Abstract
The phenomenon of cybersickness is currently hindering the mass market adoption of head-mounted display (HMD) virtual reality (VR) technologies. This study examined the effects of dynamic field-of-view (FOV) restriction on the cybersickness generated by ecological HMD-based gameplay. Forty participants were exposed to a commercially available HMD game (Marvel Powers United VR) under both unrestricted FOV and dynamic FOV restriction conditions across three sessions. Participants had their spontaneous postural instability measured before entering VR. Then, during/following each of these 10-min exposures to HMD VR, they rated their cybersickness, vection (illusory self-motion), and feelings of presence. Individual differences in spontaneous postural instability were found to predict cybersickness during HMD VR gameplay. Cybersickness severity increased steadily over the course of each VR exposure and was significantly reduced by dynamic FOV restriction. Presence also increased steadily over the course of each VR exposure and was positively correlated with vection. We conclude that: (1) postural instability can identify people who are more susceptible to cybersickness, (2) vection can increase an HMD user’s feelings of presence, and (3) dynamic FOV restriction can serve as a viable countermeasure to cybersickness.
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We used a commercially available video game in this study.
Effects of Dynamic Field-of-View Restriction on Cybersickness and Presence in HMD-based Virtual Reality.
Notes
There is a possibility that the long-term use of dynamic FOV restriction might affect day-to-day activities outside the simulated environment. This possibility needs to be examined in future research.
e.g., see “TechnoLust—Anyway to turn off ‘comfort mode’?” at https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4cvo2l/technolust_anyway_to_turn_off_comfort_mode/.
The authors acknowledge the limitations of subjective measures of presence. It is suggested that (where possible) future studies utilize a combination of subjective and objective measures to examine the complexity of presence further.
This was similar to traditional teleportation methods in VR, except that high-speed visual motion was maintained between the user’s starting and stopping points.
While we did not observe any other significant differences in “sick” versus “well” comparisons of postural activity, this could perhaps be attributed to the small and disparate sample sizes of our sick and well participants (31 to 7, respectively) watering down potential postural effects.
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Teixeira, J., Palmisano, S. Effects of dynamic field-of-view restriction on cybersickness and presence in HMD-based virtual reality. Virtual Reality 25, 433–445 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00466-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00466-2