Moving Worlds: A Cure for

Virtual Reality Motion

Sickness

Chris Young
River Hill High School
Intern/Mentor GT
Sage Jesse, Human Factors Engineer
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
 Research Question
Is the manipulation of the artificial horizon in
regards to user movement the most efficient
way of preventing motion sickness in Virtual
Reality?
 Purpose
The purpose of this research is to help prevent
motion sickness when using Virtual Reality
headsets in moving vehicles.
This is a problem for many users even when
simply walking around using a VR headset.
This problem is worse in situations where the VR
headset is in a moving vehicle.
This problem is compounded by viewing an image
in a VR headset coming from an independent
moving vehicle.
 Hypothesis
If the artificial horizon of a virtual environment is
adjusted dynamically as the program is
updating, then the effect of motion sickness can
be reduced because of how the environment is
dynamically adjusted based on the movement of
the vehicle and the user.
 Background
Simulator sickness has always been a problem
when using virtual reality headsets, especially in
moving vehicles.1
Previous attempts at an artificial horizon have
been made, through commercial2 and
government research3.
Despite these attempts, there still is not a
consensus on if it is the most effective way of
preventing motion sickness3.

1. Krueger, Wesley W O. System and Method for Measuring and Minimizing the Effects of Vertigo, Motion Sickness,
Motion Intolerance, And/or Spatial Disorientation. Wesley W O Krueger, assignee. Patent US8690750 B2. 14 May
2010. Print.
2. Gray, Richard. "The End of Air Sickness? Virtual Reality Headsets Could Prevent Nausea on Bumpy Flights and
Even Tackle Jet Lag." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 22 Apr. 2015. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.
3. "Mal de debarquement, motion sickness and the effect of an artificial horizon. National Center for Biotechnology
Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2014. Web. 10 Oct. 2016.
 Operational Definitions
Artificial Horizon: What you see in the
background that is created at the edge of the
program.
Simulator Sickness: A form of motion sickness
that is caused by using motion simulators or
head mounted devices.
Virtual Reality Headset: A display, usually head-
mounted, that displays a simulated image to the
user.
 Methods
The method that is being used to do this is
based on correction of vertical movement by the
end user and the platform.
The objects will be dynamically adjusted based
on the movement of vehicle: Example: When the
vehicle moves up in altitude, the objects in the
area moves down until the altitude changes
stabilize and when the altitude decreases the
objects will move up until the altitude stabilizes
again.
Blue line represents the artificial horizon.
 Discussion
My approach to solving the problem at this point
is mainly doing variations on trial and error,
testing the program, making note of what went
right or what went wrong, making modification
to those programs and repeating that tasks.
I hit a large roadblock with streaming data from
the phone which I am collecting data from to the
computer, where the software at my workplace
would block the software needed to stream the
data.
 Results
The project involves integration of multiple
digital systems as well as development of
custom software. Good progress has been made
and research work is ongoing.
Collection of past published research on the
topic is complete.
An initial prototype of an artificial horizon that
senses the position of the person using a VR
headset has been developed and is being
tested.
Artificial Horizon Prototype
Unity3D running on an Apple
Macbook Pro

Motion is detected by the

accelerometer in the
Samsung Galaxy S5 Android
phone data from the phone
is sent to the Macbook

The position of the artificial

horizon (blue line) is
calculated using the
accelerometer data and is
displayed on the Macbook
and the Android phone

Android phone could serve

as the VR display
Examples of the System Running
Android phone is level and not
moving. The artificial horizon is
fixed in one position. The effects
of gravity on the accelerometer
are removed in the software
developed for this project.

The Android phone is moved up,

which makes the artificial horizon
move down. This is the first step for
preventing motion sickness it
counters motion experienced by the
VR headset user.
 Development Environment
Used for my Research
Unity3D was used
to develop the
visualizations for
the project

Flexible, multi-
platform system
capable of
working with
computers and
handheld devices

Research involved integrating Android phone with Unity3D

Required integration of the Java Development Kit for Android and the
Android Development Kit into Unity3D

Custom code written using C# programming language

 Conclusion
This project is challenging:
Research on the topic needed to be completed before
the system development could begin
The project required development of new software,
which required me to learn a new programming
language, C#
To be able to sense motion and provide a VR display it
was necessary to integrate a Samsung Android phone
with both a Macbook Pro and a Windows 7 PC

Future direction
Better methods of generating the artificial horizon are
being tested
Need to get motion data from a moving vehicle to test
the ability of the code to accurately generate an
artificial horizon
 Citations
Artificial Horizon. Digital image. Avionics. Softforge, n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2017.

Becker, Jackie. Mitigating Visually-Induced Motion Sickness in Virtual Reality?

(n.d.): n. pag. Stanford University. Stanford University. Web. 23 Dec. 2016.

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June 2016. Web. 3 Oct. 2016.
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 Citations
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