A team of human-computer interaction specialists from the University of Glasgow and Canada have introduced a system aimed at addressing motion sickness in virtual reality (VR) experiences while also allowing users to perceive movement at varying speeds compared to real-life travel.

The system’s development comes as a response to the challenge posed by the disparity between physical motion sensed by the vestibular system and visual cues in VR, often leading to discomfort and nausea for some users.

The team’s paper, titled From Slow-Mo to Ludicrous Speed: Comfortably Manipulating the Perception of Linear In-Car VR Motion Through Vehicular Translational Gain and Attenuation, is set to be presented at the Association of Computing Machinery CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Currently, many VR systems mitigate motion sickness by aligning physical movements with virtual perceptions. However, this approach limits the range of experiences available to users, according to the researchers.

To explore alternatives, the team delved into the principles of translational gain and attenuation in VR, which involve modifying real-world movements into virtual perceptions without a strict one-to-one correspondence.

“VR technology is becoming more widely accepted and adopted for use in entertainment and productivity applications, but it can still make some people feel unwell, particularly in vehicles,” said Dr Graham Wilson, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science.

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“Exactly mapping real-world movements to virtual ones does a good job of reducing that feeling of sickness, but it limits the available types of experiences users can have, and reduces the range of feelings those experiences can create. It’s more difficult to make a movement-based game seem exciting if it’s constantly stopping and starting at traffic lights. Similarly, it’s hard to focus on writing an email if you’re feeling distracted by moving at motorway speeds.

In the study’s first phase, participants experienced a virtual urban journey while their perceived speed in VR was manipulated to be faster or slower than real-life travel. Participants reported no increase in discomfort during accelerated sections, while slower-than-real-life experiences led to feelings of safety and relaxation.

“Our participants reported that the accelerated sections of the study didn’t make them feel any more discomfort than the speed-matched sections, and that they didn’t feel the task was more challenging when they perceived they were going faster. They did report feeling more aware of motion sickness during the slower-than-real-life sections, but that they felt safer, more relaxed and more able to focus than they did during either the matched or accelerated velocity experiments,” said Dr Katharina Pöhlmann, of the KITE Research Institute in Canada, and the paper’s other lead author.