The impacts of animated-virtual actors' visual complexity and simulator sickness in virtual reality applications

This article discusses the effects of Animated Virtual Actors' (AVAs) visual complexity on Simulator Sickness (SS) in Virtual Reality (VR) applications. SS is one of the major disadvantages of VR simulations. Previous research has shown that visual complexity correlates with SS. Yet complex AVAs are increasingly used along with real-time graphics. Minimising SS for a VR application is thus beneficial. A series of VR simulations were created to teach second-year psychology students about the navigational capabilities of desert ants with different levels of AVA's visual complexity: flat, cartoon, or lifelike. We predicted that more complex AVAs would induce more SS. The results contradicted the predictions, with no significant differences in SS between groups as a function of the AVAs visual complexity. Moreover, our methods succeeded in low overall levels of SS in all the simulations. Possible explanations and our future research directions are discussed.