Date of Award

12-2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Legacy Department

Human Factors Psychology

Committee Chair/Advisor

Muth, Eric R

Committee Member

Tyrrell , Richard

Committee Member

Pagano , Chris

Committee Member

Hoover , Adam

Abstract

The relationship between the occurrence of simulator sickness (SS) and the several characteristics of latency (i.e., added latency, amplitude of latency, and frequency of latency) in a helmet-mounted display (HMD) were explored in this study. The experience of SS while using an HMD has often been attributed to system latency. These findings are typical in research where HMDs with head trackers are used. The current study explored the effects of 200 ms added constant latency, latency varying at 0.2 Hz with a constant 100 ms amplitude, and latency varying at 0.2 Hz with a 20-100 ms varying amplitude on the experience of SS in HMDs while viewing a real world scene. Participants wore a HMD and made multiple head movements while performing an object location task in the laboratory. Data sets were collected from 120 participants. Eleven participants withdrew prior to completion of the experiment. Results revealed a significant difference between SSQ peak scores in the presence of varying amplitude of latency and fixed amplitude of latency. In addition, results revealed a significant difference between SSQ peak scores in the presence of 0.2 Hz frequency of latency and 0 Hz frequency of latency. Significantly more participants dropped out before completing the experiment due to condition membership, with the varying amplitude of latency condition having 7 out of the 11 drop outs in the study. The results of this study indicated that the elimination of varying amplitude of latency may lessen the experience of SS in HMDs. HMD systems should be developed in a way that minimizes sensor error, which was found by Wu et al. (2011) to be responsible for varying amplitude and frequency of latency. Further research should be performed to further explore the separate and combined effects of frequency and amplitude of latency in an HMD and the experience of SS.

Included in

Psychology Commons

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