Habituation of virtual simulation sickness: preliminary results

Immersion in a Virtual Environment (VE) is known to produce symptoms similar to those of motion sickness, termed ‘Virtual Simulation Sickness’ (VSS), and there is evidence that people adapt or, more accurately, habituate to the effects. We aimed to quantify this habituation by immersing 70 people on ten occasions each. Ten subjects were exposed every day, ten more every 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 days, by playing a PC racing game viewed through a non-tracked Head Mounted Display for 20 minutes. Participants rated motion sickness symptoms both before and after exposure, and also rated their level of malaise at one-minute intervals during this immersion period. All sets of participants reported significantly less VSS symptoms after completion of the ten trials. The habituation which occurred was of a similar nature in all of the participant groups, and thus it appears that the number of exposures is a more important factor than the time interval between them.