TP — Cybersickness and Comfort in VR
The goal of this practical session is to investigate how different design choices in VR influence user comfort and cybersickness.
You will modify an existing VR navigation application, implement several comfort-related features, and evaluate their impact through a small user experiment.
1. Baseline experiment
Start from the Navigation TP project used previously.
Deploy the application on the VR headset.
Use the city navigation task already implemented in the project.
Ask 3 participants to perform the task. Participants must try to activate as many buzzers as possible within 2 minutes, as in the original TP.
After the task, ask each participant to rate their experience using the following scales:
Nausea: 0–10
Dizziness: 0–10
Eye strain: 0–10
Record the results. These results constitute your baseline condition.
2. Implement comfort-related features
You must implement at least three independent features from different categories that can influence comfort in VR.
Each feature must be implemented independently so that it can be activated or deactivated for testing.
Possible features include (you may implement others if relevant):
Motion and locomotion factors
- Continuous joystick navigation
- Teleportation locomotion
- Continuous rotation
- Snap rotation (step-based turning)
- Rotation speed modification
- Abrupt acceleration
- Smooth acceleration / deceleration
- Navigation speed increase or decrease
Camera and motion behaviour
- Camera lag (delay between head motion and camera update)
- Head bobbing
- Artificial camera sway
- Artificial camera stabilization
Field of view and visual factors
- Field-of-view reduction during movement (tunneling / vignette)
- Dynamic FOV adjustment based on speed
- Larger field of view
- Smaller field of view
Spatial perception factors
- Incorrect world scale
- Height offset (camera slightly too high or too low)
- Tilted horizon
- Slight camera roll
Environmental cues
- Adding stable visual references (e.g. cockpit frame or nose)
- Removing environmental references
- High visual motion in the environment (moving objects)
- Static vs dynamic environment
Rendering / visual complexity
- Reduced frame rate (simulated)
- Motion blur
- Increased visual contrast
- Reduced visual contrast
Some of these modifications may increase discomfort, while others may reduce it.
3. User testing
For each implemented feature, repeat the same experiment.
Ask 3 participants to perform the same task again.
Important rules:
- Participants must not know which modification is active.
- Use the same task and duration (2 minutes).
- Activate only one feature at a time.
After each condition, participants must rate:
Nausea: 0–10
Dizziness: 0–10
Eye strain: 0–10
Record all results.
4. Shared dataset
Report your results in this shared document.
For each condition include:
- the implemented feature
- the parameters used
- the results for the three participants
This shared dataset will allow the class to compare many comfort factors in VR.
5. Report
Your report must include the following elements.
Implementation
Explain how each feature was implemented:
- scripts modified or created
- parameters used
- technical choices
Illustrations or code snippets can be included.
Results
Present your experimental results:
- baseline condition
- each modified condition
Compare your results with those obtained by other groups in the shared dataset.
Discuss:
- which factors had the strongest impact
- whether the effects were expected or surprising
Discussion
Provide personal observations and reflections:
- subjective impressions during testing
- differences between participants
- limitations of the experiment
Discuss possible explanations for the observed effects.
Design guidelines
Based on your experiments and the shared class results, propose at least five design guidelines for improving user comfort in VR applications.
Each guideline should include:
- a short description of the recommendation
- a brief explanation based on your experimental observations