Comparing the onset of cybersickness using the Oculus Rift and two virtual roller coasters

The uptake of new interface technologies, such as the Oculus Rift, has generated renewed interest in virtual reality. However, the long-standing issue of cybersickness continues to impact on the general use of virtual reality devices, including head mounted displays. This paper contains a discussion of the growing interest, particularly within the gaming and business communities, of virtual reality technologies such as the Oculus Rift. A review of key issues related to cybersickness and their impact on the condition is reported. This includes a discussion of individual, device related and task dependent factors related to cybersickness. We also discuss the underlying theories that are used to explain these conditions and review a number of previous measures, both subjective and objective, that have been used to study cybersickness. We conclude this paper with the outcomes of a preliminary study using the Oculus Rift and comparing two different virtual roller coasters, each with different levels of fidelity. We find that the more realistic roller coaster with higher levels of visual flow has a significantly greater chance of inducing cybersickness