An examination of scene complexity's role in cybersickness

This study explored the effects of scene complexity factor on cybersickness. In this between-subjects experiment, 44 participants played the Pendulum Chair VR game, half with a simple scene and half with a complex scene. The complex scene featured higher optic flow (lower-level perceptual factor) and higher familiarity (higher level factor). Dependent variables were cybersickness and task performance. Results were unexpected in that cybersickness did not differ significantly between the simple and complex scenes. These results suggest that the impact of optic flow and familiarity on cybersickness may be affected by each other or other factors, making them unreliable predictors of cybersickness if considered alone. Both lower level and higher-level factors would benefit from further research to deduce the conditions under which they affect cybersickness. VR designers could consider that optic flow and familiarity alone are not reliable factors when predicting the cybersickness-inducing effects of a new environment.