Search Results (9)

As in-vehicle display environments become increasingly common, addressing motion sickness has become essential due to the intensified visual and vestibular discrepancies introduced by media experiences within vehicles. Prior research highlights that minimizing the conflict between vestibular signals and visual motion perception is crucial for reducing motion sickness. This study aims to identify optimal viewing conditions and simulation settings for motion sickness reduction by experimentally adjusting field of view (FOV) and screen brightness. Specifically, the FOV is narrowed according to vehicle acceleration and angular speed, aligning with simulated vehicle motion through a motion simulator connected to a head-mounted display (HMD). The experimental results indicate that this approach can reduce motion sickness by up to 40%. Additionally, integrating the generated motion data with VR motion data enables a realistic simulation of in-vehicle conditions, suggesting that this method may enhance comfort in actual in-vehicle media environments. Full article

Background: As technology continues to shape society, younger generations are increasingly accustomed to its integration into daily life, making it mandatory for medical educators to adopt innovative tools like virtual reality (VR). This systematic review examines the efficacy of VR in obstetric training and patient care, focusing on its impact on educational engagement, procedural skill acquisition, and pain management in obstetric patients. Methods: A systematic review of the current literature was conducted using databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and Clinicaltrials.gov analyzing randomized controlled studies on VR’s use in obstetric training and patient care. Inclusion criteria focused on studies evaluating VR’s role in enhancing clinical skills, and pain and anxiety management during labor and procedures. Only randomized controlled trials published in English were considered. The risk of bias was assessed using RoB 2 for RCTs. Data extraction and quality appraisal were performed independently by two reviewers. Results: A total of 18 studies met the inclusion criteria. Among them, 13 studies focused on VR for pain relief and anxiety reduction, and 5 studies on medical training and skill acquisition. Most studies used immersive VR headsets, while some utilized interactive VR or serious gaming platforms. Adverse effects such as motion sickness and visual discomfort were reported in a few cases but did not significantly impact participant engagement. Conclusions: VR holds the potential to improve obstetric training and patient care by aligning with the learning preferences of younger generations and enhancing both educational and patient care experiences. However, heterogeneity in sample sizes, participants, and intervention types limits generalizability. Further large-scale, high-quality RCTs are needed to validate findings and standardize VR applications in obstetrics. This review was registered in PROSPERO (Registration ID: CRD42024619197). Full article

The use of virtual reality (VR) for flight simulation, particularly in the earliest stages of pilot training, is gaining attention in both research and industry. The use of the technology for this ab initio training requires suitable consideration of the risks of simulator sickness—risks that are heightened relative to conventional simulators. If simulator sickness results in the development of compensatory skills, or otherwise disrupts the training process, the benefits of the technology may be negated. Enabling the effective integration of VR within flight training requires that, to the extent that simulator sickness is an issue, practical mechanisms are developed to manage the occurrence without disrupting existing training structures. The primary objective of this research is, thus, to evaluate an intervention and a nuisance factor in relation to the reduction of simulator sickness, considering their practicality within existing flight training syllabi. The Total Severity (TS) of the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) was evaluated within a quasi-experimental, non-equivalent pre-test–post-test design, incorporating three groups: a prior flight experience nuisance factor group, a prior personal computer aviation training device (PCATD) exposure intervention group, and a control group with neither prior experience nor prior simulator exposure. The results indicated that the TS was significantly reduced for the prior flight experience nuisance factor (r_rb = 0.375), but that the PCATD exposure intervention produced no such reduction (r_rb = 0.016). The findings suggest that VR flight simulation is likely best used as a supplemental tool, introduced after initial airborne experience. Notwithstanding this finding, the relatively low median TS scores (<20) for all groups suggest that the technology may still be used with caution earlier in the training process. No other published research has examined this important effect in the context of the new VR situation. Full article

User experience is a key predictor of future use of goods and services. The presented study collected a combination of qualitative and quantitative data from both experienced users and novices about their perceptions of virtual reality (VR) equipment, any concerns surrounding the data collected by the equipment, and facets that needed to be taken into consideration for future developments. The purpose of this research was to understand the current user experience of VR and ways in which it can be improved. The findings indicated that the majority of people have used VR, albeit infrequently, and that the most common use for it was for entertainment purposes. The most important characteristics of VR systems were judged to be the available content and price. While it was reported to be enjoyable to use, the ways in which it was suggested to be improved were through a reduction in size and weight of the headsets, and incorporating wireless capabilities. Concerns about the use of VR were the potential for sickness, discomfort, and eye strain, the disconnect from the real world and the subsequent risks that this poses, as well as the use and privacy of user data. The findings from this research can be used as a stepping stone toward the advancement of VR technologies. Full article

