Effects of virtual reality technology locomotive multi-sensory motion stimuli on a user simulator sickness and controller intuitiveness during a navigation task

Simulator sickness of users and intuitiveness of controllers contribute to a user's acceptance or rejection of a virtual reality (VR) experiment. However, few studies investigated the effects of different VR locomotive controllers and potential gender effects. Hence, we investigated the effects of different motion stimuli combinations and a user's range of neck motion via two experiments in a gender balanced group. Thus, through separate sessions, young adult participants utilized four common VR locomotive controllers (TiltChair, omni-directional treadmill, VRNChair and joystick) with a head-mounted display to execute the same VR navigation task as we measured simulator sickness by the simulator sickness questionnaire and postural sway. Also, we measured intuitiveness through total traversed distance and execution times. As expected, simulator sickness severity increased with VR exposure time. However, participants had significantly shorter traversed distances and execution times when they utilized the TiltChair and joystick respectively; while, participants had significantly longer execution times when they utilized the omni-directional treadmill. Additionally, female participants easily utilized the TiltChair and omni-directional treadmill because they traversed shorter distances than male participants. Therefore, a VR locomotive controller selection should be based on a target population's characteristics to reduce user simulator sickness and to increase controller intuitiveness.