Simulator Sickness Ratings Reduce with Simulator Motion when Driven Through Urban Environments

A necessity in driving simulation testing is to understand and attenuate simulator sickness, to reduce the number of undesired drop-outs. Especially urban environments, with its many turns and changes in the velocity profile, are a challenge. This paper describes the motion sickness rating results of a between-subjects experiment (n = 63), which investigated the effects of adding scaled yaw motion to a simulator on the sickness incidence and severity while being driven as passenger through an urban environment. Three cases were considered: no motion, scaled yaw motion, and including the vehicle pitch and roll rotations in addition to the scaled yaw motion. The misery scale (MISC) was obtained every minute, and the simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) was completed before and after the 45-minute trial. Experimental results show that less participants became sick when some form of yaw-motion was provided.