Effect of Synchronized Vehicle Motion to Mitigating Sickness for On-Vehicle VR During Active Task Performance

In recent years, the integration of virtual reality (VR) into vehicular environments has opened new possibilities for entertainment, education, and productive activities during transit. However, motion and cybersickness, exacerbated by sensory mismatches between visual and vestibular systems, remains a significant challenge. To mitigate such a difficulty, the idea of mixing in vehicle motion information into the VR content (as a way to reduce the sensory mismatch) has been suggested. While the suggested technique has shown promising results, it has been tested mainly for passive viewing situations only. This study explores the effectiveness of on-vehicle VR content with synchronized vehicle motion information during “active” task performance. Three experimental conditions were compared, while carrying out an interactive task, viewing: 1) the on-vehicle VR content as is, 2) VR content with overlaid (graphical) particles moving in synchrony to vehicle motion, 3) VR content with overlaid video of a car mounted camera. The first condition served as the control condition (“Baseline”), while the latter two represented different forms of mixing in synchronized vehicle motion into the VR scene for sickness reduction (“Particle” and “Camera” respectively). Results indicated that the Particle condition significantly reduced both cybersickness and task completion time compared to Baseline and Camera conditions. However, contrary to initial expectations, the Camera condition did not show any significant sickness reduction effect. A post analysis revealed that the high frequency/amplitude and insufficient content frame rate of the motion presentation by the vehicle mounted camera wrote off the effect of the synchronized motion and possibly exacerbated the extent of the sickness. This study provides insights into designing VR environments that optimize user comfort and performance in moving vehicles, emphasizing the importance of simplified, consistent visual motion cues.