The effect of gaming on accommodative and vergence facilities after exposure to virtual reality head-mounted display

Background: To investigate the change between accommodative and vergence facilities before and after exposure to gaming in a virtual reality (VR) device amongst participants with normal binocular visual function. Methods: 62 participants between the ages of 18-30 years with normal binocular visual function and inter-pupillary distances between 51 and 70 mm were selected for the study. Spectacle and contact lenses users were excluded. The experimental group (n = 42) was exposed to gaming using Samsung Gear VR(SM-R323) whilst the control group (n = 20) watched a television film projected on a two-dimensional screen at 1 m. Pre-test and post-test binocular amplitude scaled facilities and vergence facilities were obtained for both groups after exposures of 25 min. Results: Binocular accommodative facilities for the experimental group had a mean pre-test and post-test facility of 11.14 +/- 3.67 cpm and 13.38 +/- 3.63 cpm, respectively, after gaming using VR device. The vergence facilities for the experimental group had a mean pre-test and post-test facility of 11.41 +/- 3.86 cpm and 15.28 +/- 4.93 cpm, respectively, after gaming using a VR device. Binocular accommodative facilities for the control group had a mean pre-test and post-test facility of 11.70 +/- 3.2 cpm and 11.95 +/- 3.4 cpm, respectively. Vergence facilities for the control group had a mean pre-test and post-test facility of 11.55 +/- 6.4 cpm and 11.70 +/- 4.9 cpm, respectively. The mean change for binocular accommodative facilities was 2.24 +/- 3.43 cpm and 0.25 +/- 1.25 cpm for the experimental and control group, respectively. The mean change for vergence facilities was 3.81 +/- 3.09 cpm and 0.15 +/- 2.72 cpm for the experimental and control group, respectively. Binocular accommodative facilities and vergence facility showed a statistically significant mean increase greater than the control group after gaming using a VR device using an independent t-test (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The results showed that binocular accommodative facilities and vergence facilities increased after 25 min of VR gaming in emmetropic participants under 30 years of age with inter-papillary distances between 51 mm and 70 mm. 0 2020 Spanish General Council of Optometry. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).