Virtual Illustrations
A series of immersive illustrations created in VR, to be experienced in VR.
CLIENT
Personal work
MY ROLE
Designer and illustrator
YEAR
2022–2024
VIEW IN VR
Virtual Illustrations
A series of immersive illustrations created in VR, to be experienced in VR.
CLIENT
Personal work
MY ROLE
Designer and illustrator
YEAR
2022–2024
VIEW IN VR
↗ creator.oculus.com
Virtual reality (VR) sickness is a term for various symptoms of nausea that the user of a VR headset might feel during and after being immersed to virtual worlds. These symptoms have been researched widely in the fields of simulation training and video games under the term simulator sickness, but not from the perspective of illustration. With the increasing popularity and accessibility of VR headsets, illustrators and artists are adopting the technology more widely. However, most people are not yet accustomed to being immersed inside illustrations, which means viewing the artwork can lead to nausea. Being aware of what causes VR sickness will allow illustrators to take those elements into account.
VR only takes over a part of your senses, meaning conflicts can arise from the difference between reality and virtual reality. This sensory mismatch can cause VR sickness in multiple ways, most commonly by vection, which happens when your eyes see you move in VR while your real body remains stationary. You could be running in VR while sitting on a chair, and this sends the brain conflicting signals. The sensory conflict is similar to motion sickness but not exactly the same, since in the case of VR you're not actually moving physically.
This work aims to find out how VR sickness affects the work of an illustrator by creating a series of artworks to be tested on people. The illustrations will test for example the viewer's ability to withstand motion in an illustration, and the test sessions will also include an interview conducted during and after the testing. The results will provide a subjective conclusion on what are some of the best practices when creating illustrations for virtual reality.
