Wintersberger, P., Matviienko, A., Schweidler, A., & Michahelles, F. (2022). Development and Evaluation of a Motion-based VR Bicycle Simulator. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 1–19). https://doi.org/10.1145/3546745
Bicycle simulators are becoming an increasingly used research tool. However, due to the complex cycling dynamics, these simulators have issues of simulator sickness and perceived realism. A potential method to address these issues could be providing a motion-based tilting function. Some bicycle simulators with tilt functionality have already been presented but still lack a systematic evaluation. In this work, we present a motion-based bicycle simulator without centrifugal force simulation and the results from a user study that compared different tilt modes. N=31 participants completed a study in virtual reality with a strong and a weak tilt mode, as well as a baseline condition without movement. We discovered that weak tilting could significantly improve the cycling realism without decreasing cycling performance and simulator sickness. Furthermore, our research suggests that there is a sweet spot for a tilting function, which facilitates a balance between presence/immersion and simulator sickness.
