Reducing simulator sickness with perceptual camera control

Abstract

Virtual-reality provides an immersive environment but can induce cybersickness due to the discrepancy between visual and vestibular cues. To avoid this problem, the movement of the virtual camera needs to match the motion of the user in the real world. Unfortunately, this is usually difficult due to the mismatch between the size of the virtual environments and the space available to the users in the physical domain. The resulting constraints on the camera movement significantly hamper the adoption of virtual-reality headsets in many scenarios and make the design of the virtual environments very challenging. In this work, we study how the characteristics of the virtual camera movement (e.g., translational acceleration and rotational velocity) and the composition of the virtual environment (e.g., scene depth) contribute to perceived discomfort. Based on the results from our user experiments, we devise a computational model for predicting the magnitude of the discomfort for a given scene and camera trajectory. We further apply our model to a new path planning method which optimizes the input motion trajectory to reduce perceptual sickness. We evaluate the effectiveness of our method in improving perceptual comfort in a series of user studies targeting different applications. The results indicate that our method can reduce the perceived discomfort while maintaining the fidelity of the original navigation, and perform better than simpler alternatives.

Evaluating Automatic Parameter Control Methods for Locomotion in Multiscale Virtual Environments

“…At the largest scale (1), the automatic speed was too high, which led to deviations from the ideal path, in turn requiring users to turn their heads more to track the target. This might be the cause of the increase in simulator sickness [19].…”

Differences in Three Vection Indices (Latency, Duration, and Magnitude) Induced by “Camera-Moving” and “Object-Moving” in a Virtual Computer Graphics World, Despite Similarity in the Retinal Images

“…Our results may also shed light on cybersickness in virtual reality (VR) situations. Hu et al (2019) reported that the characteristics of the virtual camera movement (e.g., translational acceleration and rotational velocity) and the composition of the virtual environment (e.g., scene depth) contribute to perceived discomfort, that is, motion sickness. Palmisano et al (2017) also reported that cybersickness could be enhanced by adding oscillation to the radial flow.…”

Multimodality in VR: A Survey

“…In other cases, physical space is constrained, and manipulating users' movement may allow to reduce the necessary physical space to complete a task [193]. Manipulating the experience can be also useful to reduce simulator sickness, for instance, by means of manipulating camera control depending on some characteristics such as velocity, acceleration, or scene depth [75]. Although this can be done using a single modality, the use of multimodal cues can improve the effectiveness of these techniques.…”