Fighting virtual reality sickness
Columbia Engineering Professor Steven K. Feiner and Ajoy Fernandes MS'16 have developed a method of combating virtual reality (VR) sickness that can be applied to consumer head-worn VR displays, such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR, and Google Cardboard. Their approach dynamically, yet subtly, changes the user's field of view (FOV) in response to visually perceived motion, as the user virtually traverses an environment while remaining physically stationary. The study showed that by strategically and automatically manipulating FOV, the degree of VR sickness experienced by participants can be significantly reduced. Furthermore, the researchers accomplished this without decreasing the participants' sense of presence in the virtual environment, and without the majority of the participants even being aware of the intervention.