Project: Simulator sickness

In collaboration with Nokia Research we investigated if spatial sound causes effects of simulator sickness (or motion sickness (there is a lengthy discussion about whether simulator sickness is a form of motion sickness. Therefore we will refer to what made people sick during our experiments as "simulator sickness")).

We started off with a recording made with an improvised binaural recording device (the head) mounted on a manipulated record player that allowed seamless speed manipulation. We compared the binaural recording to a stereo recording (made with a Zoom H4) and found it worth to take a closer look at.

Click "read more" to listen to some sound demos.

At Nokia Research in Helsinki we rebuilt the initial setup but used 5 Genelec 8240A
speakers emitting various sounds (music, human voices, environmental noises), real human head wearing an Augmented Reality Audio headset for the binaural recording, and a soundproofed studio.

We ran a study on 82 participants and compared random to predictable to no movements at all.

Listen to what they have listened to (shortened and lower quality). Oh, and be warned - it's in Finish.
This is for regular left to right movements:


And this is an example of random movements:

Related Publications

Dicke, C., Aaltonen, V. and Billinghurst, M., Occurrence of Simulator Sickness in Spatial Sound Spaces and 3D Auditory Displays in International Conference on Auditory Display, (Copenhagen, Denmark, May 18-22, 2009). download