Projection Displays Induce Less Simulator Sickness than Head-Mounted Displays in a Real Vehicle Driving Simulator

Driving simulators are necessary for evaluating automotive technology for human users. While they can vary in terms of their fidelity, it is essential that users experience minimal simulator sickness and high presence in them. In this paper, we present two experiments that investigate how a virtual driving simulation system could be visually presented within a real vehicle, which moves on a test track but displays a virtual environment. Specifically, we contrasted display presentation of the simulation using either head-mounted displays (HMDs) or fixed displays in the vehicle itself. Overall, we find that fixed displays induced less simulator sickness than HMDs. Neither HMDs or fixed displays induced a stronger presence in our implementation, even when the field-of-view of the fixed display was extended. We discuss the implications of this, particular in the context of scenarios that could induce considerable motion sickness, such as testing non-driving activities in automated vehicles.