25 March 2009

VS-GAMES2009 Article

Today, a paper with title ‘A Pervasive Augmented Reality Serious Game’ was presented at the 1st IEEE International Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications at Coventry University. Pervasive games can sometimes have an educational aspect. The whole idea of playability in pervasive games is the player’s interaction with the physical reality. Accessibility space that is the key to the oscillation between embedded and tangible information and augmented reality interfaces have the potential of enhancing ubiquitous environments by allowing necessary information to be visualized in a number of different ways depending on the user needs. However, only a few applications combined them together with trying to graphically represent sensor information in real-time performance.

This paper presents a pervasive augmented reality serious game that can be used to enhance entertainment using a multimodal tracking interface. The main objective of the research is to design and implement generic pervasive interfaces that are user-friendly and can be used by a wide range of users including people with disabilities. A pervasive AR racing game has been designed and implemented. The goal of the game is to start the car and move around the track without colliding with either the wall or the objects that exist in the gaming arena. Users can interact using a pinch glove, a Wiimote, through tangible ways as well as through I/O controls of the UMPC. Initial evaluation results showed that multimodal-based interaction games can be beneficial in serious games.

A draft version of the paper can be downloaded from here and a video from here.