ABSTRACT

Researchers at the Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab of Columbia University found that the effects of VR sickness were reduced by controlling the range of visibility, based on how much the user is moving around in the virtual world (Evarts, 2016). They used a mask in front of the camera, to provide a view similar to looking through a hole in a piece of card (Figure 13.1). When the user moved around, the mask was scaled down so that the viewing hole grew smaller. When the user stopped moving, the hole returned to its original scale and, as a result, the field of view restored. You may have seen a technique very similar to this used in the Google Earth VR application (available free on Steam) where the view is masked out whenever you fly around. Google do not use so much of a transition as we do in this section, but the effect of reducing the field of view is the same.