Science & Technology, UK (Commonwealth Union) – Virtual Reality (VR) has become a more common phenomena in recent year, where it gives the user the chance to get a feeling of how they may actually handle a pressure situation in a realistic setting. From exploring the impact on the brain in an anxiety situation to a trainee pilot flying a plane VR can be crucial in testing the waters, and even in telemedicine.
Researchers suggest that passengers in vehicles utilizing VR headsets to pass time could soon indulge in games operating at ‘ludicrous speed’ without succumbing to motion sickness. A team of human-computer interaction experts from the UK and Canada has pioneered a groundbreaking system, capable of both managing motion sickness in VR and simulating sensations of rapid or slow movement relative to the actual vehicle’s speed.
Their findings propose that manipulating travelers’ perception of speed within virtual environments could enhance gaming experiences or facilitate concentration on tasks like reading or working, all while minimizing the risk of motion sickness. This condition arises from a disparity between the physical motion detected by an individual’s vestibular system and the visual input received. When these perceptions misalign, it can swiftly induce discomfort in some individuals.
Certain VR systems presently available in the market offer to alleviate or eradicate motion sickness during travel by synchronizing the physical movements of the vehicle with the perceived motion within the headset. For instance, they translate real-world maneuvers into virtual equivalents, replicating direction and duration accurately.
The team embarked on a mission to explore whether further tweaking VR users’ perceptions of movement could create enjoyable virtual experiences without inducing discomfort. Their findings, slated for presentation as a paper at an upcoming international conference, mark a significant development.
Their research yields the pioneering creation of a travel-centric system, leveraging established VR principles of translational gain and attenuation. These principles involve transforming real-world movements into virtual perceptions in non-linear ways.
Translational gain allows for the amplification of small real-world movements into larger virtual ones, typically without triggering motion sickness. Conversely, translational attenuation shrinks significant real-world movements into more manageable virtual ones.
Dr. Graham Wilson, from the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science and one of the paper’s lead authors, highlighted the significance of their work. He noted, the while VR technology gains wider acceptance in entertainment and productivity applications, it still poses challenges for some users, especially in simulating vehicular experiences.
“Exactly mapping real-world movements to virtual ones does a good job of reducing that feeling of sickness, but it limits the available types of experiences users can have, and reduces the range of feelings those experiences can create. It’s more difficult to make a movement-based game seem exciting if it’s constantly stopping and starting at traffic lights. Similarly, it’s hard to focus on writing an email if you’re feeling distracted by moving at motorway speeds.
“Translational gain and attenuation hold a lot of potential for more expanding the scope of VR experiences during travel. In this study, we set out to explore how that potential might be realised in real-world situations.”
During the initial phase of the study, 17 participants donned VR headsets and embarked on a simulated 2km journey through Glasgow’s west end, cruising at approximately 50 kilometers per hour, mimicking a typical urban commute. Immersed in a virtual cityscape, they encountered overlaid text prompts, which they were tasked to read while traversing actual city streets. Subsequently, they faced multiple-choice questions based on this content.
The image they had of the velocity was synchronized with their vehicle’s movement, fluctuating across three one-hour sessions. In the “faster-than-reality” segments, the virtual speed surged across four intervals, ranging from 72km/h to 338km/h—sevenfold faster than real-world speeds. Conversely, in the “slower-than-reality” segments, participants navigated through the virtual city at reduced speeds, descending from 32km/h to 7km/h—merely 14 percent of their usual pace.
Dr. Katharina Pöhlmann, from the KITE Research Institute in Canada, co-authored the paper. She noted, that their participants reported no heightened discomfort during the accelerated phases compared to speed-matched sections. They did not perceive the task as more challenging at increased speeds. However, during slower-than-real-life segments, they reported heightened motion sickness awareness. Despite this, they felt safer, more relaxed, and better able to concentrate than during either matched or accelerated velocity phases.
