Method for estimating display lag in the Oculus Rift S and CV1

Abstract

We validated an optical method for measuring the display lag of modern head-mounted displays (HMDs). The method used a high-speed digital camera to track landmarks rendered on a display panel of the Oculus Rift CV1 and S models. We used an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 graphics adapter and found that the minimum estimated baseline latency of both the Oculus CV1 and S was extremely short (~2 ms). Variability in lag was low, even when the lag was systematically inflated. Cybersickness was induced with the small baseline lag and increased as this lag was inflated. These findings indicate the Oculus Rift CV1 and S are capable of extremely low baseline display lag latencies for angular head rotation, which appears to account for their low levels of reported cybersickness. CCS CONCEPTS• Displays and imagers • Visualization design and evaluation methods • Empirical studies in visualization

Cybersickness in Head-Mounted Displays Is Caused by Differences in the User's Virtual and Physical Head Pose

“…Research has shown that imposing an additional constant lag into the system increases the likelihood and severity of cybersickness (DiZio and Lackner, 1997;Jennings et al, 2000Jennings et al, , 2004Caserman et al, 2019;Feng et al, 2019;Palmisano et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2020). While a small number of studies have failed to find such effects (Draper et al, 2001;, we note that the baseline lags of their systems were already quite high (∼40-70 ms).…”

“…While the above example is focused on user head rotation in pitch, our research suggests that head rotations in yaw (and presumably also in roll) can generate provocative DVP during HMD VR (Feng et al, 2019;Palmisano et al, 2019). During each of these head rotations, DVP will increase in magnitude and become more variable when: (1) additional (constant or time-varying) display lag is injected into the system; and (2) the user's head-movement speed increases.…”

“…While a small number of studies have failed to find such effects (Draper et al, 2001;, we note that the baseline lags of their systems were already quite high (∼40-70 ms). Our own research has consistently found that cybersickness is increased by imposing additional constant lag into the system (Feng et al, 2019;Palmisano et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2020). Participants in these studies were simulated to either be seated inside a virtual room (Figure 1, Right) or moving forwards through a 3D cloud of randomly positioned objects (Figure 1, Left).…”

“…Participants in these studies were simulated to either be seated inside a virtual room (Figure 1, Right) or moving forwards through a 3D cloud of randomly positioned objects (Figure 1, Left). They were instructed to make continuous yaw (Feng et al, 2019;Palmisano et al, 2019) or pitch (Kim et al, 2020) head rotations during each 12 second VR exposure. Irrespective of the simulation/environment, or the axis/speed of head rotation, we consistently found that cybersickness severity increased in a monotonic fashion with increases in this constant display lag (Figures 2A-C).…”

“…FIGURE 2 | Effects of increasing the mean display lag from ∼4 to ∼204 ms on cybersickness severity ratings when participants made continuous: (A) yaw head rotations during visually simulated forwards self-motion (Feng et al, 2019); (B) yaw head rotations while they were simulated to be seated inside the "Tron-like" virtual room (Palmisano et al, 2019; binocular viewing condition data only) and (C) pitch head rotations while they were again simulated to be seated inside the "Tron-like" virtual room (Kim et al, 2020). Error bars in each of the three different plots represent standard errors of the mean.…”