The effect of cybersickness on the affective appraisal of virtual environments

One application of virtual environments is to form an affective appraisal of an environment, such as a building before it is constructed. But the affective appraisal attributed to a real environment can differ from the affective appraisal of the simulated virtual environment. One virtual environment specific problem is that people can experience cybersickness by watching virtual scene movement. We hypothesize that people who experience cybersickness will affectively appraise a certain virtual environment differently from people who do not experience cybersickness. In order to test this, a virtual environment was created with the aid of a game level editor. Participants viewed a virtual tour through the environment with a superimposed camera oscillation with different amplitudes, on a 20 " computer screen. These amplitudes were subsequently tested as stimuli of cybersickness incidence. This yielded no significant result. Consequently a polygenic stimulus was implemented which did induce cybersickness and was mixed with an appraisal task. Results show that cybersickness significantly influences the affective appraisal of a virtual environment) 003. 0 , 30 (< = p N , which is mostly due to a decrease in pleasantness attributed to the environment. Detailed analysis and recommendations for future research have subsequently been given. 4 Preface I have always been an ardent videogame player, and was excited to find out the University of Utrecht was starting a center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation (AGS) in conjunction with TNO and the HKU. However, even after some delay in my study career, the thesis project came to early; the center was still in its preliminary buildup stage. Luckily at that moment I was doing an experimentation project at the university under Joske Houtkamp on the affective appraisal of virtual environments. This research is one of the objectives of AGS and consequently she was able to set me up with TNO to perform similar research there, which is this thesis project. Therefore my first thanks should go to Joske Houtkamp, who endured two consecutive projects with me and still remains friendly. Special praise should also go to my daily supervisor at TNO, Martijn van Emmerik, who was always available and willing to help me out, especially with my many questions on the statistical analysis. Further thanks go out to Jelte Bos and Lex Toet on their help with cybersickness and affective appraisal respectively. Additionally, this thesis wouldn't have been possible without my parents' patient and financial support, the support …