research-article

Investigating External Airflow and Reduced Room Temperature to Reduce Virtual Reality Sickness

Authors:

Leigh Ellen PotterAuthors Info & Claims

OzCHI '21: Proceedings of the 33rd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

Pages 198 - 207

https://doi.org/10.1145/3520495.3520518

Published: 15 September 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) provides a new way for people to interact with technology, but it comes with its own challenges that can restrict its accessibility for the general public. Not everyone is able to use VR due to a phenomenon known as VR sickness, where users experience motion sickness like symptoms when using VR. This paper presents two studies that investigates the impact of introducing an external airflow and reducing room temperature on people during a VR experience. 33 participants were used across these studies who played the same VR game in each condition, a control, an airflow and a reduced room temperature. Our results show participants had a 28% reduction in average VR sickness with the external airflow, as compared against the control and reduced room temperature. Most participants also responded that they preferred the airflow condition the most, citing that it made them less sick and more comfortable.

References

[1]

Laura Lynn Arns. 2002. A new taxonomy for locomotion in virtual environments. (2002).

[2]

Jelte E Bos, Scott N MacKinnon, and Anthony Patterson. 2005. Motion sickness symptoms in a ship motion simulator: effects of inside, outside, and no view. Aviation, space, and environmental medicine 76, 12 (2005), 1111–1118.

[3]

Elodie Chiarovano, Catherine de Waele, Hamish G MacDougall, Stephen J Rogers, Ann M Burgess, and Ian S Curthoys. 2015. Maintaining balance when looking at a virtual reality three-dimensional display of a field of moving dots or at a virtual reality scene. Frontiers in neurology 6(2015).

[4]

Ross A Clark, Adam L Bryant, Yonghao Pua, Paul McCrory, Kim Bennell, and Michael Hunt. 2010. Validity and reliability of the Nintendo Wii Balance Board for assessment of standing balance. Gait & posture 31, 3 (2010), 307–310.

[5]

HTC Corporation. 2019. Vive. (2019). https://www.vive.com/au/product/

[6]

Simon Davis, Keith Nesbitt, and Eugene Nalivaiko. 2015. Comparing the onset of cybersickness using the Oculus Rift and two virtual roller coasters. In Proceedings of the 11th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment (IE 2015), Vol. 27. 30.

[7]

Sarah D’Amour, Jelte E Bos, and Behrang Keshavarz. 2017. The efficacy of airflow and seat vibration on reducing visually induced motion sickness. Experimental brain research 235, 9 (2017), 2811–2820.

[8]

Andre Garcia, Carryl Baldwin, and Matt Dworsky. 2010. Gender differences in simulator sickness in fixed-versus rotating-base driving simulator. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, Vol. 54. SAGE Publications Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA, 1551–1555.

[9]

John F Golding. 2006. Motion sickness susceptibility. Autonomic Neuroscience 129, 1 (2006), 67–76.

[10]

Jukka Hakkinen, Tero Vuori, and M Paakka. 2002. Postural stability and sickness symptoms after HMD use. In IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Vol. 1. 147–152.

[11]

Jake Harrington, Christopher Headleand, 2019. A Somatic Approach to Combating Cybersickness Utilising Airflow Feedback. (2019).

[12]

Lawrence J Hettinger, Kevin S Berbaum, Robert S Kennedy, William P Dunlap, and Margaret D Nolan. 1990. Vection and simulator sickness.Military Psychology 2, 3 (1990), 171.

[13]

Peter A Howarth and Simon G Hodder. 2008. Characteristics of habituation to motion in a virtual environment. Displays 29, 2 (2008), 117–123.

[14]

Robert S Kennedy, Julie Drexler, and Robert C Kennedy. 2010. Research in visually induced motion sickness. Applied ergonomics 41, 4 (2010), 494–503.

[15]

Robert S Kennedy, Norman E Lane, Kevin S Berbaum, and Michael G Lilienthal. 1993. Simulator sickness questionnaire: An enhanced method for quantifying simulator sickness. The international journal of aviation psychology 3, 3 (1993), 203–220.

[16]

Behrang Keshavarz and Heiko Hecht. 2011. Validating an efficient method to quantify motion sickness. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 53, 4(2011), 415–426.

[17]

Behrang Keshavarz, Bernhard E Riecke, Lawrence J Hettinger, and Jennifer L Campos. 2015. Vection and visually induced motion sickness: how are they related?Frontiers in psychology 6 (2015), 472.

[18]

Aram Kim, Nora Darakjian, and James M Finley. 2017. Walking in fully immersive virtual environments: an evaluation of potential adverse effects in older adults and individuals with Parkinson’s disease. Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation 14, 1(2017), 16.

[19]

Eugenia M Kolasinski. 1995. Simulator Sickness in Virtual Environments.Technical Report. DTIC Document.

[20]

Eike Langbehn, Paul Lubos, Gerd Bruder, and Frank Steinicke. 2017. Bending the curve: Sensitivity to bending of curved paths and application in room-scale vr. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 23, 4(2017), 1389–1398.

Digital Library

[21]

Joseph J LaViola Jr. 2000. A discussion of cybersickness in virtual environments. ACM SIGCHI Bulletin 32, 1 (2000), 47–56.

Digital Library

[22]

Jorge Martín-Gutiérrez, Carlos Efrén Mora, Beatriz Añorbe-Díaz, and Antonio González-Marrero. 2017. Virtual technologies trends in education. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics Science and Technology Education 13, 2(2017), 469–486.

[23]

Nicole A Matas, Ted Nettelbeck, and Nicholas R Burns. 2015. Dropout during a driving simulator study: a survival analysis. Journal of safety research 55 (2015), 159–169.

