Methods for Correlating Visual Scene Elements with Simulator Sickness Incidence

Abstract

Simulator sickness occurs in a large number of Army, Navy, and Marine Corps simulators, and is most prevalent in moving-base, rotary-wing devices which employ cathode ray tube (CRT) video displays as opposed to fixed-wing, dome-display trainers with no motion base. Based on data from a factor analysis of over 1000 Navy and Marine Corps pilot simulation exposures, a new scoring procedure was applied to two helicopter simulators with similar rates of simulator sickness incidence. Based on the factor analytic scoring key, the two simulators showed slightly different sickness profiles. Preliminary work was begun to record the visual scene by video frame-by-frame decomposition and automated scoring algorithms were developed. The findings are discussed from the standpoints of (1) recommendations for future design and use of simulators, and (2) the metric advantages and other merits of the “field experiment” methodology to address human factors problems with simulator sickness.

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