Simulator sickness and presence in a high FOV virtual environment

As part of a process to identify potential simulator sickness issues with our NAVE (Non-expensive Automatic Virtual Environment), a new virtual environment display system developed at Georgia Tech, we have conducted a study to address the experience of simulator sickness and presence under different display and user role configurations. The NAVE has three 8 feet by 6 feet screens. The two side screens are positioned at 120 degree angles to the central screen to give a three-sided display area that is sixteen feet wide and approximately seven feet deep. This allows for two different field of view configurations, a one-screen set-up that provides a 60 degree FOV, and a three-screen set-up that provides a 180 degree FOV. Users are seated in front of the center screen and navigate with a joystick. The virtual environment used in this study could be displayed in the NAVE stereo-visually or in mono, providing us with a second experimental factor, display fidelity. Lastly, we were interested in determining whether or not the user's role in the environment would affect their experience of simulator sickness and presence as suggested by Stanney and Kennedy (1997). This provided us with our third factor user role, with its two levels, driver and passenger.