Effects of frame rate on vection and postural sway

The quality of stereoscopic 3D cinematic content is a major determinant for user experience in immersive cinema in both traditional theatres and cinematic virtual reality. One of the most important parameters is the frame rate of the content which has historically been 24 frames per second for movies, but higher frame rates are being considered for cinema and are standard for virtual reality. A typical behavioural response to immersive stereoscopic 3D content is vection, the visually-induced perception of self-motion elicited by moving scenes. In this work we investigated how participants' vection varied with simulated virtual camera speed, frame rate, and motion blur produced by the virtual camera's exposure, while viewing depictions of movement through a realistic virtual environment. We also investigated how their postural sway varied with these parameters and how sway covaried with levels of perceived self-motion. Results show that while average perceived vection significantly increased with 3D content frame rate and motion speed, motion blur had no significant effect on perceived vection. We also found that levels of postural sway induced by vection correlated positively with subjective ratings.