Ambient Augmented Reality Effects on Game Immersion Experience

Hidden Human-Computer Interaction Computer Science Bachelor Master Thesis No Affiliation

Background

The HCI chair has implemented a mixed reality version of the role-play-based board game Quest: Zeit der Helden (Giebler-Schubert et al., 2013). . A multitouch table with object recognition capabilities serves as a shared interaction space for tangible game elements (pawns, cards, …). The system augments these real objects with multimedia content, according to the ongoing game.

The Quest V3-prototype realizes a mixed reality version of Quest’s storytelling aspects by incorporating the social robot Reeti into the setup. Reeti takes on the role of the characters, which the human players meet during the adventure, as well as of the narrator, making him the questmaster. His multimodal performance includes a playback of the respective character’s lines supported by facial expressions, eye-gaze, and movements, as well as mood-coloured LEDs in the robot’s cheeks.

A major advantage of transferring a tabletop role-playing game to a mixed reality tabletop game, is that the social situation of traditional tabletop games is preserved, while the automatic detection of the human players’ actions is facilitated.

Tasks

The goal of this project is to evaluate the effects of background scenery, brought into the game via Augmented Reality, on Game Immersion Experience (Cheng, M. T. et al., 2015):

• Players are wearing AR Head-Mounted-Displays (HMDs) that extend the game area beyond the multitouch table.
• Ambient scenery is then integrated into this context area dependend on the game state: Forests, mountains, cityscapes, taverns etc.
• Players standing around the table should be able to be tracked, e.g. using Kinect sensors, and depth sensors integrated into the user’s HMD.
• An evaluation needs to be performed comparing different methods of augmentation towards the effects on Game Immersion Experience.
  • 1: Rendering ambient scenery everywhere but on top of the table
  • 2: Using information from depth sensors, mask out human players to integrate them into the background scenery

Prerequisites

• Practical programming skills
• Understanding of interactive 3D graphics
• Interest in Real-time Interactive Systems (RIS), especially Augmented Reality

References

Giebler-Schubert, A., Zimmerer, C., Wedler, T., Fischbach, M., & Latoschik, M. E. (2013). Ein digitales Tabletop-Rollenspiel für Mixed-Reality-Interaktionstechniken. Virtuelle und Erweiterte Realität, 10, 181-184.

Cheng, M. T., She, H. C., & Annetta, L. A. (2015). Game immersion experience: its hierarchical structure and impact on game‐based science learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 31(3), 232-253.

Contact Persons at the University Würzburg