Assessing the impact of selective attention in a minimalist virtual reality driving simulator: An analysis of perceived experience and motion sickness

Driving is a complex cognitive task that is prone to distractions, especially visual ones. Efficient visual selective attention is critical for safety; therefore, it is necessary to study the effects of distraction on driving. Conducting experiments on real-life driving behaviour raises serious practical and ethical concerns; therefore, we investigate the use of virtual reality in this area. In particular, we are exploring the use of low-cost virtual reality simulators using commonly available hardware and simple AI techniques to ensure easy reproducibility of our experiments. Our study investigates techniques to improve attention in two age groups using a driving simulator. Participants’ immersion and motion sickness are assessed through questionnaires. We aim to determine whether simpler setups maintain immersion and mitigate motion sickness, offering insights for the selection of future research equipment.