Researchers figure out way to cure virtual reality motion sickness

While virtual reality (VR) equipment typically elicits a response of awe and amazement, for the motion sensitive, it can also generate a response of nausea. 

Simulator sickness, which includes symptoms like dizziness, sweating, disorientation, and the aforementioned sense of nausea, come about as a result of the VR equipment’s computer-generated signals manipulating the user’s senses independently. 

Researchers from Purdue University have figured out a trick to quell the body’s reaction to this sensory overload — by putting a virtual nose in the middle of the program.

First, some reference. One of the long accepted ways to combat sea sickness is to have the ill-feeling individual take to the deck of the boat where he / she can focus on the horizon. Doing this gives the mind a stable reference which, in turn, brings the vestibular and visual senses back in line with one another. 

Using this natural remedy as a point of reference, the folks at Purdue’s Department of Computer Graphics Technology added a stable reference to VR programming in the form of a virtual nose. The digital protuberance is clearly visible in the bottom right of the left eye’s field of view, as well as the bottom left of the right eye’s field of view, so as to imitate the experience we’re all familiar with. What the group found was that this relatively simple addition to the screen allowed users to test various applications, including walking around a virtual Tuscan villa and riding a virtual roller coaster, for much longer then when the screen is nose-less.

Biologically speaking, how this works is the nose provides a clear visual reference that moves with the point of view of the observer in the scene; this, in turn, gives him / her a better impression of the motion in the virtual world. 

Looking down the road, the Purdue team wants to create a complete model of simulator sickness, which will allow them to predict the degree of sickness a user can expect to experience when using a particular application. Immediately speaking, though, they plan on sharing this relatively simple way to reduce motion sickness symptoms with developers, and increase the usability of VR systems overall. 

Via Purdue University