Effects of Field-of-View Restriction and Peripheral Teleportation on Path Integration during Virtual Locomotion

Most software-based cybersickness mitigation techniques, such as field-of-view (FOV) restrictors and rest frames, alter visual content and peripheral optical flow, often negatively affecting various locomotion quality factors. Path integration, a critical component of spatial updating, relies on optical flow during virtual locomotion and may therefore be particularly affected by these techniques. Despite a substantial body of work evaluating cybersickness mitigation methods, relatively few studies have examined their effects on spatial updating or path integration. Moreover, prior studies on spatial updating have not yielded conclusive results, despite theoretical predictions from the perception literature. In this work, we conducted a preregistered experiment with 48 participants to compare the effects of two mitigation techniques, the dynamic FOV restrictor and peripheral teleportation, on path integration, relative to an unrestricted control condition. By minimizing potential confounding factors identified in previous work, we found that participants made significantly larger homing errors with the FOV restrictor than in the control condition, whereas performance with peripheral teleportation did not differ significantly from either of the other conditions. These findings provide direct evidence that FOV restriction impairs path integration, while the impact of peripheral teleportation remains inconclusive. Our results further highlight the trade-off between mitigation effectiveness and spatial updating, providing VR designers with deeper context for selecting mitigation techniques.