Developing Automated Methods to Quantify the Visual Stimulus for Cybersickness

Abstract

Simulator sickness is a significant human factors issue in simulator and virtual environment systems. The extent to which users are adversely affected by sickness-inducing stimuli in virtual environments may hinder the behavioral goals sought (training, systems evaluation, etc.). To alleviate the problem, it is first necessary to accurately and reliably quantify the amount and type of visual motion stimulation that leads to motion sickness-like discomfort. This paper describes a human performance-based approach to the development of a system capable of measuring the visual stimulus for motion sickness. Military flight simulator trainees reported severity levels of sickness. A video camera was used to capture a significant portion of the simulated out-the-window visual stimuli to which they were exposed and a PC-mounted, frame-grabber algorithm was used to score the kinematic characteristics of that stimulation. Results show a significant positive correlation between roll motion and overall sickness. Development of these and other methods to quantify the visual stimulus for cybersickness are discussed.