Slingshot 3D: A synchronous haptic-audio-video game

Abstract

Recent advances in multimedia and human computer interaction technologies have paved the way for rich contents across multiple media such as haptics, audio, and video. This paper introduces a multimodal game named the Slingshot 3D Game: an interactive and synchronous haptic-audio-video shooter game over the Internet network. The game incorporates two types of haptic feedback: tactile feedback using a haptic jacket and kinesthetic feedback using the Novint Falcon haptic interface. Furthermore, the game utilizes a depth camera to track the player's (upper) body movements and detect collisions between the player's body and the shot projectile. To promote availability and cost, the game uses the Internet network as the communication medium between the players, by utilizing the Admux communication framework [10]. The game design and implementation are detailed in this paper. Both the player performance analysis and the user satisfaction analysis have shown that the incorporation of synchronous haptic-video multimedia has enhanced the perception of player presence and the overall quality of performance.