Remote Virtual Showdown: A Collaborative Virtual Reality Game for People with Visual Impairments

TL;DR

This paper introduces a collaborative virtual reality showdown game designed for people with visual impairments, utilizing auditory spatial cues and supporting both solo and multiplayer modes, with positive user study results.

Contribution

It presents a novel VR game enabling collaboration between visually impaired and able-bodied players, incorporating auditory distance perception and providing design guidelines.

Findings

People with visual impairments won 67.6% of games against able-bodied players.

The VR system effectively supports collaborative gameplay for visually impaired users.

User studies demonstrate the system's potential for inclusive VR gaming.

Abstract

Many researchers have developed VR systems for people with visual impairments by using various audio feedback techniques. However, there has been much less study of collaborative VR systems in which people with visual impairments and people with able-body can participate together. Therefore, we developed a VR showdown game which is similar to a real Showdown game in which two players can play together in the same virtual environment. We incorporate auditory distance perception using the HRTF (Head Related Transform Function) based on a spatial position in VR. We developed two modes in the showdown game. One is the PVA (Player vs. Agent) mode in which people with visual impairments can play alone and the PVP (Player vs. Player) mode in which people with visual impairments can play with another player in the network environment. We conducted our user studies by comparing the performances of people with visual impairments and people with able-body. The user study results show that people with visual impairments won 67.6% of the games when competing against people with able-body. This paper reports an example of a collaborative VR system for people with visual impairments and also design guideline for developing VR systems for people with visual impairments.