Evaluating the Efficacy of Multi-Sensory Stimulations on Simulator Sickness and Sense of Presence during HMD-mediated VR Experience

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) is currently being used for a wide range of applications. However, a sense of discomfort during VR experiences (commonly referred to as simulator sickness), is an obstacle for acceptance of the technology outside the niche of tech enthusiasts. Some lines of evidence have shown that sensory input, especially related to vestibular stimulation, may reduce the symptoms related to simulator sickness and increase the sense of presence. This investigation aims at understanding how mechanical vibration can be used to improve user experience in VR, reducing symptoms of simulator sickness and increasing the sense of presence. Four different groups comprising a total of 80 participants were tested under different conditions of sensory input (visual and vibratory, visual and auditory, visuo-auditory and vibratory, and visual only), during a VR roller-coaster experience. A questionnaire was used as the research instrument to evaluate both the sense of presence and the degree of simulator sickness experienced in VR. No significant differences in simulator sickness or presence were found between the groups exposed to seat vibration and/or audio. However, female participants experienced higher sense of presence when vibration was included. For participants experiencing a high degree of simulator sickness, vibration improved the experienced sense of presence, and the inclusion of vibration (but not sound) decreased the level of sickness-related disorientation. The inclusion of multi-sensory stimulation in VR revealed possibilities to improve the experience in some user categories; however, the use of vibration stimulation requires further research to be proven effective for the general public.Keywords: virtual reality, simulator sickness, presence, HMDs, vibration

Examining cross-modal correspondence between ambient color and taste perception in virtual reality

“…In this experiment, we aim to explore and determine the suitable settings of different ambient color environments, which is the premise for their usage in the follow-up taste perception study. As mentioned in Section 2.4, color in VR environments may cause visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) (Bonato et al, 2004;So and Yuen, 2007;Gusev et al, 2018;Grassini et al, 2021). Directly adapting the colors from former color-taste studies in physical settings to the ambient color in virtual TABLE 1 (Continued) A summary of related work about taste and the immersive environments with the used stimuli.…”

“…is the main research question explored in Experiment 1. Previous work revealed two potential problems that color studies in VR environments may suffer: 1) participants may experience visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) due to the unpleasant colors (Bonato et al, 2004;So and Yuen, 2007;Gusev et al, 2018;Grassini et al, 2021); and 2) there may be a recognition deviation between the color of the ambient light presented through the VR HMD and the color perceived in the physical setting. Based on these, we conducted Experiment 1 to evaluate the impact of these issues and set up the ambient light conditions to be suitable for color-taste studies.…”

Immersive visual technologies and human health

“…Human psychophysiology was shown to be a promising way to assess, and eventually better understand the human-VR interactions and it may contribute to the development of hardware, modality of presentation of the virtual stimuli, or algorithms able to reduce the side effects of the VR experience (as recently attempted in, e.g. [90], [91]). Electroencephalography and especially eye tracking (for its non-invasive nature), have shown to be promising methods to improve human experience in VR.…”

Using electrophysiological measures to evaluate the sense of presence in immersive virtual environments: An event‐related potential study

“…Being an immersive horror‐themed videogame, the VR used in Terkildsen and Makransky (2019) may have induced a reasonably high level of fear. The feeling of fear and threat has been studied in relationship with early and automatic attentional processes (see e.g., Grassini et al., 2019a, 2021b), and it is possible that a state of visually induced fear may promote different attentional processes in other sensory modalities (early auditory attention in the case of Terkildsen & Makransky, 2019). The activation of earlier attentional processes may then deplete the attentional resources for later (consciously controlled) attentional processes (mirrored in the brain activity in SWs).…”

“…The ride is part of the selection of rides available in a customer‐oriented videogame (“Epic Roller Coaster” B4T games). Such type of VR was chosen for the ability to induce, even after short use, a high sense of presence as previously shown (see e.g., Grassini et al., 2021a; Grassini et al., 2021b). The virtual ride was set in a fictitious tropic island environment.…”