Description: The proposed activity will develop an app or website that can be accessed with at-home, consumer-level virtual reality (VR) systems, and conduct a large-scale crowd-sourced passenger acceptance study of virtual flights in an urban air taxi through an urban environment. Presently, there is very little research into what types and levels of out-the-window visual stimuli triggers passenger discomfort. Part 1 is to develop a tool, such as a website or downloadable application, which can be used to conduct an urban air taxi passenger discomfort study of the general public via at-home, consumer grade virtual reality systems. Part 1: Tool Description The study tool must be either partially or entirely VR-based. The required VR portion of the tool shall allow the participant to experience several (up to 4) simulated air taxi flights (~5 minutes each) through an urban environment using their own consumer-grade VR equipment. The tool shall also allow the participant to provide real-time indications of their discomfort through hand controllers or other methods. The VR graphics files containing the air taxi flight paths will be provided by the NASA Project Owner. See Figure 3. The tool shall provide an output file of the discomfort indications that can be correlated to the specific time points within the flight path when the indications were annunciated by the participant. The other portion of the tool, which may be in VR or another medium such as a website, shall guide the participant through the process, including the following elements: ? Explain the reasons for the study, how the study will be conducted, what data will be collected, how the data will be used, stored, protected, and reported, and other elements of informed consent (to be provided by the NASA Project Owner) ? Record Informed Consent ? Random ordering of VR Flight Paths ? Navigate the participant through the completion of the study
The project is to develop an open-source tool, such as a website or downloadable application, which can be used to conduct an urban air taxi passenger discomfort study of the general public via at-home, consumer grade virtual reality systems. The study tool must be either partially or entirely VR-based. The required VR portion of the tool shall allow the participant to experience several (up to 4) simulated air taxi flights (~5 minutes each) through an urban environment using their own consumer-grade VR equipment. The tool shall also allow the participant to provide real-time indications of their discomfort through hand controllers or other methods. The VR graphics files containing the air taxi flight paths will be provided by the NASA Project Owner. The tool shall provide an output file of the discomfort indications that can be correlated to the specific time points within the flight path when the indications were annunciated by the participant. The app should be flexible to allow NASA to make changes to which and how many VR files, and the preamble (i.e., description, informed consent, etc.) to support the use of the tool in multiple different studies. The developed system should also include a demonstration mode that bypasses the informed consent and feedback recording.