Identifying Factors That Induce Cybersickness to Inform a Standardized Framework for Cybersickness Assessment and Reporting

Abstract

Cybersickness experimental research in Virtual Reality (VR) is inherently complex and methodologically diverse, leading to inconsistent reporting practices of numerous research factors related to participants, tasks, and the VR system. This study aims to address these reporting inconsistencies by developing standardized reporting guidelines through a two-phased approach. The paper presents the findings of Phase I, which conducted a scoping review, identifying 82 cybersickness-inducing factors categorized into 4 groups: participant, hardware, environment, and task, ranked into 3 impact tiers based on citation frequency and evidence of strength. Phase I synthesizes current knowledge by providing a comprehensive inventory of factors with their relative impact to guide Phase II. It also highlights the complexity and interdependent nature of these factors, inconsistent definitions across the literature, and a lack of standardized measurement metrics. These findings establish a structured understanding of cybersickness factors to inform the development of reporting guidelines in Phase II.