Edinburgh Napier University

  Interactive play can take very different forms, from playing with physical board games to fully digital video games. In recent years, new video game paradigms were introduced to connect real-world objects to virtual game characters. However, even these applications focus on a specific section of the Reality-Virtuality Continuum, where the visual embodiment of characters is either largely static toys in the real world or pre-animated within the virtual world according to a determined set of motions.

We introduce a novel concept, called Multi-Reality Games, that encompasses interactions with real and virtual objects to span the entire spectrum of the Reality-Virtuality Continuum, from the real world to digital and/or back. Our application on real-virtual game interaction makes an evolutionary step toward the convergence of real and virtual game characters. Rather than static toys or prebuilt and unconfigurable virtual counterparts, we bring together technologies from the entire Reality-Virtuality Continuum to target new game experiences.

We showcase our framework by proposing a game application on a mobile device. Without the need to change the location or set, we enable intuitive and seamless interactions between physical, augmented and virtual elements. The experience brings both worlds closer, and enables the user to customize the virtual scenario according to physical references.