Abstract:

Advances in computing technology in the 21st century have enabled the rapid development of virtual reality (VR) technology, primarily through powerful and readily available hardware. As a result, virtual reality has entered a number of areas, far from dominating only the industrial sector, where it has long been used. It can now be found in the fields of industrial engineering, education, medicine, sports, construction and, above all, the gaming industry. In addition to the standard approach for standardized procedures education, it is increasingly used as a form of project presentation, soft skills education, etc.

On the other hand, with the growing interest in VR, there are an increasing number of reported adverse effects that arise during its use. One representative of these effects is called VR sickness or virtual reality sickness. The purpose of investigating VR sickness is to identify problematic moments and possible shared tendencies for maximum prevention of these aspects when implementing VR education, regardless of the relevant field.

The first sickness belonging to this group is called motion sickness and occurs after the vestibular apparatus, or ear, perceives different movements and signals than visual perception. This phenomenon is also expressed by the sensory conflict theory, which describes that motion sickness arising during the use of virtual reality is precisely due to mismatched signals between the vestibular system and the visual system. Symptoms of this disease are manifested by head and eye pain, disorientation, sweating, nausea, vomiting or dizziness. Cyber sickness, is one of the other virtual illnesses that occur when the user does not move around in the environment but receives a convincing sense of their own movement through moving visual objects. It is a visually induced motion sickness caused by the user's immersion in a computer-generated virtual world. Another form of VR sickness is simulator sickness, which is nausea associated with interaction in a simulated environment. It is most often caused by discrepancies between simulated motion and expected motion. This problem often occurs in users training on, for example, flight simulators and is associated with kinetosis. All these described types of illnesses that occur during the use of virtual reality are referred to by the term VR sickness, regardless of the specific cause of these illnesses.

In recent years, a number of authors have been working with tools predicting the severity of VR sickness, in addition to experimentally identifying and evaluating VR sickness symptoms. This presentation will introduce aspects of VR sickness per se, using quite specific examples of applications, and will also present partial results from a study aimed at investigating the impact of three selected applications, quite specifically applications using problematic aspects such as flickering lights, walking at heights and large numbers of moving objects. In the actual measurement, the stress level was investigated using measuring sensors. An initial questionnaire and SSQ were used to identify and assess the influence of physiological factors and to assess the user experience itself. The results can serve as a basis for predictive tools for assessing VR environments or as a basis for developing more user-friendly VR applications.

Keywords:

VR sickness, virtual reality, motion sickness, VR environment.