Some Experimental Results of Relieving Discomfort in Virtual Reality by Disturbing Feedback Loop in Human Brain

TL;DR

This paper proposes a low-cost method to reduce VR discomfort by disturbing the feedback loop in the human brain, demonstrated through an experimental setup that blurs the display during head movement.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, low-cost approach to alleviate VR discomfort by manipulating feedback in the human brain, supported by experimental validation.

Findings

Discomfort was significantly reduced with the new method.

The approach is cost-effective and easy to implement.

VR usability in education could be enhanced.

Abstract

Recently, great progress has been made in virtual reality(VR) research and application. However, virtual reality faces a big problem since its appearance, i.e. discomfort (nausea, stomach awareness, etc). Discomfort can be relieved by increasing hardware (sensor, cpu and display) speed. But this will increase cost. This paper gives another low cost solution. The phenomenon of cybersickness is explained with the control theory: discomfort arises if feedback scene differs from expectation, so it can be relieved by disturbing feedback loop in human brain. A hardware platform is build to test this explanation. The VR display on a Samsung S6 is blurred while head movement is detected. The effect is evaluated by comparing responses to the Simulated Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) between a control and experimental condition. Experimental results show that the new method can ease discomfort remarkably with little extra cost. As a result, VR may be used more widely in teaching (like foreign language, medicine). It's also reasonable to expect likewise merits in other VR applications.