initially failed to live up to expectations, but have improved greatly, with many new head-worn displays and associated applications being released over the past few years. Unfortunately, 'cybersickness' remains as a common user problem that must be overcome if mass adoption is to be realized. This article evaluates the state of research on this problem, identifies challenges that must be addressed, and formulates an updated cybersickness research and development (R&D) agenda. The new agenda recommends prioritizing creation of powerful, lightweight, and untethered head-worn displays, reduction of visual latencies, standardization of symptom and aftereffect measurement, development of improved countermeasures, and improved understanding of the magnitude of the problem and its implications for job performance. Some of these priorities are unresolved problems from the original agenda which should get increased attention now that immersive technologies are proliferating widely. If the resulting R&D agenda is carefully executed, it should render cybersickness a challenge of the past and accelerate mass adoption of immersive technologies to enhance training, performance, and recreation.

Use of virtual reality (VR) technology is often accompanied by a series of unwanted symptoms, including nausea and headache, which are characterised as ‘simulator sickness’. Sensory mismatch has been thought to lie at the heart of the problem and recent studies have shown that reducing cue mismatch in VR can have a therapeutic effect. Specifically, electrical stimulation of vestibular afferent nerves (galvanic vestibular stimulation; GVS) can reduce simulator sickness in VR. However, GVS poses a risk to certain populations and can also result in negative symptoms in normal, healthy individuals. Here, we tested whether noisy vestibular stimulation through bone-vibration can also reduce symptoms of simulator sickness. We carried out two experiments in which participants performed a spatial navigation task in VR and completed the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire over a series of trials. Experiment 1 was conducted using a high-end projection-based VR display, whereas Experiment 2 involved the use of a consumer head mounted display. During each trial, vestibular stimulation was either: 1) absent; 2) coupled with large angular accelerations of the projection camera; or 3) applied randomly throughout each trial. In half of the trials, participants actively navigated using a motion controller, and in the other half they were moved passively through the environment along pre-recorded motion trajectories. In both experiments we obtained lower simulator sickness scores when vestibular stimulation was coupled with angular accelerations of the camera. This effect was obtained for both active and passive movement control conditions, which did not differ. The results suggest that noisy vestibular stimulation can reduce simulator sickness, and that this effect appears to generalize across VR conditions. We propose further examination of this stimulation technique.

The user base of the virtual reality (VR) medium is growing, and many of these users will experience cybersickness. Accounting for the vast inter-individual variability in cybersickness forms a pivotal step in solving the issue. Most studies of cybersickness focus on a single factor (e.g., balance, sex, vection), while other contributors are overlooked. Here, we characterize the complex relationship between cybersickness and several measures of sensorimotor processing. In a single session, we conducted a battery of tests of balance control, vection responses, and vestibular sensitivity to self-motion. Following this, we measured cybersickness after VR exposure. We constructed a principal components regression model using the measures of sensorimotor processing. The model significantly predicted 37% of the variability in cybersickness measures, with 16% of this variance being accounted for by a principal component that represented balance control measures. The strongest predictor was participants' sway path length during vection, which was inversely related to cybersickness (r(28) = -.53, p = .002) and uniquely accounted for 7.5% of the variance in cybersickness scores across participants. Vection strength reports and measures of vestibular sensitivity were not significant predictors of cybersickness. We discuss the possible role of sensory reweighting in cybersickness that is suggested by these results, and we identify other factors that may account for the remaining variance in cybersickness. The results reiterate that the relationship between balance control and cybersickness is anything but straightforward.

Studies of the illusory sense of self-motion elicited by a moving visual surround (‘vection’) have revealed key insights about how sensory information is integrated. Vection usually occurs after a delay of several seconds following visual motion onset, whereas self-motion in the natural environment is perceived immediately. It has been suggested that this latency relates to the sensory mismatch between visual and vestibular signals at motion onset. Here, we tested three techniques with the potential to reduce sensory mismatch in order to shorten vection onset latency: noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) and bone conducted vibration (BCV) at the mastoid processes, and body vibration applied to the lower back. In Experiment 1, we examined vection latency for wide field visual rotations about the roll axis and applied a burst of stimulation at the start of visual motion. Both GVS and BCV reduced vection latency by two seconds compared to the control condition, whereas body vibration had no effect on latency. In Experiment 2, the visual stimulus rotated about the pitch, roll, or yaw axis and we found a similar facilitation of vection by both BCV and GVS in each case. In a control experiment, we confirmed that air-conducted sound administered through headphones was not sufficient to reduce vection onset latency. Together the results suggest that noisy vestibular stimulation facilitates vection, likely due to an upweighting of visual information caused by a reduction in vestibular sensory reliability.