A Framework for Supporting Immersion in Commodity Gaming

Abstract

Presented here is a case for a higher level of engagement and immersion in gaming by proposing gaming software support for displays that engage the players peripheral vision. It is widely accepted that the sense of "being there" or "presence" is heightened by "removing the frame", that is, filling the viewers field of view with a virtual environment. Except for a few special cases this is almost entirely unsupported in current commodity games, and yet the importance is readily accepted as is illustrated by the widespread use in commercial simulators and virtual reality environments. This paper will present the general requirements necessary to support a range of seamless immersive displays, that is, displays that engage a significant portion, if not all, of the users field of view. It will further outline a software pipeline split into two parts, a generic section that generates the necessary visual information followed by a section that handles the device/display specific details.

Part of the motivation stems from the realisation that there are many possible hardware configurations for immersive displays and it would be too high a burden on the software developer to support them all. Equally the installation supplier does not have access to the underlying software engine or source code. The proposed solution then is to separate the problem into two pieces, those that are the responsibility of the software developer and those that are the responsibility of the display provider.

Immersion, virtual reality, peripheral vision, surround display, gaming, engagement, presence

Paper

PDF: paper.pdf