Eye Thought You Were Sick! Exploring Eye Behaviors for Cybersickness Detection in VR

Cybersickness induced through Virtual Reality (VR) applications is still one of its main barriers as it can induce unwanted side-effects in players, significantly hindering the overall experience. Despite the wealth of research available on this topic, it is still an unsolved problem. Although previous studies have explored methods of cybersickness mitigation in addition to correlating physiological factors, there has been little research on the potential correlation of eye behavior and cybersickness. Thanks to advances in eye-tracking technology within HMDs, detecting eye behavior has become a much easier process. This paper explores the differences of pupil position and blink rate in relation to cybersickness intensity. The latter is measured through the standard and a customized version of the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). A total of 34 participant data was collected from two separate playing sessions of a VR maze game, where each session presented a unique control scheme.