Development of an Immersive Cultural Game using Mixed Reality

Abstract

This game aims to preserve and spread cultural practices. It introduces new gaming mechanics, which allows user interaction with virtual game objects using hand gestures. The user’s objective is to hunt prey in their natural habitat, which means that the player will physically change his location to hunt a specific prey using his falcon to mimic how the falcon hunts for its prey in the real world. This interaction with the real world, along with incorporation of realistic graphics and mixed reality features, enhances the user’s experience and helps in preserving cultural practices. Previous work tried to achieve the same goal by different approaches that led to different user segments and different usability cases. One major limitation in that work was the accessibility due to the use of specialized hardware. The hardware is accessible to a small segment of users; however, given the new limitations forced by the COVID-19 situation reusing the hardware is prohibited ; and as a result, not many will have access to the developed solution. The current implementation was designed to work on both Android and IOS to have a social interaction between the largest possible numbers of players. Other features that could also contribute to the goal of the project include building a virtual museum and displaying real falcons using the capabilities mixed reality has to offer.