The Effect of Driving Environments on Simulator Sickness

Abstract

In order to be an effective tool for driver evaluation and education, driving simulators need to be better designed to reduce simulator sickness. This study investigated driving in four environments (country, suburban, city, and curves) using a simulator. When driving on straight roads (city and suburban environments) subjects reported less simulator sickness then driving in the city environment (which included left and right turns) and on curves. A mini-SSQ was used to measure the accumulation of simulator sickness over trials. From trial 1 to trial 5, reported simulator sickness increased linearly. From trial 5 through 8, the rate of increase in simulator sickness decreased. We suggest that the rapid and distorted optic flow experienced while executing turns and driving on curves in driving simulators makes a substantial contribution to simulator sickness.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allen

R.W.

Park

Cook

Rosenthal

T.J.

(2003). Novice driver training results and experience with a PC based simulator. Proceedings of the 2nd International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training and Vehicle Design. Park City, Utah, 165–170.

Chrysler

S.T.

Williams

A.A.

(2005). Driving performance in a simulator as a function of pavement and shoulder width, edge line presence, and oncoming traffic. Proceedings of the 3nd International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training and Vehicle Desig, 370–375.

Edwards

C.J.

Creaser

J.I.

Caird

J.K.

Lamsdale

A.M.

Chisholm

S.L.

(2003). Older and younger driver performance at complex intersections: Implications for using perception response time and driving simulation. Proceedings of the 2nd International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training and Vehicle Design Park City, Utah, 33–38.

Kennedy

R.S.

Lane

N.E.

Berbaum

K.S.

Lilienthal

M.G.

(1993). “Simulator sickness questionnaire: An enhanced method for quantifying simulator sickness” Journal of Aviation Psychology 3(3): 203–220.

Kennedy

R. S.

Stanney

Dunlap

W. P.

(2000). Duration and Exposure to Virtual Environments: Sickness Curves During and Across Sessions. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 9(5), pp. 463–472.

Kolasinski

E.M.

Gilson

R.D.

(1998). Simulator sickness and related findings in a virtual environment. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 42nd Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, 1511–1515.

Mourant

R.R.

Ahmad

Adetiloye

Jaeger

B.K.

(2006) “Optical flow, geometric field of view, and requested vehicle velocity”. Proceedings of the Third Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization, Boston, MA, 155.

Mourant

R.R.

Thattacherry

T.R.

(2000). Simulator sickness in a virtual environments driving simulator. Proceedings of the IEA 2000/HFES 2000 Congress, 1, San Diego, CA, 534–537.

Park

G.R.

Allen

Fiorentino

(2006) Simulator Sickness Scores According to Symptom Susceptibility, Age, and Genger for an Older Driver Assessment Study. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 50th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, 2702–2706.

10.

Stanney

K.M.

Kingdon

K.S.

Kennedy

R.S.

(2002). Dropouts and aftereffects: Examining general accessibility to virtual environment technology. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, 2114–2118.

11.

Stanney

Salvendy

, (1998). Aftereffects and sense of presence in virtual environments: Formulation of a research and development agenda. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 10(2), 135 187.