The Effect of Environment Characteristics and User Interaction on Levels of Virtual Environment Sickness

  • Authors:
  • Roy A. Ruddle

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Leeds, UK

  • Venue:
  • VR '04 Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2004
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Data are reported for symptoms of virtual environment(VE) sickness that arose in 10 behavioral experiments. Intotal, 134 participants took part in the experiments andwere immersed in VEs for approximately 150 hours.Nineteen of the participants reported major symptomsand two were physically sick. The tasks that participants'performed ranged from manipulating virtual objects thatthey "held" in their hands, to traveling distances of 10 kmor more while navigating virtual mazes. The data areinterpreted within a framework provided by the VirtualEnvironment Description and Classification System.Environmental dimensions and visual complexity hadlittle effect on the severity of participants' symptoms.Long periods of immersion tended to produce majorocular-motor symptoms. Nausea was affected by the typeof movement made to control participants' view, and wasparticularly severe when participants had to spendsubstantial amounts of time (3%) looking steeplydownwards at their virtual feet. Contrary to expectations,large rapid movements had little effect on mostparticipants, and neither did movements that were notunder participants' direct control.