Group items tagged

Potential applications for therapy, electronic health records, operating rooms

First of a two part series on the console's tenth anniversary

"Arkadium has survived for the past decade by making casual games for the web and Facebook. But with the arms race going in games, that approach may not cut it anymore. So the New York game publisher is announcing today that it has hired industry veteran Stephen Jarrett as its vice president of game design. ... The new hire goes with the strategy of moving up in games and making big investments in game platforms such as the upcoming Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft."

Design patent awarded to Microsoft Corporation

Abstract: "Serious games can help to improve efficacy of motor rehabilitation especially in a home environment. We introduce " The Sorcerer's Apprentice" , a serious game improving strength and mobility of the shoulder area targeting support of supervised phy siotherapy . It proposes a customizable environment for supplementary exercises in the context of rehabilitation for a one - sided Shoulder - Impingement - Syndrome. We introduce the medical background of the shoulder impingement syndrome, how the game aims to im prove the health status of the patients through several options of exercises and how these exercises are embedded into the flow of game play. We will further explain how motivational factors are implemented and which additional factors were relevant in the design process. As the game makes use of motion tracking for input, we utilized Microsoft Kinect as a low - cost IO device suitable for a home - environment use case. "

Abstract: "D video games are getting popular in the world with the availability of advanced graphic cards, high processing p ower computers, high speed internet and smart sensing devices ranging from general mouse to Microsoft Kinect. OpenGL is a popular graphics processing framework and it is being used by many famous 3D video game design software as the back end framework. In this paper we present our experience with OpenGL based C++ implementation of a 3D first person shooting game. 3D environment building, navigating, character animation, lighting, sound and shooting is described. Specially OpenGL based concepts are discussed for clear understanding of the concepts."

abstract: "This work focuses on the design and implementation of an educational game for deployment on the Xbox 360 commercial game console. Video games can be extremely powerful and effective learning tools when deployed with methodical precision. Currently, no learning tools are available for commercial consoles that focus on teaching core concepts in Engineering. This work presents an overall design for an educational game to address Number Systems in the scope of the Electrical and Computer Engineering curricula. BINX is an educational adventure game designed to address Number Systems and their arithmetic operations in Digital Logic Design, a core course is Electrical and Computer Engineering programs. Object Oriented Design Principles were used in the development of this game. This work presents one sublevel implemented using the XNA framework - a Microsoft Software Development Kit (SDK).The BINX gameplay takes place inside a computer where a malicious virus is threatening the computer's operability. The player has to find the virus and eradicate it by disconnecting the terminals of the graphics processor. The player has the opportunity to practice before taking on the Boss Challenge. In the practice phase, the player practices number conversions without fear of penalties. In the Challenge phase, the player is timed and has to perform the number conversions before the allotted time expires. The combination of practice and challenge provides players with the ability to practice number conversions and, when ready, to take on the challenge task where assessment is conducted to provide the player with the knowledge of how well he/she has performed on the challenge. The number conversion level of BINX was implemented and formally evaluated showing improvement in student scores after using BINX."

Abstract: "ideo games and other applications using off - the - shelf tracking devices often take a simple approach to gesture and pose recognition: a recognized gesture is always mapped to the same action . This approach basically turns a gesture into a binary button pre ss and misses much of the nuance implicit in natural gestures. In this paper we explore , in a game design setting , the use of continuous 3D gesture sequences where in attributes of individual gestures, such as speed, direction, etc., combine to influence th e r esult of the sequence as a whole . We present Pixelbending, a game demo built using the Microsoft Kinect and Unreal Developers Kit (UDK) in which the player performs Tai Chi inspired movements to control water. Designed with the goal of creating a fun an d engaging 3D game experience built on a nuanced gesture set, the demo was well received by many players of different ages and sizes. Through the development process we encountered challenges to working with off - the - shelf devices."

