Data from "Come fly with me" VR study on Reducing Cybersickness with Foveated Depth of Field Blur across varying Locomotion Control conditions

Abstract

Cybersickness, which is characterized by symptoms such as general discomfort, headaches, and nausea, is a common issue in virtual reality (VR) that negatively impacts the accessibility and user experience. Foveated depth of field blur rendering (FovDof) uses the perceptual limitations of the human eye to mitigate cybersickness. However, the external validity of this countermeasure is limited. To increase the external validity, an interactive task is introduced. In addition, the study introduces two levels of locomotion control (3 vs. 6DoF). Along with subjective measures focusing on cybersickness symptoms (SSQ/MISC), objective performance measures (eye tracker sampling frequency) were analyzed. Based on valid data from 65 participants, the analysis revealed significant main effects for both rendering and locomotion control factors for the objective measures. However, the effects of the two types of measures are in opposite directions. For the subjective measures, the combination of full rendering and 3DoF locomotion control resulted in the highest cybersickness values. These results suggest that the applicability of FovDof is universal, even when a task is included, and can be implemented using other eye tracking software and hardware. However, limited customizability for VR headsets limits the applicability. In cases where full locomotion control is provided to the user, the FovDof algorithm does not have additional mitigating effects.