Sophie Kenny, GI alum and staff scientist at Vpixx Technologies Inc., recently presented at the 2019 Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) Conference that took place June 7-9 at the University of Waterloo.
Kenny presented a paper co-written by Séamas Weech and Michael Barnett-Cowan entitled "Effect of refresh rate on motion smoothness perception and vection strength", which explored whether motion smoothness within Virtual Reality (VR) simulations contributes to an increase in perceiving illusions of self-motion, otherwise known as vection.
This research looked at whether vection is further enhanced beyond 60 frames per second (FPS; how many images are displayed within each second). The data they collected found that an increased FPS was directly related to the occurrence of this phenomenon and that it would increase with a FPS above 60 and, although weaker, at FPS below 60.
These results clearly show that technical characteristics of devices used to display video, and not only its content, greatly influence a the viewer's subjective experience.
-Sophie Kenny