{"id":8367,"date":"2016-06-16T10:13:11","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T10:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/?p=282027"},"modified":"2016-06-20T08:34:12","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T08:34:12","slug":"two-inventions-deal-with-virtual-reality-sickness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2016\/06\/16\/two-inventions-deal-with-virtual-reality-sickness\/","title":{"rendered":"Two inventions deal with virtual-reality sickness"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Single-eye view of a virtual environment before (left) and after (right) a dynamic field-of-view modification that subtly restricts the size of the image\u00a0during image motion to reduce motion sickness (credit: Ajoy Fernandes and Steve Feiner\/Columbia Engineering)<\/p><\/div>\n

Columbia Engineering researchers announced earlier this week that they have developed a simple way to reduce VR motion sickness<\/a> that can be applied to existing consumer VR devices, such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR, Gear VR, and Google Cardboard devices.<\/p>\n

The trick is to subtly change the field of view (FOV), or how much of an image you can see, during visually perceived motion. In an experiment conducted by\u00a0Computer Science Professor Steven K. Feiner<\/a> and student Ajoy Fernandes, most of the participants were not even aware of the intervention.<\/p>\n

What causes VR sickness is the clash between the visual motion cues that users see and the physical motion cues that they receive from their inner ears’ vestibular system, which provide our sense of motion, equilibrium, and spatial orientation. When the visual and vestibular cues conflict, users can feel quite uncomfortable, even nauseated.<\/p>\n

Decreasing the field of view can decrease these symptoms, but can also decrease the user’s sense of presence (reality) in the virtual environment, making the experience less compelling. So the researchers worked on subtly decreasing FOV in situations when a larger FOV would be likely to cause VR sickness (when the mismatch between physical and virtual motion increases) and restoring the FOV when VR sickness is less likely to occur (when the mismatch decreases).<\/p>\n