STUDY THE EFFECTS OF OLFACTORY STIMULATIONS IN-RELATED TO CYBERSICKNESS IN VIRTUAL REALITY

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cybersickness is common in Virtual Reality Environment (VRE), and it reduces the experience of presence. The symptoms of the Cybersickness include vomiting, eye strain, headache, sweating, nausea, vertigo, disorientation, dryness of mouth, fullness of stomach, ataxia, pallor. The manipulation of more senses improves the sense of presence and olfactory is a major concern. Olfactory can be categorized into several groups and the study of effects on those olfactory categories towards the reduction of Cybersickness benefit the users of VR system to experience the improved sense of presence. This study aims to identify the factors of multiple scents and their effects towards Cybersickness. This study is focused to analyze the effects of multiple scent in related to the Cybersickness and find the limitations in use of olfactory in the VR and impact of multiple olfactory scents when they used individual and combinational. Three categories: pleasant, unpleasant and neutral are used in this study and the neutral as the baseline. Neutral scent as the baseline the study shows that the VR application introduces noticeable cybersickness from very low SSQ from 3 to significantly to about 16. Qualitative analysis demonstrates the presence enhanced under the pleasant scent while the unpleasant scent results discomfort. Moderate sickness had resulted after exposing user to VR for 5 mins without scent, which is taken as the baseline in this study