Resolution deficits drive simulator sickness and compromise reading performance in virtual environments

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that sub-optimal effective resolution in virtual environments significantly increases simulator sickness and impairs reading performance, with a critical threshold at 0 logMAR where symptoms rapidly worsen.

Contribution

It identifies human-eye resolution as a key factor influencing comfort and performance in XR, providing a quantitative threshold for optimal display resolution.

Findings

Reading performance degrades exponentially below 0 logMAR resolution.

Sickness symptoms increase rapidly when resolution drops below 0 logMAR.

0 logMAR is identified as a critical resolution threshold for comfort and performance.

Abstract

Extended reality (XR) is evolving into a general-purpose computing platform, yet its adoption for productivity is hindered by visual fatigue and simulator sickness. While these symptoms are often attributed to latency or motion conflicts, the precise impact of textual clarity on physiological comfort remains undefined. Here we show that sub-optimal effective resolution, the clarity that reaches the eye after the full display-optics-rendering pipeline, is a primary driver of simulator sickness during reading tasks in both virtual reality and video see-through environments. By systematically manipulating end-to-end effective resolution on a unified logMAR scale, we measured reading psychophysics and sickness symptoms in a controlled within-subjects study. We find that reading performance and user comfort degrade exponentially as resolution drops below 0 logMAR (normal visual acuity). Notably, our results reveal 0 logMAR as a key physiological tipping point: resolutions better than this threshold yield naked-eye-level performance with minimal sickness, whereas poorer resolutions trigger rapid, non-linear increases in nausea and oculomotor strain. These findings suggest that the cognitive and perceptual effort required to resolve blurry text directly compromises user comfort, establishing human-eye resolution as a critical baseline for the design of future ergonomic XR systems.