Abstract: The decreasing hardware cost makes it affordable to pair Immersive Virtual Environments (IVR) visors with treadmills and exercise bikes. In this paper, we discuss the application of different gamification techniques in IVR for supporting physical exercise. We describe both the hardware setting and the design of Rift-a-bike, a cycling fitmersive game (immersive games for fitness). We evaluate the effectiveness of such techniques through a user study, which provides different insights on their effectiveness in designing such applications.
Authors: E. Tuveri, L. Macis, F. Sorrentino, L. D. Spano, R. Scateni.
Fitmersive Games: Fitness Gamification through Immersive VR.
AVI 2016, 212-215.
Bari, Italia, Giugno 2016.
Abstract: The recent development in consumer hardware lowers the cost barrier for adopting immersive Virtual Reality (VR) solutions, which could be an option for classroom use in the near future. In this paper, we introduce RiftArt, a VR tool for supporting the teaching and studying of Art History. Using riftArt the teachers can configure virtual museum rooms, with artwork models inside, and enhance them with multimodal annotation. The environment supports both the teachers during the lesson and the students during rehearsal. The application, implemented completely using Web technologies, can be visualized on large screens and head mounted displays. Via the user test results we can say that the immersive VR visualization increases the motivation of high-school students towards studying Art History.
Abstract: Navigation systems allow to discover cities and their urban areas easily and quickly, finding the shortest path to reach them and giving directions to users saving their time and energy. At present time, these systems are based over streets maps offered by the major mapping services like Tele Atlas, Navteq or OpenStreetMap. In recent years, thanks to the Google StreetView service it has been possible to discover main cities locations both indoor and outdoor. What is missing in this frame is the possibility to map small urban areas of small and medium sized cities, due to their lack of relevance for the big players. In this cities there could be very interesting areas for tourists. Example locations could be botanical gardens, archeological sites, protected natural areas among others. In this work we tried to set up a navigation system for limited extensions inside urban areas which permits to wander around and gives access to related information using augmented reality techniques. Due to the possible poor wireless coverage in these locations we designed an application that stores all required data on the user’s device, splitting the information in packages according to the chosen language. A key issue was to achieve good results combining all these features in a single device with a small display, overwhelming the constraints due to the mobile environment.