Discrete Viewpoint Control to Reduce Cybersickness in Virtual Environments

Cybersickness in virtual reality is an on-going problem. We propose a method for reducing the onset of cybersickness caused by illusions of self-motion (vection), when using stationary VR setups. Our approaches rely on reducing optic flow and the inconsistent displacement approach. We propose two different technique including translational and rotational viewpoint movements. We run two different user studies and measure participant cybersickness levels via Simulator Sickness Questionnaire, as well as user reported levels of nausea, presence, and error rates. Overall, our results indicate that both viewpoints snapping and translation snapping significantly reduced SSQ-reported cybersickness levels by 40% for rotational viewpoint movement, and 50% for translational viewpoint movement. Both techniques resulted in a reduction in participant nausea levels, especially with longer VR exposure. Presence levels, error rate, and performance were not significantly different when using viewpoint snapping, or translation snapping as compared to a control condition with continuous viewpoint motion.