cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Sim sickness related to VR driving simulation research

littledevilsisi
Honored Guest
Hi guys,

I´m a master student at the Univeristy for Applied Science in Heilbronn, Germany and currently I´m writing my thesis with the cooperation from Robert Bosch GmbH. My topic is about simulation sickness and more specific reducing the sickness while using a Virtual reality driving simulator.

I´m using Oculus Rift DK2 and Logitech driving wheel and pedals, but the chair is a normal office chair without any extras. The app is a driving simulation in real environment using BMW 7. The driving scenario is simple, you´re driving on the road in normal weather conditions. There isn't other vehicles except one but is not sufficient to put you in real driving situations. That I´m going to change soon 🙂

My thesis´s goal is to find out how to reduce to minimum or completely eliminate the side effect called simulation sickness. For that purpose I would like to invite you to fill in my quick questionnaire, use the link below. Thank you in advance 🙂

http://goo.gl/forms/naSJh8DF3D

If you have any question, please write me PM.

I´ll be glad to hear your oppinion about how you deal with that kind of sickness 🙂
8 REPLIES 8

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi littledevilsisi,

Although I no longer have a DK2 I did for almost a year, and I played Project Cars and Assetto Corsa extensively. Appart from the normal getting my VR legs which took me about two weeks of gradually upping the time.

I can give you two instances of when I felt sick while driving.

1. When coming up to a corner and I overshoot the breaking point and I know the corner is coming up too quick and I'm about to crash but not yet crashed.... the only way to describe the feeling is like you are falling... it actually makes me shout out arrrrggghhh...

2. The constant anticipation of inertia. when I throw myself through the corners and hit the breaks or accelerate away... I get a build up of nausea I think caused by the lack of movement being pressured on me. My wife tells me that I sway when I'm play on the rift but I don't notice it when I'm in there.

There was one instance of actually being sick when playing Project cars, but this was caused by a glitch which put me 100 feet in the air and spinning around... but that i'm sure is not what you are looking for lol 🙂

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Tim,

Supersjgod
Honored Guest
feelthree.com

this is the first vr chair i'll be backing.
they said it should be affordable too and you can build it part by part(don't have to order whole thing at once)

Anonymous
Not applicable
The main culprit in my VR experience with racing-sims has definitely been directly tied to proper performance of the head-tracking and/or FPS/Judder issues. Any time I played where the HT wasn't smooth, I felt a bit ill. Obviously, this is a well known issue with VR and remains one of the biggest challenges in making VR successful.

Most people that have tried the DK2 with racing games on my system were not accustomed to driving simulators and very quickly lost control of the virtual car causing a spin (Disorientation). In most cases, that was enough for them to stop playing immediately due to feeling ill.

Another - perhaps lesser known - cause of feeling ill is driving backwards. I'm not sure why this has such a strong effect but, it certainly seems to be significant for most people - myself included.

Another interesting aspect is one of Haptic Feedback. With more advanced simulation gear, we use powerful and precise direct-drive racing wheels, high-end pedals and shifters, tactile transducers driven by powerful amps, and even motion platforms in some cases. So long as the motion is not too extreme (greatly affecting head-tracking), these added effects seem to be beneficial in tying what we are seeing with what we "should be" feeling in RL. The right amount of haptic feedback can be extremely effective in tricking our mind in regard to what we are seeing in VR.

TroutDeep
Honored Guest
"deanogur" wrote:
Another - perhaps lesser known - cause of feeling ill is driving backwards. I'm not sure why this has such a strong effect but, it certainly seems to be significant for most people - myself included.


I second this with every fiber of my being/digestive tract.

Reversing is pretty much the only thing that immediately gives me sim sickness when driving. I usually close my eyes when I have to reverse, but if I forget or open my eyes too soon, then WHAM. Barf city. And I'm the mayor. :(((((

AntDX3162
Heroic Explorer
"littledevilsisi" wrote:
Hi guys,

I´m a master student at the Univeristy for Applied Science in Heilbronn, Germany and currently I´m writing my thesis with the cooperation from Robert Bosch GmbH. My topic is about simulation sickness and more specific reducing the sickness while using a Virtual reality driving simulator.

I´m using Oculus Rift DK2 and Logitech driving wheel and pedals, but the chair is a normal office chair without any extras. The app is a driving simulation in real environment using BMW 7. The driving scenario is simple, you´re driving on the road in normal weather conditions. There isn't other vehicles except one but is not sufficient to put you in real driving situations. That I´m going to change soon 🙂

My thesis´s goal is to find out how to reduce to minimum or completely eliminate the side effect called simulation sickness. For that purpose I would like to invite you to fill in my quick questionnaire, use the link below. Thank you in advance 🙂

http://goo.gl/forms/naSJh8DF3D

If you have any question, please write me PM.

I´ll be glad to hear your oppinion about how you deal with that kind of sickness 🙂



play project cars with at least a 980 Ti on a fanatec racing set

there's simulation sickness because probably the tracking of the app and/or your pc is bad

you are also probably racing using a computer chair instead of a fixed racing seat

what you are trying to figure out is what is the reason are the feelings of this dysfunction w/o knowing the dysfunction is due to the fact you are on the wrong hardware/software

if you play project cars with at least a 980 Ti on a fanatec racing set your simulation sickness would disappear
facebook.com/AntDX316

littledevilsisi
Honored Guest
Thanks to everyone for your responses 🙂

Happy New Year!

obzen
Expert Protege
"deanogur" wrote:
Another - perhaps lesser known - cause of feeling ill is driving backwards. I'm not sure why this has such a strong effect but, it certainly seems to be significant for most people - myself included.


Some people don't like riding trains backwards.

My guess is, there is some correlation between travel sickness, sea sickness, and VR sickness. I wonder if VR can help the other conditions as well. maybe your (or some other) research could quantify and test that in any way. The 'Making people sick' kind of research. Lovely.
DK1 FREAK...

PDG_SBiegun
Honored Guest
Happy new year, Littledevilsisi! I tried to fill out your survey form but Google said no 😞

I've done a bit of research into the topic of simulator sickness and how to prevent it. From what I have experienced, the level of immersion and the level at which we suspend our disbelief is entirely contingent upon our hardware. If you are using a simulation and your VR headset is locked at an abominably low FPS or resolution, you will have problems. I haven't had the luxury of using any driving platforms or motion controlled environments, but I would assume the same applies to those.

The biggest point to make is that if you never mention motion sickness or simulator sickness to the user prior to having them trying VR, they are far less likely to exhibit symptoms. One thing that we seem to forget - and I say this as a VR developer - is that simulator sickness is usually the developer's fault. Early simulations would immediately induce simulator sickness for me when they would include cinematic camera movements or camera effects. Bright colors and lights, depth of field, motion blur, head bob, and cinematic movement all immediately make me woozy. Any application of vertical movement is a big no-no for me as well. Interestingly, I've seen more and more simulations that include a virtual nose that is positioned between the user's eyes. That actually makes a lot of sense to me and I think it would be hilarious if virtual nose implementation is going to be a thing we come back to.

Of course, there are the other factors that influence simulator sickness. The user's eye-line relative to the camera's height, gender, race, and age are all factors.

I've always held the rule that you should never make a user go faster than 24 meters/s in VR, but I haven't used many driving sims. Do you think that would be true for applications you use? Have you found a "nausea speed limit?"