RoadVR: Mitigating the Effect of Vection and Sickness by Distortion of Pathways for In-Car Virtual Reality

We explore a method to reduce motion sickness and allow people to use virtual reality while moving in vehicles. We put forth a usage scenario where the target VR content is based on constant road navigation so that the actual motion can enhance the VR experience. The method starts with a virtual scene and objects around an infinitely straight road. The motion of the vehicle is sensed by the GPS and IMU module. The sensed motion is reflected in a way that the virtual scene is navigated according to the vehicle motion, and its pathways distorted such that the virtual motion has a near-identical optical flow pattern to the actual. This would align the user's visual and vestibular sense and reduce the effect of vection and motion sickness. We ran an pilot experiment to validate our approach, comparing the before and after sickness levels with the VR content (1) not aligned to the motion of the vehicle and (2) aligned by our method. Our preliminary results have shown the sickness was reduced significantly (but not eliminated to a negligible level yet) with our approach.