[24]

Denys JC Matthies, Felix M Manke, Franz Müller, Charalampia Makri, Christoph Anthes, and Dieter Kranzlmüller. 2014. VR-Stepper: A Do-It-Yourself Game Interface For Locomotion In Virtual Environments. arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.3948(2014).

[25]

Stephen Palmisano, Rebecca Mursic, and Juno Kim. 2017. Vection and cybersickness generated by head-and-display motion in the Oculus Rift. Displays 46(2017), 1–8.

[26]

Gary E Riccio and Thomas A Stoffregen. 1991. An ecological theory of motion sickness and postural instability. Ecological psychology 3, 3 (1991), 195–240.

[27]

Bernhard E Riecke and Jacqueline D Jordan. 2015. Comparing the effectiveness of different displays in enhancing illusions of self-movement (vection). Frontiers in psychology 6 (2015), 713.

[28]

Jennifer NA Silva, Michael Southworth, Constantine Raptis, and Jonathan Silva. 2018. Emerging applications of virtual reality in cardiovascular medicine. JACC: Basic to Translational Science 3, 3 (2018), 420–430.

[29]

Kay M Stanney, Robert S Kennedy, and Julie M Drexler. 1997. Cybersickness is not simulator sickness. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual meeting, Vol. 41. SAGE Publications Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA, 1138–1142.

[30]

Kay M Stanney, Ronald R Mourant, and Robert S Kennedy. 1998. Human factors issues in virtual environments: A review of the literature. Presence 7, 4 (1998), 327–351.

Digital Library

[31]

Heather A Stoner, Donald L Fisher, and Michael Mollenhauer. 2011. Simulator and scenario factors influencing simulator sickness. (2011).

[32]

Facebook Technologies. 2019. Oculus Quest. (2019). https://www.oculus.com/quest/

[33]

James N Templeman, Patricia S Denbrook, and Linda E Sibert. 1999. Virtual locomotion: Walking in place through virtual environments. Presence: teleoperators and virtual environments 8, 6(1999), 598–617.

[34]

Michel Treisman. 1977. Motion sickness: an evolutionary hypothesis. Science 197, 4302 (1977), 493–495.

[35]

Aleksander Väljamäe. 2009. Auditorily-induced illusory self-motion: A review. Brain research reviews 61, 2 (2009), 240–255.

[36]

Martijn L van Emmerik, Sjoerd C de Vries, and Jelte E Bos. 2011. Internal and external fields of view affect cybersickness. Displays 32, 4 (2011), 169–174.

[37]

Alexander D Walker, Eric R Muth, Fred S Switzer, and Adam Hoover. 2010. Head movements and simulator sickness generated by a virtual environment. Aviation, space, and environmental medicine 81, 10 (2010), 929–934.

[38]

Colin Ware and Steven Osborne. 1990. Exploration and virtual camera control in virtual three dimensional environments. In ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, Vol. 24. ACM, 175–183.

Cited By

Biswas NMukherjee ABhattacharya S(2024)“Are you feeling sick?” – A systematic literature review of cybersickness in virtual realityACM Computing Surveys10.1145/367000856:11(1-38)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3670008
Park SSon SKim JKim G(2024)The Effect of Directional Airflow toward Vection and Cybersickness2024 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR58804.2024.00103(839-848)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VR58804.2024.00103
Zhao FLi ZLuo YLi YLiang H(2024)AirWhisper: enhancing virtual reality experience via visual-airflow multimodal feedbackJournal on Multimodal User Interfaces10.1007/s12193-024-00438-9Online publication date: 20-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-024-00438-9

Index Terms

Investigating External Airflow and Reduced Room Temperature to Reduce Virtual Reality Sickness
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Virtual reality

Recommendations

WalkingVibe: Reducing Virtual Reality Sickness and Improving Realism while Walking in VR using Unobtrusive Head-mounted Vibrotactile Feedback
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Virtual Reality (VR) sickness is common with symptoms such as headaches, nausea, and disorientation, and is a major barrier to using VR. We propose WalkingVibe, which applies unobtrusive vibrotactile feedback for VR walking experiences, and also reduces ...
A meta-analysis of the virtual reality problem: Unequal effects of virtual reality sickness across individual differences
Abstract
Practical applications of virtual reality (VR), defined as a three-dimensional digital representation of a real or imagined space, have become increasingly popular and are now applied in workplace training, physical rehabilitation, psychological ...
High computer gaming experience may cause higher virtual reality sickness
OzCHI '18: Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction

This paper describes one work-in-progress finding of a larger pilot study, investigating simulator sickness in virtual reality. The investigation asked participants (n = 10) to play though a VR application, and then complete a Simulator Sickness ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

OzCHI '21: Proceedings of the 33rd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

November 2021

361 pages

ISBN:9781450395984

DOI:10.1145/3520495

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 September 2022

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

OzCHI '21

OzCHI '21: 33rd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

November 30 - December 2, 2021

VIC, Melbourne, Australia

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 362 of 729 submissions, 50%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
132
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)46
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 08 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Biswas NMukherjee ABhattacharya S(2024)“Are you feeling sick?” – A systematic literature review of cybersickness in virtual realityACM Computing Surveys10.1145/367000856:11(1-38)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3670008
Park SSon SKim JKim G(2024)The Effect of Directional Airflow toward Vection and Cybersickness2024 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR58804.2024.00103(839-848)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VR58804.2024.00103
Zhao FLi ZLuo YLi YLiang H(2024)AirWhisper: enhancing virtual reality experience via visual-airflow multimodal feedbackJournal on Multimodal User Interfaces10.1007/s12193-024-00438-9Online publication date: 20-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-024-00438-9

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten