Previous studies showed that natural walking reduces the susceptibility to VR sickness. However, many users still experience VR sickness when wearing VR headsets that allow free walking in room-scale spaces. This paper studies VR sickness and postural instability while the user walks in an immersive virtual environment using an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset and a full-body motion capture system. The experiment induced VR sickness by gradually increasing the translation gain beyond the user's detection threshold. A between-group comparison between participants with and without VR sickness symptoms found some significant differences in postural stability but found none on gait patterns during the walking. In the EEG analysis, the group with VR sickness showed a reduction of alpha power, a phenomenon previously linked to a higher workload and efforts to maintain postural control. In contrast, the group without VR sickness exhibited brain activities linked to fine cognitive-motor control. The EEG result provides new insights into the postural instability theory: participants with VR sickness could maintain their postural stability at the cost of a higher cognitive workload. Our result also indicates that the analysis of lower-frequency power could complement behavioural data for continuous VR sickness detection in both stationary and mobile VR setups.
翻译:先前的研究显示,自然步行会降低对VR疾病的易感性。然而,许多使用者在穿戴允许在室内空间自由行走的VR头盔时仍会经历VR疾病。本文研究VR疾病和后院不稳定性,而用户则使用电脑图耳机和全体运动捕捉系统在隐性虚拟环境中行走。实验通过逐渐增加用户检测阈值以外的翻译收益,导致VR疾病。对VR疾病症状的参与者之间的群体比较发现,后院稳定性存在一些重大差异,但在行走过程中的动作模式方面没有发现任何差异。在EEEG分析中,VR疾病群体显示,甲型力量减弱,这种现象以前与工作量增加和维持后院控制的努力有关。相比之下,没有VR疾病的群体展示了与精细的认知运动控制有关的脑活动。EG的结果为后院不稳定理论提供了新的见解:VR疾病参与者可以以更高的认知工作量维持其后院稳定性。我们的结果还表明,低频力的分析可以补充连续VR型疾病检测站和VRs的动作数据。