BalanceVR: balance training to increase tolerance to cybersickness in immersive virtual reality

Abstract Cybersickness (CS) is a serious usability problem in virtual reality (VR). Postural instability theory has emerged as one major hypothesis for the cause of CS. Based on such a hypothesis, we present two experiments to observe the trends in users’ trained balance ability with respect to their susceptibilities to CS. The first experiment (as a preliminary study) evaluated the effects of 2-week balance training under three different operational conditions: training in VR (VRT), training in non-immersive media with a 2D projection display (2DT), and VR exposure without any training (VRO; Baseline). The effect toward CS was tested not only in the training space but also in a different VR content to observe for any transfer effect. As results clearly indicated that the non-VR 2DT was ineffective in gaining any significant tolerance to CS, we conducted a follow-up second experiment with 1-week balance training, focusing on comparing only the VRT and VRO conditions. Overall, the experimental findings have shown, aside from the obvious improvement in balance performance itself, that accompanying balance training had the stronger effect of increasing tolerance to CS than mere exposure to VR. Furthermore, the tolerance to CS developed through VR balance training exhibited a transfer effect, that is, with reduced levels of CS in another VR content (not used during the training sessions).