Simulation sickness is a profuse research area, but still little applied to VR community (rather applied to driving simulators). However solutions exist in VR area, answering the simulation sickness issue.
- Oculus proposes a « Best practice guide » of about 40 pages giving recommendations to designers of VR applications (Oculus best practice guide [pdf]).
- Stanford University has designed a new type of HMD: the « Light-Field Stereoscope », based on the Light-Field technology aiming at decreasing the accomodation/vergence conflict and thus also decreasing the simulator sickness (Light-Field stereoscope)
- CloudHead Games has developed the « Blink » system with several displacement metaphors based on the teleportation idea in order for future users to move themselves in the virtual environment of their next game(s) (Cloudhead blink)
None of these solutions handles the visuo-vestibular conflict. The following table presents a comparison of these solutions with the solution that we are currently developing, under several causes of simulator sickness.
Oculus/HTC | Stanford | « Blink » | Our focus | |
Transport delay | +++ | +++ | ||
Visuo-vestibular conflict | +2 | ++1 | +++ | |
Visual integration of luminosity sources / Colorimetry | + | |||
Vergence / accommodation conflict | +++3 | + | ||
Observer’s eye height | +2 | + | ||
Field of View | + | |||
Temporal and visual resolution | + | |||
Expectations / Internal model | ++1 | +++ |
+ Taken into account ++ Expert configuration +++ Strong positioning, major added value | 1 Partially taken into account 2 Oculus user’s guide – overall recommendations 3 Hardware prototype |