Real vs Simulated Foveated Rendering to Reduce Visual Discomfort in Virtual Reality
This addresses VR-induced motion sickness for users, but results are preliminary and incremental.
The study investigated real (eye-tracking) and simulated foveated blurring in VR to reduce visual discomfort, finding that nausea may improve for sensitive participants and task difficulty decreased with real foveated blurring.
In this paper, a study aimed at investigating the effects of real (using eye tracking to determine the fixation) and simulated foveated blurring in immersive Virtual Reality is presented. Techniques to reduce the optical flow perceived at the visual field margins are often employed in immersive Virtual Reality environments to alleviate discomfort experienced when the visual motion perception does not correspond to the body's acceleration. Although still preliminary, our results suggest that for participants with higher self-declared sensitivity to sickness, there might be an improvement for nausea when using blurring. The (perceived) difficulty of the task seems to improve when the real foveated method is used.