First steps towards Live-action Virtual Reality Games

Abstract

In this paper we describe the main concepts of a new game genre (live-action virtual reality game) made possible by the advances of virtual reality technologies and context-awareness. This set of games requires that players wear HMD devices, from where they see a complete virtual world that is built using part of the physical configuration as the basic geometry and context information. games keep both the virtual and real-worlds superimposed, requiring players to physically move in the environment and to use different interaction paradigms (such as tangible & embodied interaction) to complete game activities. As tracking physical elements is a key issue in the implementation of games, in this paper we also describe an architecture that addresses indoor navigation and tracking in live-action virtual reality games. The system we propose is based on infrared markers, working on the infrared spectral region that provides low optical noise and better precision when compared to traditional solutions based on fiducial markers. Furthermore, this paper describes our system and presents two case studies based on our architecture.