The Problem:
In today's capitalistic economy, there is a real push to make
products that will yield the greatest profit. This often results
in targeting games to a main stream audience with a larger number
of consumers. However, this leaves minorities with a shortage of
fun, worthwhile games to play. This is especially a problem for
the blind community. While sighted children are out having fun
and getting exercise, blind children are left sitting around. As
a result, their muscles don't develop as well as they should and,
even more importantly, they aren't having fun!
The Idea:
One of the most famous games is Dodgeball. Growing up, everyone
had their dodgeball memories, whether good or bad. But, either
way, it was a fundamental part of childhood. We thought, how could
this be translated to the blind world. In our game, instead of
avoiding a thrown ball, the objective is to dodge a sound that
appears to be thrown at you.
Did it work?
When we started working on this, we knew that we could create a 3D
sound environment. The issue, we thought, was in tracking the
player to see if he or she avoided the ball. However, our tracking
scheme works fairly well. The sound turned out to be the problem.
We want this game to work on commodity equipment and it is difficult
with just a left and right speaker to really tell where the ball is
coming from.
With that said, the game works to a reasonable degree. The player
hears a sound and can avoid it. The game then gives him or her
feedback on his or her performance.
Other uses:
The exciting news is that our simple tracking technology works.
Perhaps dodgeball isn't the best application of them. The camera
only updates the player's position 2 or 3 times per second which
makes it tough to accurately track the player. But, we've thought
about applying this to "whack-a-mole," another project from our
class, simon says, or a virtual drum set where the player's hand
position indicates which drum to play.
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