Live-action Virtual Reality Games Luis Valente1, Esteban Clua1, Alexandre Ribeiro Silva2, Bruno Feijó3 1MediaLab, Institute of 2Instituto Federal do Triângulo 3VisionLab, Department of Computing, Mineiro, Brazil Informatics, UFF, Brazil PUC-Rio, Brazil {lvalente,esteban}@ic.uff.br,
[email protected],
[email protected] Abstract. This paper proposes the concept of “live- high cost, the inconvenience of using this hardware action virtual reality games” as a new genre of digi- (e.g., heavy helmets, lots of cables required, limited tal games based on an innovative combination of mobility), and application specificity (e.g., high end live-action, mixed-reality, context-awareness, and VR systems, military applications). One of the main interaction paradigms that comprise tangible ob- goals in virtual reality applications is to immerse jects, context-aware input devices, and the user’s senses in an artificial virtual environment embedded/embodied interactions. Live-action vir- (VE) through an interactive experience. A key fac- tual reality games are “live-action games” because tor regarding how this interactive immersive experi- a player physically acts out (using his/her real body ence is successful refers to the sense of presence and senses) his/her “avatar” (his/her virtual repre- [1]. Recently, there is a growing trend in the indus- sentation) in the game stage – the mixed-reality en- try to bring these kinds of devices to the mass mar- vironment where the game happens. The game ket (e.g., Oculus Rift, Samsung VR, HTC Vive), stage is a kind of “augmented virtuality” – a mixed- with affordable prices and small form factors, reality where the virtual world is augmented with which opens up possibilities for using these devices real-world information.