Effects on user perception of a 'modified' speed experience through in-vehicle virtual reality

In order to make the experience of traveling in automated vehicles more enjoyable, Virtual Reality (VR) experiences based on the real-world journey have been proposed. Presenting users with VR content synched to the car's actual movement decreases the motion sickness, but it also sharply limits the possible range of VR content. In this paper, we investigate whether the user's subjective perception of speed can be 'modified' by presenting VR content at a different speed than the actual speed of the vehicle, and whether users feel this experience is strange. Study participants viewed VR content occurring at a faster or slower speed than their actual travel speed in an electric wheelchair. Our results show that the participants were able to do this without experiencing a feeling of "strangeness". However, the participants did report higher "strangeness" scores when the speed in the VR content was slower than their actual speed.