Live-Action Virtual Reality Games Luis Valente1, Esteban Clua1, Alexandre Ribeiro Silva2, Bruno Feijó3
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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. In live-action virtual reality in mainstream games and entertainment applica- games, players wear HMD devices and see a virtual tions. world that is constructed using the physical world The advancement of virtual-reality technologies architecture as the basic geometry and context in- and context-awareness give rise to new possibilities formation. Physical objects that reside in the physi- of game genres. In this regard, in this paper we cal world are also mapped to virtual elements. Live- present a new game genre based on unique combi- action virtual reality games keeps the virtual and nations of live-action, mixed-reality, context-aware- real-worlds superimposed, requiring players to ness, and interaction paradigms comprising tangible physically move in the environment and to use dif- objects, context-aware input devices, embedded in- ferent interaction paradigms (such as tangible and teractions, and embodied interactions. We call this embodied interaction) to complete game activities. new genre as “live-action virtual reality games”. This setup enables the players to touch physical ar- chitectural elements (such as walls) and other ob- We say that live-action virtual reality games are jects, “feeling” the game stage. Players have free “live-action games” because a player physically movement and may interact with physical objects acts out his/her “avatar” (his/her virtual representa- placed in the game stage, implicitly and explicitly. tion) in the game stage – the mixed-reality environ- Live-action virtual reality games differ from similar ment where the game happens. The game creates game concepts because they sense and use contex- the game stage based on several real-world infor- tual information to create unpredictable game expe- mation sources, such as the physical environment riences, giving rise to emergent gameplay. architecture and context information. Live-action virtual reality games keep the virtual and real- Keywords: live-action virtual reality games, worlds superimposed as the player experiences the mixed-reality, virtual reality, context-awareness, game. The player sees a virtual world through a tangible interaction, embodied interaction, context- HMD device (in first-person perspective) and needs aware interaction, smart objects. to move and walk in the physical environment to play the game. Also, the player may need to use gestures and other body movements in interactions 1 Introduction with game elements and other players. The player may need to interact with physical objects to com- In the past, virtual reality hardware (such as head- plete game tasks. Live-action play in live-action mounted display devices) has been restricted virtual reality games is facilitated through light- mostly to research labs due to factors such as their Figure 1. Simplified reality-virtuality continuum, extracted from [2] weight and mobile HMDs, mobile computing, and ment properties (e.g., temperature), generating vi- context-awareness. brations, and outputting smells. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the live-action virtual reality game vision 2.2 Physical structure as input and its main concepts. Section 3 provides related work, which compares live-action virtual reality A live-action virtual reality game uses physical games to other types of games based on mixed-real- structure information as basic building blocks to ities and initiatives originated in industry and create the game stage. When a player enters the academia. Section 4 presents concluding remarks. physical environment where the game happens (e.g., a room), the game tracks all architectural ele- ments (such as walls) to use as the basic geometry 2 Live-action virtual reality games to create a virtual 3D environment. After creating the virtual world structure, the game may augment This section presents key concepts of live-action this raw structure with virtual content. Metaphori- virtual reality games, which are: mixed-reality and cally, we compare this process to the process of the game stage, information flow, context-aware- mapping images (textures) to raw polygon data in ness, and interaction paradigms that live-action vir- 3D environments. The game keeps the virtual and tual reality games provide. This section also dis- real worlds superimposed as the player moves in cusses how a live-action virtual reality game may the environment, creating the game stage. stimulate the sense of presence. The game may also track physical objects that are part of this physical environment and map them 2.1 Mixed-reality in the virtual world as 3D models. Examples of these physical objects are furniture, interactive ob- Live-action virtual reality games create a mixed-re- jects carried by a player, and players’ own bodies. ality environment, which we name as the game However, the player does not see the physical stage. A “mixed-reality environment” can be de- world and physical objects – the player only sees fined as an environment that fuses virtual and real- virtual representations through the HMD. The vir- world (physical) information. Figure 1 illustrates a tual world building process may happen in real- simplified “reality-virtuality” continuum that Mil- time or before the game session (as a preparation gram and co-authors [2] proposed. This continuum step). In this preparation step, the game system may represents a spectrum describing possible combina- track all relevant physical features to generate a vir- tions of virtual and real elements, resulting in dif- tual world to be optimized later by an artist, who ferent kinds of “mixed-realities”. may augment the virtual world with other virtual el- ements. The game stage is a kind of “augmented virtual- ity” because the virtual world is constructed through real-world information sources and en- 2.3 Context information as input riched through virtual and real-world information. We roughly categorize these real-world information Context-awareness is a key component of live-ac- sources as “physical structure information” and tion virtual reality games. Dey [3] defines context “context information”. Live-action virtual reality as “any information that can be used to character- games output information in the virtual and physi- ize the situation of an entity. An entity is a person, cal worlds. Physical world output can take form as place, or object that is considered relevant to the real-world effects, such as manipulating environ- interaction between a player and an application, including the user and applications themselves”. A able to output information (such as audio system can be considered as “context-aware” if “it and images) and create real-world effects uses context to provide relevant information and/or (Section 2.4). services to the user, where relevancy depends on 3. The physical place may be augmented with the user’s task” [3]. In this regard, “context-aware- dedicated infrastructure that enables the ness” means that a live-action virtual reality game game to sense context information. Exam- is able to adapt the gameplay according to the cur- ples include installing tracking technology rent context conditions. Context-awareness enables and sensors to collect environmental infor- live-action virtual reality games to collect informa- mation. In this solution, these objects are tion from the real-world and from players (while hidden (“invisible”) from players, being part the game session is happening), using these data as of the overall game infrastructure. On the input information. Live-action virtual reality games other hand, smart objects are complex, visi- use context information for two main purposes: ble physical objects that reside inside the 1. Augment the game environment with dy- game stage; namic information that originates in the