Identifying Causes of and Solutions for Cybersickness in Immersive Technology: Reformulation of a Research and Development Agenda

Abstract

Immersive technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, initially failed to live up to expectations, but have improved greatly, with many new head-worn displays and associated applications being released over the past few years. Unfortunately, ‘cybersickness’ remains as a common user problem that must be overcome if mass adoption is to be realized. This article evaluates the state of research on this problem, identifies challenges that must be addressed, and formulates an updated cybersickness research and development (R&D) agenda. The new agenda recommends prioritizing creation of powerful, lightweight, and untethered head-worn displays, reduction of visual latencies, standardization of symptom and aftereffect measurement, development of improved countermeasures, and improved understanding of the magnitude of the problem and its implications for job performance. Some of these priorities are unresolved problems from the original agenda which should get increased attention now that immersive technologies are proliferating widely. If the resulting R&D agenda is carefully executed, it should render cybersickness a challenge of the past and accelerate mass adoption of immersive technologies to enhance training, performance, and recreation.