Q&A — Aaron Thibault and Corey Carbonara on VR and AR
TVT: Does the current research suggest that "cyber-sickness" is a technical glitch that is likely fixable or something inherent in this type of presentation? How does "cyber-sickness" affect men and women differently?
Corey Carbonara: According to the research, cyber-sickness is not just a technical "glitch" because it is a phenomenon where we just do not have all of the answers because we do not know all of the factors that affect it. This is because we still do not know exactly how all of the senses in the human body work together. We tend to focus on visual and vestibular factors, but it turns out it is much more than that. So, it is not merely a timeline where we might reach a technology threshold, for even if we had a display that was absolutely perfect, we still would just be addressing the visual factors not all of the senses combined.
The research out there indicates there is a difference between the number of cases of cyber-sickness and gender and our research at Baylor supports that. It appears that women do get cyber-sick more than men. Factors the research discusses that could account for this result is based on differences in the way that men and women process information in the brain, but more research is still needed to understand this more fully.