Ellic’s Exercise Class: promoting physical activities during exergaming with immersive virtual reality

Abstract

This work presents the design and evaluation of a set of three mini exercise games (exergames), called “Ellic’s Exercise Class,” which allows people to play in virtual reality (VR) using a head-mounted display (HMD) with the intention to promote physical activities. The exergames require the player to move hands, arms, and body to interact with sporting gameplay events. The game design methodology considers both display advantages and physical limitations in VR technologies. The games are evaluated in a usability study with the goal to understand participants’ performance, gaming experience, effectiveness in motivating them to move, and their exercise intensity levels. In the study, we compare play of games in a VR environment simulated through an HMD with the play in front of a standard large flat-screen display (LFD), while ensuring the difficulty level of gameplay to be same in both. The participants’ moving distances and their answers in questionnaires show that they become more active and engaged when playing exergames with HMD, but according to heart rate data, there is not significant evidence that playing with HMD would be better than that with LFD in terms of increasing the energy expenditure. We discuss the findings in accordance with the relationship and independence between engagement and exertion in exergaming.