Virtual reality can be compelling and immersive, but the discrepancy between what you see and what your inner ear tells you is happening can provoke nausea 鈥� so-called cybersickness. AI that adapts VR environments to match the motion of the head more accurately can reduce this.
Most VR technology uses three degrees of movement. What you see changes when you tilt your head from side to side, up or down, or rotate it. But it doesn鈥檛 take into account translational movement of the head 鈥� that is, forwards and backwards as when walking, up and down as when crouching or standing up and side-to-side when side-stepping.
Walk around while watching a 3D video filmed from a static point and you may well succumb to cybersickness as the video won鈥檛 reflect all of that movement.
Advertisement
Researchers at a UK start-up called Kagenova have created a system that reacts to these additional degrees of freedom, and a study has shown that it reduces聽VR-induced nausea.
Existing 3D videos are filmed on static cameras that cover all directions from a fixed point. Viewers can use a special headset that tracks head movement to pan around inside that video as if they were actually inside the scene that was filmed.
Kagenova鈥檚 software uses AI to morph the images slightly to add movement from one spot to another. The software can adapt existing images so no new technology is required to record footage, and it can work with any VR headset.
Read more: Men who are bad at public speaking can get help from a virtual clone
To see how well the new approach worked, Elisa Ferr猫聽and her colleagues at Royal Holloway University of London ran tests to compare a standard VR set-up with one using Kagenova鈥檚 software.
The team had 25 people use HTC Vive headsets to view 3D footage of a beach using both set-ups. The participants reported 33 per cent less nausea when experiencing VR with the six degrees of freedom compared with just three.
Ferr猫 believes that this effect would be even larger in a more 鈥渃ompelling visual scenario鈥� that included more movement.聽鈥淭he brain is getting information which is much more coherent between visual and [inner ear] cues and this prevents sickness and conflict,鈥� she says.
Sylvia Xueni Pan at Goldsmiths, University of London, who wasn鈥檛 involved with the work, says that up to 80 per cent of people experience sickness when using VR. 鈥淵our ear, where the vestibular system is, is telling your body you鈥檙e not moving. Your eyes are telling your brain that you鈥檙e moving around. Your brain says, 鈥極kay, something is going wrong鈥� and the most logical explanation to your brain is that you鈥檝e eaten some toxic mushrooms and that it should vomit this out. That鈥檚 how cybersickness works,鈥� she says.
Reference:
