Can We Predict Susceptibility to Cybersickness?

Abstract

This study investigated whether individual differences in postural stability/activity can be used to predict who will become sick when exposed to head-mounted display (HMD) based virtual reality (VR). We found that participants who reported feeling sick after at least one exposure to VR displayed different postural activity than those who remained well. Importantly these differences were present in their sway data before they even donned the HMD. These results are inline with the postural instability theory of motion sickness and suggest that we can identify individuals who are more susceptible HMD-based cybersickness based on their spontaneous postural sway.