A comparative assessment of subjective experience in simulator and on-road driving under normal and time pressure driving conditions

Abstract

This study conducts a comparative assessment of subjective experience of real-world and simulated world driving for investigating factors leading to simulator sickness. Thirty professional car drivers drove a fixed-base driving simulator in real and simulated worlds under No Time Pressure (NTP) and Time Pressure (TP) driving conditions. Drivers rated their perceptions based on real-world driving and simulator driving experiences after each driving session with respect to three factors: simulator sickness, mental workload, and sense of presence. The structural equation model results revealed that drivers experienced high mental workload due to TP driving conditions (factor loading = 0.90) and repeated exposure to simulated world (factor loading = 0.20) which induced simulator sickness (factor loading = 0.41) and resulted in low sense of presence (factor loading = −0.18). Thus, it can be concluded that lack of experience with virtual reality induced high simulator sickness, increased mental workload, and low sense of presence.

Keywords:

• Driving simulator
• simulator sickness
• time pressure
• mental workload
• sense of presence

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Mrs. Rashmeet Kaur Khanuja for her assistance during the starting phase of scenario generation and data collection. The authors acknowledge the participation of the professional drivers for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.