Explosive progress in Virtual Reality (VR) systems provides users with access to sophisticated interactive "immersion" in multi-sensory, 3-dimensional (3-D) synthetic environments. The ubiquity of these systems has extended from MASA research with their Hubble telescope training device and in the military with their many ground based visual flight trainers to industrial, educational, medical, and entertainment applications. Two critical and unresolved human factors issues in VR ssytems exposure are: 1) potential "cybersickness," a form of space motion sickness, and 2) transfer of maladaptive cognitive and/or psychomotor performance from VR (or space) to real world environments with, as yet, unknown adverse legal, economic, individual, and social consequences. Effective VR systems utilization requires urgent and appropriate multisensory human factors research clarification of the potential central nervous system interactive sources of cybersickness and transfer of maladaptive cognitive and psychomotor performance from VR to real world environments. The proposed research develops a Virtual Environment Adaptation Assessment Test Battery (VEAATB) as a countermeasure for NASA to the adverse or conflicting sensorimotor integration due to exposure to space or to VR systems in terms of interactive visual, kinesthetic and vestibular representation, cortical/cognitive transformations, and psychomotor performance.Commercial Applications:Industries utilizing VR devices in training could benefit from this research. Primary applications will be with VR device manufacturers and users of simulators where VR devices are used for projection. Entertainment companies, such as home video production, represent a substantial potential market.