In this paper, we propose a training method to reduce the VR sickness that occurs while viewing VR content with an HMD on. The proposed approach is a new method that involves pre-exposing users to VR sickness to enable them to adapt to VR sickness. In the proposed method, the training process was designed based on the features of existing studies related to exposure and adaptation to motion sickness and simulator sickness. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated through experiments with 15 subjects (SSQ and VR sickness response were used in the analysis). As a result of the experiment, nausea was significantly decreased by 47%, and oculomotor discomfort was significantly decreased by 34% after the proposed training method. The VR sickness response decreased by 31%; however, this difference was not statistically significant. Furthermore, we analyzed the VR sickness response in two groups: those whose sickness decreased and those whose sickness increased. We confirmed that the decrease group (pre-experiment mean: 1.34 times, post-experiment mean: 0.58 times) had a larger change than the increase group (pre-experiment mean: 0.31 times, post-experiment mean: 0.42 times). Therefore, from the experimental results, it was confirmed that the proposed method is effective in reducing VR sickness. Full article

To encourage the application of virtual reality (VR) in physical rehabilitation, this study analyzed the occurrence of motion sickness when walking on a treadmill in virtual straight paths presented on two types of displays (screen and head-mounted displays (HMDs)) at a constant speed of 3.6 km/h. The simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) scores, which indicate motion sickness, were collected from the participants. In addition, the heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV; RMSSD and LF/HF ratio) were measured from electrocardiogram data. The correlations between the SSQ scores and HR and HRV were examined to identify a reliable variable for evaluating motion sickness. The SSQ scores were used to classify the data into the motion-sickness and no-motion-sickness groups. The data were classified into the motion-sickness group if a minimum difference of 15 points existed between the walking and baseline phases when using the screen and HMD; otherwise, the data were classified into the no-motion-sickness group. The HR and LF/HF ratio were higher, whereas the RMSSD was lower in the motion-sickness group. Moreover, within the motion-sickness group, the reduction in RMSSD and increase in HR and LF/HF ratio were greater with the HMD than with the screen. Regression analysis was performed on the HR, HRV, and SSQ scores to differentiate between the motion-sickness and no-motion-sickness groups. The regression analysis results showed a high negative correlation between the SSQ score and RMSSD. The results of this study can assist in controlling the occurrence of motion sickness in VR-based applications. Full article

Virtual reality (VR) is in its nascent technological advancement and market diffusion stages. Interestingly, the scientific exploration concerning the impact of non-isometric mapping disparities within visual–vestibular stimuli on motion sickness remains deficient. This investigation focuses on scrutinizing the visual–vestibular implications for motion sickness within the context of flight simulation. The developed motion platform, offering specific pitch and roll ranges of ±16 and ±17 degrees, respectively, was employed to induce varying ratios of simulated visual–vestibular cues. Involving a cohort of five participants, the study exposed them to two prevalent simulated mission profiles, subsequently assessing their motion sickness symptoms. Sixty responses were analyzed using the subjective assessment of the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). The findings reveal a reduction in cybersickness severity with congruent visual–vestibular stimuli in proportion to the variance observed among visual–vestibular coupling ratios. A comparative analysis of SSQ sub-categories demonstrates that disorientation holds the most significance in the hierarchy of motion sickness contributors, followed by oculomotor discomfort, with nausea manifesting as the least influential. This study can lead to situation awareness analysis by integrating VR-based flight-simulation setups in the formal training of pilots and UAV operators. Full article

Sickness is a major obstacle in the wide adoption of virtual reality (VR). Providing low-resolution peripheral “countervection” visualization could mitigate VR sickness. Herein, we present an extension/improvement to this work, in which the reverse optical flow of the scene features is mixed in, and the extent of the periphery is dynamically adjusted simultaneously. We comparatively evaluated the effects of our extension versus the two notable sickness reduction techniques, (1) the original peripheral countervection flow using the simple stripe pattern (with a fixed field of view and peripheral extent) and (2) the dynamic field of view adjustment (with no added visualization). The experimental results indicated that the proposed extension exhibits competitive or better sickness reduction effects and less user-perceived content intrusion, distraction, and breaks in immersion/presence. Furthermore, we tested the comparative effect of visualizing the reverse optical flow only in the lower visual periphery, which further reduced the content intrusion and lowered the sense of immersion and presence. The test indicated that using just the low visual periphery could achieve a comparable level of sickness reduction with significantly less computational effort, making it suitable for mobile applications. Full article

In this paper, we propose a new type of visually induced reduction method for virtual reality (VR) sickness. This method induces a gaze based on a visual guide (VG). Although VGs are used in commercial VR game contents as crosshairs, no studies have been conducted related to VR sickness. VGs can have various properties determined by position, size, shape, color, etc., and it was necessary to investigate which properties affect VR sickness. In particular, size and position of VG are properties that directly affect the user’s gaze movement. Therefore, in this paper, five VR sickness reduction methods with different position and size of VG are proposed. Then, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed VR sickness reduction method. To this end, a SSQ (including nausea, oculomotor discomfort, disorientation, and total score) and a questionnaire on fatigue and immersion were used. From the experimental results, a VG with a size 30% that of the aspect ratio, and a position synchronized to the user’s head movement direction, was most effective in terms of VR sickness reduction and immersion. Full article