Analysis on Mitigation of Visually Induced Motion Sickness by Applying Dynamical Blurring on a User's Retina

Visually induced motion sickness (MS) experienced in a 3D immersive virtual environment (VE) limits the widespread use of virtual reality (VR). This paper studies the effects of a saliency detection-based approach on the reduction of MS when the display on a user's retina is dynamic blurred. In the experiment, forty participants were exposed to a VR experience under a control condition without applying dynamic blurring, and an experimental condition applying dynamic blurring. The experimental results show that the participants under the experimental condition report a statistically significant reduction in the severity of MS symptoms on average during the VR experience compared to those under the control condition, which demonstrates that the proposed approach may alleviate visually induced MS in VR and enable users to remain in a VE for a longer period of time.