The Influence of Gaming Experience and Optic Flow on Simulator Sickness: Insights from a Driving Simulator Study

Simulator sickness can increase dropout rates and bias participant behavior in driving simulator experiments. It has been suggested that participants experienced with simulator driving are less susceptible to simulator sickness. The authors hypothesized that gaming experience may likewise reduce the susceptibility to simulator sickness. It was also proposed to decrease optic flow in the virtual driving scene to reduce simulator sickness. The preceding assumptions were investigated in a driving simulator experiment with N=26 participants. Results indicate that gamers are less susceptible to simulator sickness compared to non-gamers. Regarding optic flow, only descriptive tendencies could be observed in terms of lower simulator sickness with reduced optic flow. Future studies should be aimed at investigating how gaming experience can be used in order to reduce simulator sickness in driving simulators. The effect of optic flow should be reconsidered in a larger experiment.