Analysis of vestibulo-ocular effects on motion sickness in flight simulation

Abstract

According to sensory conflict theory, discrepancies between visual and vestibular senses give rise to cyber sickness. This research scrutinizes whether coupling visual stimuli to inertial stimuli in a VR environment reduces virtually induced motion sickness. A virtual flight simulation environment coupled to a 2 DoF motion platform was used to provide vestibular cues to supplement visual pitch and roll from a head-mounted display (HMD). The flight simulation setup was able to generate ∓16◦ and ∓17◦ of the moment along roll and pitch respectively. A traditional simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) was used as a motion sickness measurement index. Two conditions were tested: visual stimulus only, and visual-vestibular sensory information. Subjective user feedback was statistically analyzed under six different ratios of the visual-vestibular sensory interface. Results elicit that the overall score of cybersickness decreases in a visual-vestibular environment, and virtually induced motion sickness is proportional to the measure of variance between the ratios of visual and vestibular signals. In a comparison of subjective scores of SSQ sub-categories, nausea contributed less to motion sickness as compared to oculomotor and disorientation, resulting in a motion profile of the order: Disorientation > Oculomotor > Nausea. The findings of the study are expected to be used to analyze slew rate ranges of flight simulators and VR glasses and to measure simulator sickness in a VR environment.