How Long Does It Take to Alleviate Discomfort? A Preliminary Study on Reducing Cybersickness in Novice Users

2025-08-01

AI Summary

This study investigates the long-term efficacy and contextual boundaries of locomotion tunneling for mitigating cybersickness in novice VR users. A five-day longitudinal experiment was conducted in VRChat, involving 24 VR-naïve participants who completed daily subjective cybersickness assessments and qualitative interviews. Results demonstrate significant symptom reduction by Day 4, confirming short-term adaptation to the technique; however, symptoms markedly rebounded on Day 5 following a virtual environment switch, revealing its sensitivity to environmental instability. This work presents the first systematic characterization of the temporal progression of cybersickness during continuous locomotion tunneling use among novices. It empirically delineates the technique’s effectiveness boundary—namely, its dependence on environmental consistency—and thereby provides evidence-based guidance for VR comfort design and identifies key optimization avenues for locomotion interfaces.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Computer Vision: Motion & Tracking
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Robustness and generalizability of Web mining methods
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Studies of user behavior, including longitudinal effects of personalized systems

Abstract

Cybersickness significantly impacts the user experience in VR applications. Locomotion tunneling is a widely adopted technique for mitigating cybersickness in susceptible users. However, there is a lack of research investigating the effects of prolonged use of locomotion tunneling among novice users. To fill this gap, we used VRChat as our experimental platform. We recruited 24 novice VR users, defined as participants with no prior experience using immersive virtual environments. We collected five days of data within a one-week period. The results indicated that participants exhibited significant mitigation to cybersickness by Day 4. However, a change in the VR scene on Day 5 led to a notable increase in cybersickness symptoms. Qualitative feedback revealed participant-perceived causes of cybersickness and suggested that the effectiveness of locomotion tunneling was limited in some scenarios. Finally, we discussed the limitations of the study and proposed directions for future research.

Problem

• Investigates cybersickness mitigation in novice VR users
• Examines prolonged effects of locomotion tunneling technique
• Assesses impact of scene changes on cybersickness symptoms

Innovation

• Used locomotion tunneling to reduce cybersickness
• Conducted five-day study with novice VR users
• Analyzed VR scene change impact on symptoms