Reducing Seasickness in Onboard Marine VR Use through Visual Compensation of Vessel Motion

We developed a virtual reality interface for cleaning sonar point cloud data. Experimentally, users performed better when using this VR interface compared to a mouse-and-keyboard with a desktop monitor. However, hydrographers often clean data aboard moving vessels, which can create motion sickness. Users of VR experience motion sickness as well, in the form of simulator sickness. Combining the two is a worst-case scenario for motion sickness. Advice for avoiding seasickness includes focusing on the horizon or objects in the distance, to keep your frame of reference external. We explored moving the surroundings in a virtual environment to match vessel motion, to assess whether it provides similar visual cues that could prevent seasickness. An informal evaluation in a seasickness-inducing simulator was conducted, and subjective preliminary results hint at such compensation's potential for reducing motion sickness, enabling the use of immersive VR technologies aboard underway ships.