Rapid technological advancements and lowering prices of commercial Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) have led to an increased demand for modern VR applications, many of which, involve the travel and exploration of large virtual environments. Of multiple VR travel metaphors studied in the past, steering is one that is relatively intuitive and straightforward, giving users continuous control over their movement in immersive virtual environment (IVE) using physical devices like steering wheels, joysticks, etc. Despite the growing popularity of VR and its potential as a technology, it has yet to become widely adopted. Apart from the costs associated with the technology, a major hurdle in its widespread adoption is cybersickness. Cybersickness is the discomfort felt by users while experiencing virtual environments marked by symptoms such as nausea, eye strain, sweating, disorientation, dizziness, etc., and it usually occurs when users are exposed to visual motion stimulus while remaining stationary in the real world. With modern VR applications are increasingly incorporating travel, it is critical to investigate factors influencing cybersickness. Therefore, in the work presented, we developed a proof of concept immersive driving simulation platform to extensively study cybersickness in virtual reality.

(a) Real world car seat and HMD setup. (b) First person view of the participant sitting in the virtual car.

The simulator allows participants to either freely drive or sit in an autonomous vehicle as it freely moves around the city while embodying a self-avatar. A pilot study was conducted to test the validity of the simulator. Participants were given a search task where they had to look for landmarks presented on a virtual screen in the car. This task was added as we wanted participants to stay engaged in the simulation for as long as possible while experiencing as much optic flow as they could. Participants were instructed to explore the city and look for landmarks for a maximum of 30 minutes and were allowed to stop at anytime if they felt any discomfort.
The simulator is currently being used to conduct studies investigating multiple cybersickness factors.

(a) A screenshot of the city environment where the participant looked for landmarks. (b) City layout. Orange blocks represent tall buildings like skyscrapers, white block represent short buildings like apartments, complexes, etc., green block represent landmarks.

Further details on the simulator can be found in the published article below.

• Venkatakrishnan, R., Venkatakrishnan, R., Bhargava, A., Lucaites, K., Solini, H., Volonte, M., Robb, A.C., Lin, W.C., Lin, Y.X. and Babu, S.V. (2020, March). “Comparative Evaluation of the Effects of Motion Control on Cybersickness in Immersive Virtual Environments”, In 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR). IEEE. Atlanta, Georgia
• Venkatakrishnan, R., Bhargava, A., Venkatakrishnan, R., Lucaites, K., Volonte, M., Solini, H., Robb, A., Pagano, C., Babu, S. (2019, March) “Towards an Immersive Driving Simulator to Study Factors Related to Cybersickness”, accepted in the proceedings of IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR), Osaka, Japan