Gaming and Entertainment

Introduction

Gaming and entertainment is one of the earliest areas augmented reality was applied. In this domains two different categories of games are presented. These include:

Virtual and Augmented Reality Breakout

The traditional Breakout is one of the first graphical games available on computer systems. The basic logic is the same but there are a few differences. The first is that new variant breakout was implemented on three dimensions. Also a cylindrical wall existed in the middle of the simulation area. A single player controls three curved bats, each at an angle of 120 degrees to each other. The bats can move clockwise or anticlockwise using the keyboard as input. The cylindrical wall is situated in the middle of the circle and is constructed by nine bricks in such a way that it looks like a shaft. The objective for a single player is to knock the bricks down using a small ball. A brick vanishes when struck by the ball and any bricks above it fall under gravity force until they reach the ground.

The behavior of the ball was modelled using Newtonian mechanics and behaves in a realistic manner apart from that we have assumed no loss of energy. Therefore all collisions are considered pure elastic. In the case where all the bricks vanish then a new wall is appeared in the same position as the previous one. Also, to add interest the shaft ‘contains' some ‘gold' bricks. When a gold brick is struck it vanishes, but two extra balls appear in the play areas. Finally, an account of the scope for the player is kept and displayed on the screen.

AR breakout allows the player to superimpose the virtual game into the real environment through the use of special trained marker cards. The calculation of the camera position and orientation is based on ARToolKit libraries. In terms of interaction, the player can use the keyboard to rotate the bats or physically manipulate the marker card.

Natural user interactions can be performed by simply manipulating the marker card where the whole game is superimposed.

• Liarokapis, F., An exploration from virtual to augmented reality gaming, To appear in Simulation and Gaming, SAGE, (2006).

AR Puzzle and Quiz Games

This sections is focused on two learning application developed in City University including the AR Puzzle and the AR Quiz. The aim of both applications is to present geographical information in an attractive manner that would make people, especially children, more interested in geography.

One of the important goals of the AR Puzzle application is to present geographical information in an attractive manner that would make people, especially children, more interested in geography. The functionality of ARGIS enables educationalists and geographers to build interactive learning scenarios, where participants can gain geographical and navigational knowledge. As an example, we will describe a scenario illustrating the topology of City's University through an interactive 3D puzzle.

In AR Quiz users are provided with five marker cards and on the first card 3D topological application about specific locations from London are superimposed. The rest four marker cards are used to superimpose four possible answers that could represent the correct location. For more information visit the MRGIS page.

• Liarokapis, F., Greatbatch, I., Mountain, D., Gunesh, A., Brujic-Okretic, V., Raper, J., Mobile Augmented Reality Techniques for GeoVisualisation, Proc. 9th International Conference on Information Visualisation, IEEE Computer Society, 6-8 July, London, 745-751, (2005). ISBN: 0-7695-2397-8. Pdf

• Raper, J., Liarokapis, F., Mountain, D., Brujic-Okretic, V., Personal navigation using digital mobile devices, Geomatics World , March/April, 13(3): 36-38, (2005).

Videos

The following videos illustrate part of the capabilities of the work performed in this application domain.