From: J.P.Wann@RDG.AC.UK Subject: Re: SOC: Long term immersion in VR Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 15:25:56 +0100 Message-ID: Ed Lantz asked: > I was assured by a reputable simulator researcher ...that a > year-old UK study proved there was PERMANANT visual damage to children > who were exposed to HMDs with a certain biocular misalignment. > Apparently this occurs only during a critical developmental stage in > children. Has anyone heard of this study??? > I think this "assurance" is unfortunately a mis-interpretation of the published research. The main HMD human factors research in the UK that I know of is Peter Howarth/John Wilson at Loughborough/Nottingham University and ourselves (Reading/Edinburgh Univ.). Neither of us have tackled this issue and if we had then a law-suit probably be about to land on our desks from the parents of the children. In our original 1993 HMD paper we pointed that children may be more at risk, and Eugenia Kolasinki's recent dissertion cited a 1993/94 article by Bob Stone that re-stated this point. Unfortunately, there's no easy way of assessing developmentally specific HMD risks. How could you ethically expose young children to HMDs and demonstrate "permanent" damage? I'm pretty certain this arises from someone mis-reading our 1993 OPO paper which does say that it WOULD BE POSSIBLE to cause permanent damage if a user with immature or unstable binocular vision used a poorly configured HMD for an extended/repeated period. This does NOT mean that any such devices are around, but it is a warning that we should guard against poor quality "back-street" stereo-HMDs flooding the games market. The 1993 paper also made the point that we have legislation covering VDU design factors, but not HMDs. Bigger manufacturers would surely welcome some quality control legislation and it would be better to introduce it now rather than when a problem arises from a flood of cheap, poorly manufactured stereo-HMDs. John W ********************************************************* Dr John P. Wann < J.P.Wann@rdg.ac.uk> ********************************************************** Action Research Laboratory: Development, Rehabilitation, Immersive Virtual Environments (Wann, Mon-Williams, Smyth , Langaas) ARL - DRIVE Department of Psychology University of Reading PO Box 238, Reading RG6 6AL, UK +44 1734 318532 Fx +44 1734 316604 ***********************************************************