"In November, Nintendo will release Wii U, the first update to the groundbreaking motion-controlled gaming console that took the industry by storm in 2006. Pundits and developers presume Sony and Microsoft will quickly follow suit with their own updated game consoles - also the first in years - though neither have confirmed it."

"Three years ago, PAX East came to Beantown. It landed at the Hynes Convention Center and was seen by many as the acknowledgement that Boston was a worthy adversary against the perceived dominance of the West Coast gaming giants. They had EA and Microsoft, we had Harmonix and Rockstar New England."

Chris Robertson on building Microsoft's new game design studio in Canada

From the abstract: "A serious game for construction planning and scheduling education must provide an authentic environment for gameplay. To achieve this requirement, the game environment must be created from CAD drawings of a real project. The game engine must have components for providing timely scaffolding and support to the user. Storing the vast amount of data for a real project requires data structures optimized for fast rendering at the same time easily accessing and manipulating building elements and element data. This paper discusses a game engine developed for creating construction planning and scheduling educational games. The game engine is designed from scratch for performance and flexibility. It includes a component for directly importing data from a Revit model for building the game environment, interfaces Microsoft Project for scheduling, includes a feedback module, and a scoring system for measuring user performance."

"Abstract. While building a game engine in Microsoft XNA 4 that pow- ered a RTS (real-time strategy) tower defense type game, we were faced with the issue of increasing the amount of visual feedback received by the player and adding value to the gameplay by creating a more immersive atmosphere. This is a common goal shared by all games, and with the recent advancements in graphics hardware (namely OpenGL, DirectX and the advent of programmable shaders) it has become a necessity. In this pa- per we will build upon the shadowing techniques known as VSM (variance shadow map) and LVSM (layered variance shadow map) and discuss some of the issues and optimizations we employed in order to add real-time soft shadowing capabilities to our game engine."

Three interactive video games designed by University of Houston students chosen for competition

Abstract: "Mobile gaming is a big driver of app marketplaces. However, few mobile games deliver truly distinctive gameplay experi- ences for ad hoc collocated users. As an example of such an experience, consider a sword ght dual between two users facing each other where each user's phone simulates a sword. With phone in hand, the users' thrusts and blocks translate to attacks and counterattacks in the game. Such Phone-to- Phone Mobile Motion Games (MMG) represent interesting and novel gameplay for ad hoc users in the same location. One enabler for anMMG game like sword ght is continuous, accurate distance ranging. Existing ranging schemes cannot meet the stringent requirements of MMG games: speed, ac- curacy and noise robustness. In this work, we design FAR, a new ranging scheme that can localize at 12Hz with 2cm median error while withstanding up to 0dB noise, multipath and Doppler eect issues. Our implementation runs on com- modity smartphones and does not require any external in- frastructure. Moreover, distance measurement accuracy is comparable to that of Kinect, a xed-infrastructure motion capture system. Evaluation on users playing two prototype games indicate that FAR can fully support dynamic game motion in real-time."

Abstract: "Combiform is a novel digital gaming console featuring four combinable handheld controllers. It is a new and unique tangible gaming interface that stresses the importance of co-located, co-attentive social interactions among players. In particular, multiple players may freely combine and lock together their handheld game controllers, thereby creating a very flexible collective and transformable tangible interface. Combiform emphasizes social interaction through controller-to-controller contact. The platform and its 10 games introduce novel, tangible and physical co-attentive experiences that are not found in traditional co-located gaming platforms using mimetic interfaces (e.g. Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect). The project is the first game console especially designed for a new emerging digital game genre - Communal Casual Game. The new game genre captures a perspective of integrating classical folk game design approach with digital elements"

"SmartGlass, a software-based application that extends Xbox 360 experiences onto smartphones and tablets, does shine best when paired with television or movie entertainment. That's where programmers have fleshed out the most whiz-bang features at this time, but game designers have clever plans for this tech, too."

Collaboration between RIT and Microsoft Research called Just Press Play