Software techniques for improving head mounted displays to create comfortable user experiences in virtual reality

Budhiraja, Pulkit

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89045 Copy

Description

Title

Software techniques for improving head mounted displays to create comfortable user experiences in virtual reality

Author(s)

Budhiraja, Pulkit

Issue Date

2015-12-04

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Forsyth, David

Department of Study

Computer Science

Discipline

Computer Science

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• Virtual Reality (VR)
• Augmented Virtuality
• Mixed Reality (MR)
• Head Mounted Display (HMD)
• User Experience
• User Experience in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) allow users to experience Virtual Reality (VR) with a great level of immersion. Advancements in hardware technologies have led to a reduction in cost of producing good quality VR HMDs bringing them out from research labs to consumer markets. However, the current generation of HMDs suffer from a few fundamental problems that can deter their widespread adoption. For this thesis, we explored two techniques to overcome some of the challenges of experiencing VR when using HMDs. When experiencing VR with HMDs strapped to your head, even simple physical tasks like drinking a beverage can be difficult and awkward. We explored mixed reality renderings that selectively incorporate the physical world into the virtual world for interactions with physical objects. We conducted a user study comparing four rendering techniques that balance immersion in the virtual world with ease of interaction with the physical world. Users of VR systems often experience vection, the perception of self-motion in the absence of any physical movement. While vection helps to improve presence in VR, it often leads to a form of motion sickness called cybersickness. Prior work has discovered that changing vection (changing the perceived speed or moving direction) causes more severe cybersickness than steady vection (walking at a constant speed or in a constant direction). Based on this idea, we tried to reduce cybersickness caused by character movements in a First Person Shooter (FPS) game in VR. We propose Rotation Blurring (RB), uniformly blurring the screen during rotational movements to reduce cybersickness. We performed a user study to evaluate the impact of RB in reducing cybersickness and found that RB led to an overall reduction in sickness levels of the participants and delayed its onset. Participants who experienced acute levels of cybersickness benefited significantly from this technique.

Graduation Semester

2015-12

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89045

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2015 Pulkit Budhiraja

Owning Collections