Perceived mismatch between visual and inertial cues in a simulation environment

In the field of motion simulation it was found that a visual amplitude equal to the inertial amplitude does not always provide the best perceived match between visual and inertial motion. This result is thought to be caused by the "quality" of the motion cues delivered by the simulator motion and visual systems. This paper studies how different visual characteristics, like field-of-view and scene content, influence the scaling between visual and inertial motion in a simulation environment. Subjects were exposed to simulator visuals with different fields-of-view and different scenes and were asked to vary the visual amplitude until it matched the perceived inertial amplitude. This was done for motion profiles in surge, sway and yaw. However, in this paper only the surge results are reported. Results showed that the subjective visual amplitude was affected by the field-of-view. When the field-of-view had characteristics closer to the real condition, the scaling between the visual and inertial cues was closer to one. This study demonstrated that visual characteristics affect the scaling between visual and inertial motion and that such scaling may be a good measurement for image quality in motion simulation.