OnVehicleVR: Mitigating Sickness in On-Vehicle Virtual Reality by Mixing in Synchronized Vehicle Motion Information

Abstract

Vehicles, in which humans spend a significant portion of their time, are not just means of transportation, but also places for various meaningful activities. In particular, virtual reality (VR) is an attractive medium that offers a variety of possibilities, including entertainment, education, and business/casual meetings. However, one impediment is cybersickness and motion sickness - the former arises from virtual motion, and the latter from actual motion. As sickness primarily stems from sensory conflicts between the visual (from moving VR imagery) and vestibular motions (from the moving vehicle), we propose integrating actual motion information, emulating its linear and circular optical flow patterns, into the VR content background. This way, the motion information between the virtual/visual and real/vestibular systems is synchronized, reducing the extent of sickness in the vehicle, without potentially disturbing content delivery. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was tested through two on-vehicle experiments, one in a car and the other in a ship. The results showed a significant reduction in sickness without degrading the immersive VR experience while riding the respective vehicles.

Keywords

• Virtual reality
• motion sickness
• cybersickness
• sensory mismatch theory
• vection