Seeking Accessible Physiological Metrics to Detect Cybersickness in VR

Literature Review

Overcoming cybersickness has been problematic for developers of VR since its inception and remains an obstacle for widespread adoption of VR in such scenarios as mainstream education and industrial training. Nausea, asthenopia, temperature increase, sweating and dizziness can be negative experiences when engaged in a VR activity (Dennison et al., 2016). At a high level of anxiety, for instance, users can experience nausea (i.e. extreme cybersickness) which can eventually lead to vomiting. The underlying mechanism of cybersickness is not yet clear though and there is no consensus on the causes of cybersickness (Davis et al., 2015; Rebenitsch et al., 2016). Theories researched have included sensory mismatch, poison theory, postural instability, and evolutionary theory (Hale and Stanney, 2018). Sensory mismatch, also known as vection, is the most widely accepted theory (Dennison et al., 2016) and is caused by the vestibular system (which senses motion and spatial orientation in an attempt to maintain postural stability) not matching the immediate visual system. A common example to illustrate sensory mismatch is to consider a person sitting at the window of a stationary train feeling in motion when observing a parallel train moving away from the platform. This is attributed to factors such as the user’s position within the VR experience and the user’s field of view (Tambovtsev et al., 2016). Cybersickness is also effected by a sense of touch and position (termed Somatosensory), balance (the Vestibular system in the ear passage), and muscles that control eye movements (termed Oculomotor). As Davis et al. (2015) highlight: “the issue is complicated as experiences of cybersickness vary greatly between individuals, the technologies being used, the design of the environment and the tasks being performed.”