A Virtual Reality Study Investigating the Effect of Cybersickness on the Relationship Between Vection and Presence Across Environments with Varying Levels of Ecological Relevance

In the absence of physical motion, people sometimes experience the illusory sensation of self-motion which is known as vection. Vection research could contribute to the improvement of the fidelity of simulators as vection and presence appear to be positively related. However, when utilizing virtual reality technology for simulators, visually-induced motion sickness (VIMS) in the form of Cybersickness (CS) sometimes co-occurs with the experience of vection. Nonetheless, the relationship between vection and CS is not evident. Past research mainly investigated the relationship between the vection and CS using environments with a certain level of ecological relevance. Herein we investigated whether CS negatively affects the relationship between vection and presence across different virtual environments with varying levels of ecological relevance. We immersed twenty-nine participants visually and audibly in virtual environments and after each trial participants reported their vection intensity, CS, and presence. Our results showed that the relationship between vection intensity and presence was unaffected by CS. We conclude that the relationship between vection and presence is unaffected by CS with low levels of discomfort.