The Effects of False but Stable Heart Rate Feedback on Cybersickness and User Experience in Virtual Reality

Title of the Paper

The Effects of False but Stable Heart Rate Feedback on Cybersickness and User Experience in Virtual Reality

Paper Information

• Research Area: Virtual Reality (VR), physiological feedback, user experience, VR cybersickness
• Keywords: VR cybersickness, virtual reality, user experience, heart rate feedback, cognitive distraction, physiological state, immersion, virtual environment

Research Background and Problem

• What issues or challenges did the authors identify?

  • While virtual reality technology provides immersive experiences, its widespread adoption is hindered by user discomfort and physiological issues such as VR cybersickness.
  • VR cybersickness is often accompanied by increased and unstable heart rates, which may further impact user perception and physiological stability.
  • Current methods to alleviate VR cybersickness often involve reducing visual information, which may compromise content quality and immersion.

• Why is this problem important?

  • As virtual reality technology continues to develop, its application scenarios are expanding, making effective mitigation of cybersickness and enhancement of user experience crucial for promoting widespread adoption.
  • Physiological stability and comfort directly affect user experience, and improvements in this area can significantly enhance user acceptance of VR technology.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • Motivation:
    • Investigate how interventions targeting perceived heart rate can stabilize physiological states and alleviate VR cybersickness symptoms.
    • Explore the effects of non-visual feedback (e.g., auditory and tactile feedback) on VR immersion and user experience to avoid interference with visual content.
  • Related Work:
    • Existing methods to alleviate VR cybersickness focus on reducing visual motion information, but their effectiveness is limited and sensitive to individual differences.
    • False heart rate feedback has been shown to influence users' emotions and physiological states, but its application in mitigating VR cybersickness is a novel attempt.

Solution

• What methods or solutions did the authors propose?

  • Proposed "False but Stable Heart Rate Feedback" (FSH), which uses auditory (audio) and tactile (vibration) stimuli to deliver stable heart rate information to users to alleviate VR cybersickness.
  • Simulated stable heart rate feedback during VR experiences using non-visual modalities to avoid interference with visual content.

• What is innovative about this solution?

  • This is the first attempt to introduce "false heart rate feedback" into the field of VR cybersickness mitigation, while minimizing negative impacts on immersion through non-visual feedback.
  • Explores the compatibility of heart rate feedback with virtual environment content and investigates how feedback-content consistency affects user experience.

• What are the implementation steps and key technologies used?

  • Designed an experimental system based on the Meta Quest 2 device, using industrial heart rate sensors to record users' heart rates in real time.
  • Conducted two-stage experiments with auditory feedback (AF) and vibrotactile feedback (VF):
    1. Rollercoaster virtual environment (high compatibility with overall vibration and tactile feedback).
    2. Whale belly virtual environment (auditory feedback better aligned with the scene).
  • Data analysis involved questionnaires (e.g., Simulator Sickness Questionnaire, SSQ; I-group Presence Questionnaire, IPQ), real-time heart rate monitoring, and subjective experience rankings for statistical evaluation.

Research Findings

• What specific results were achieved?

  • Experiments confirmed that false stable heart rate feedback significantly reduces VR cybersickness symptoms (especially SSQ total scores and issues related to visual-vestibular mismatch).
  • Incompatible feedback (e.g., feedback forms mismatched with VR content) distracted attention to some extent but more significantly reduced cybersickness symptoms.
  • Compatible feedback forms (aligned with content) positively impacted immersion and enhanced user presence.

• How does it compare to existing solutions?

  • Does not require modifications to VR visual content, reducing interference with scenes.
  • Provides an innovative method using non-visual feedback, which can be integrated with scene design to enhance user immersion.

• What were the experimental or evaluation results?

  • Vibrotactile feedback was more effective in the Rollercoaster scene, with compatibility improving user experience, though its effect on cybersickness mitigation was slightly weaker.
  • Auditory heart rate feedback performed better in the Whale belly scene in terms of immersion while also effectively reducing cybersickness symptoms.
  • A strong negative correlation indicates a significant relationship between users' trust in feedback authenticity and the severity of cybersickness.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Current experiments did not significantly demonstrate actual heart rate stability changes, only observing physiological stabilization trends.
  • The false heart rate target value was fixed at 40 bpm, without considering individual differences; future work could adopt dynamic calculations to optimize effects.
  • Plans to explore adaptive personalized feedback systems based on real-time user responses, integrating wearable devices to monitor physiological states for further enhancement of user experience.

Conclusion

This paper proposes a method based on false heart rate feedback to alleviate cybersickness in virtual reality while maintaining user immersion and experience quality. The study demonstrates that the method is effective and has the potential to become a universal solution.