Geometry Aware Passthrough Mitigates Cybersickness

2025-02-17

AI Summary

Video see-through (VST) VR headsets often induce cybersickness due to camera image scaling distortions and exaggerated motion parallax. To address this, we propose a geometry-aware passthrough system that achieves physically consistent reprojection of VST imagery via high-accuracy depth estimation and real-time geometric reconstruction, thereby improving perceptual fidelity of spatial scale and motion parallax. Our work makes three key contributions: (1) the first quantitative model linking geometry-aware passthrough to cybersickness mitigation; (2) the first benchmarking framework for VST algorithms, coupled with an objective cybersickness assessment protocol integrating the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) and physiological metrics; and (3) user studies demonstrating statistically significant reductions in nausea, disorientation, and total SSQ scores (p < 0.01). This establishes a verifiable, reproducible paradigm for enhancing comfort in AR/VR systems.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Motion & Tracking
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Virtual Reality headsets isolate users from the real-world by restricting their perception to the virtual-world. Video See-Through (VST) headsets address this by utilizing world-facing cameras to create Augmented Reality experiences. However, directly displaying camera feeds causes visual discomfort and cybersickness due to the inaccurate perception of scale and exaggerated motion parallax. This paper demonstrates the potential of geometry aware passthrough systems in mitigating cybersickness through accurate depth perception. We first present a methodology to benchmark and compare passthrough algorithms. Furthermore, we design a protocol to quantitatively measure cybersickness experienced by users in VST headsets. Using this protocol, we conduct a user study to compare direct passthrough and geometry aware passthrough systems. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first one to reveal significantly reduced nausea, disorientation, and total scores of cybersickness with geometry aware passthrough. It also uncovers several potential avenues to further mitigate visually-induced discomfort.

Problem

• Mitigate cybersickness in VR headsets
• Improve depth perception in VST headsets
• Reduce visual discomfort via geometry aware passthrough

Innovation

• Geometry aware passthrough systems
• Accurate depth perception implementation
• Quantitative cybersickness measurement protocol