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Related Experiment Videos

Expanding and contracting optical flow patterns and simulator sickness.

Andrea Bubka1, Frederick Bonato, Stephen Palmisano

  • 1Department of Psychology, Saint Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ 07306, USA.

Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine
|May 9, 2007
PubMed
Summary
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Simulator sickness (SS) was higher when participants viewed expanding visual patterns compared to contracting ones. This suggests that the brain

Area of Science:

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Virtual Reality
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Sensory conflict, arising from visual-sensory mismatches, is a potential cause of simulator sickness (SS).
  • This study investigated the impact of optical flow patterns on SS, hypothesizing that expanding patterns would induce more SS than contracting patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To compare the levels of simulator sickness induced by expanding versus contracting optical flow patterns.
  • To determine if visual-sensory conflict influences the severity of simulator sickness symptoms.

Main Methods:

  • Sixteen participants were exposed to either an expanding or contracting pattern of blue squares for 5 minutes.
  • The Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) was administered before and after each condition to measure SS symptoms.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Total SSQ scores and sub-scores for nausea, oculomotor, and disorientation were analyzed.

    • Main Results:

    • Participants reported significantly higher total SSQ scores in the expanding pattern condition (mean=28) compared to the contracting pattern condition (mean=17).
    • Nausea and oculomotor sub-scores were also elevated in the expanding pattern condition, indicating greater symptom severity.

    Conclusions:

    • The findings support the hypothesis that expanding optical flow patterns lead to greater simulator sickness.
    • Differences in SS may stem from the central nervous system's learned expectancies for sensory inputs during forward self-motion (expanding flow) versus backward motion (contracting flow).
    • Reduced neural expectancy for contracting flow patterns may result in less sensory conflict and lower SS incidence.