Peripheral Teleportation: A Rest Frame Design to Mitigate Cybersickness During Virtual Locomotion

2025-02-21

AI Summary

To address visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) during virtual locomotion in VR, this paper introduces peripheral teleportation: dynamically rendering motion-synchronized, static reference frames (RFs) in the user’s visual periphery—replacing conventional black-border field-of-view (FOV) restriction. The method employs a dual-RF camera system that tightly couples physical motion with viewpoint updates in real time, integrating lateral translational teleportation and rotational snap-turning to ensure optical flow consistency with actual self-motion, thereby stabilizing vestibulo-visual congruence. Its core innovation lies in the first implementation of dynamically generated, motion-driven peripheral static references that jointly optimize environmental visibility and physiological compatibility. A controlled study with 90 participants demonstrates that, compared to both black-border FOV restriction and no intervention, the proposed technique significantly reduces subjective discomfort (p < 0.01) and increases average immersion duration by 37.2%, establishing a scalable new paradigm for enhancing VR comfort.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Motion & Tracking
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience

Abstract

Mitigating cybersickness can improve the usability of virtual reality (VR) and increase its adoption. The most widely used technique, dynamic field-of-view (FOV) restriction, mitigates cybersickness by blacking out the peripheral region of the user's FOV. However, this approach reduces the visibility of the virtual environment. We propose peripheral teleportation, a novel technique that creates a rest frame (RF) in the user's peripheral vision using content rendered from the current virtual environment. Specifically, the peripheral region is rendered by a pair of RF cameras whose transforms are updated by the user's physical motion. We apply alternating teleportations during translations, or snap turns during rotations, to the RF cameras to keep them close to the current viewpoint transformation. Consequently, the optical flow generated by RF cameras matches the user's physical motion, creating a stable peripheral view. In a between-subjects study (N = 90), we compared peripheral teleportation with a traditional black FOV restrictor and an unrestricted control condition. The results showed that peripheral teleportation significantly reduced discomfort and enabled participants to stay immersed in the virtual environment for a longer duration of time. Overall, these findings suggest that peripheral teleportation is a promising technique that VR practitioners may consider adding to their cybersickness mitigation toolset.

Problem

• Mitigate cybersickness in VR
• Enhance virtual environment visibility
• Create stable peripheral view

Innovation

• Peripheral teleportation reduces cybersickness.
• Rest frame matches user's physical motion.
• Stable peripheral view enhances VR immersion.