Focused Area of Movement as an Effective Rest Frame for Reducing VR Sickness

Sickness is one major obstacle in proliferating the use of virtual reality. The sensory mismatch between the visual and vestibular senses about user motion is attributed as the main cause. One effective method has been the use of rest frame such as the virtual nose, which is the reference object that remain fixed in relation to the real world and do not move as the user moves around. We propose the “Focused Area of Movement” as an alternative rest frame, which is a small moving area within the screen space, where there is little relative motion (or optical flow) with respect to the user - thereby causing less sensory conflict, but with naturally directed attention and less content intrusion. Our pilot experiment has shown its potential in significantly reducing the level of VR sickness without much degradation in the sense of presence/immersion.