Cybersickness in virtual reality: key factors and sensory integration
The article provides an overview of cybersickness, also known as a simulator sickness. Phenomenology of cybersickness often accompanies the use of virtual or augmented reality systems. The factors that are supposedly contributing to the emergence of cybersickness, including the technical parameters of virtual reality systems, the individual characteristics of particular users of such systems and the specifics of the tasks they perform, including the phenomena of presence and multitasking, are analyzed. As a promising direction in the search for one of the probable root causes of cybersickness, the issues related to the psychological mechanisms of the integration of multisensor information are discussed in detail. This research area has been actively developing over the past two decades and is associated with the appearance (including through the use of the virtual reality methodology) of sensory illusions (visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic) and with the registration of human behavior in situations when the body image seems to be changed. The corresponding phenomena have already received the metaphorical names “out-of-body experience”, or “rubber arm”. Specialists in cognitive sciences, anatomy and neurophysiology of the brain, neuropsychology, philosophy, cyberpsychology, computer science in general and computer graphics in particular, as well as medical prosthetics are interested in solving relevant research problems. Based on available sources in which attempts are made to fix the center of multisensory integration, suggestions are made about its localization in the brain. Promising measures aimed at reducing the likelihood of cybersickness are being considered.