Cybersickness affects the affective appraisal of a virtual environment
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It is well known that navigation through VEs may have a negative effect on the physical well-being of observers, by inducing cybersickness. In this study we investigated if cybersickness interacts with the appraisal of a simulated environment. Using the Half-Life 2 level editor we created a VE representing fictitious rural and urban areas. This environment was displayed by means of back projection onto a semi-transparent (frosted) screen, and was viewed from 1 m distance. For a 17 minute period, 32 subjects passively watched a walk through this VE, where the visual scene continuously performed a quasi-sinusoidally frontal roll oscillation. Immediately after the exposure, the remaining subjects filled out an appraisal questionnaire rating the environment on 4 dimensions: arousing-sleepy, pleasant-unpleasant, exciting-gloomy and distressing-relaxing.<br />Two subjects were unable to complete the experiment due to severe nausea. When we divide our subject population into two categories: non-sick when the physical well-being ratings were below 2 (19 subjects), and sick for ratings of 2 or higher<br />(11 subjects), we find a statistical significant effect of sickness on appraisal (p<0.003). a post hoc test contributes this to the arousing-sleepy dimension (p<0.05) and the pleasant-unpleasant dimension (p<0.06): sick subjects typically<br />rate more sleepiness and unpleasantness than non-sick subjects. We conclude that cybersickness may be a confounding factor in the affective appraisal of VEs.<br />Keywords: Cybersickness, camera oscillation, affective appraisal, environmental aesthetics, virtual environments, game level editors.
TNO Identifier
19165
Source title
The First International Symposium on Visually Induced Motion Sickness, Fatigue, and Photosensitive Epileptic Seizures (VIMS2007). 10 - 11 December 2007. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
Pages
170 - 177
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