Virtual reality (VR) training systems can provide consistent, repeatable, on-demand, cost-effective, and safe environments for operations in stressful high-risk tasks. However, an unrecognized risk to the value of VR training is cybernetic distortion, which occurs when VR is not sufficiently representative of relevant factors in the real-world environment, particularly with respect to visual perception, proprioception, vestibular response, ergonomics, and information perception. Cybernetic distortion can occur when validation efforts in VR training focus on how the training presents technical content but does not assess all relevant cybernetic characteristics. VR training provides a wealth of data and interactions within a simulated environment, but distortions in the human-machine-interface alter how users understand, adapt to, and make use of this information in imperceivable ways. Without a holistic cross-over validation between real-world and virtual conditions, cybernetic distortion can lead to well-practiced behaviors that are correct only within the simulation (commonly referred to as negative training). In the real-world, these automatized behaviors practiced in unrepresentative VR training could lead to catastrophic outcomes in high-risk situations. While many of these distortions can be mitigated through targeted environmental design or hardware selection, potential negative training effects must be understood and characterized, so that they can be identified and minimized before deployment. While the impetus for these effects can seem minor (user discomfort, visual perceptual alteration, misalignment between the real-world and virtual environments, misaligned ergonomic considerations, and workflow alterations), each of them could have a unique, additive, or multiplicative disruptive effects on training transfer. This paper will discuss the current use cases of VR training, perceptual and ergonomic concerns in VR not reported in simulation research, how these issues could impact training validity, and known mitigations for these issues.

Keywords
AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY (AR/VR),FIDELITY

Additional Keywords
Cybernetic Distortion, Negative training, Training transfer