Towards Serious Games and Applications in Smart Substitutional Reality

Abstract

Substitutional Reality (SR), the integration of the physical environment into Virtual Reality (VR), is a novel approach to facilitate and intensify the use of home-based VR systems. We propose to extend the passive haptics of SR with the interactive functionality of a smart home environment. This concept of smart SR is meant as a foundation for serious games and applications. In this paper, we describe the concept behind smart SR as well as the prototype in our lab environment. We created multiple virtual environments with a varying degree of mismatch regarding the real world. We present a user study where we examined the influence of these environments on the perceived sense of presence and motivation of users. Our findings showed that presence was high in all conditions while motivation increased with the level of mismatch. This provides us with a promising basis for further research.