The Team

Cole Carver, Thomas Cooper, Matthew McGraw, Sebastian Monroy

The Mouse

A wearable wristband built using ITG-3200 Gyroscope, AXDL-345 Accelerometer, and mbed microcontroller. Used to send mouse click and movement commands to the connected computer.

The Rift

An next-generation virtual reality headset designed for immersive gaming, developed by Oculus VR.

The Game

A simple Unity3D game that combines the two prior elements to create an immersive experience for the player using the Oculus Rift to control the player's view while using the mouse interface to control the player's gun crosshairs.

Components

Mbed microcontroller, ITG-3200 Gyroscope, AXDL-345 Accelerometer, 10 uF capacitor, push button, and Oculus Rift headset.

Construction

Creating the arm band device consisted of building the circuit to the right on a breadboard and mounting it on a section of a (clean) tubesock. The Mbed pin layouts are depicted to the right. The user wears the device on his or her wrist, holding their arm straight out ahead of them.

To play the game, simply build the project files and wear the Oculus Rift headset. To move the mouse (and aim with the in-game crosshairs), the user slowly moves their arm in the desired direction without rotating their wrist or bending their elbow. The user can also click the pushbutton to send a left click command to the computer, which triggers a shooting event in-game.







Results

While the final product ultimately functions as intended, the motion-based mouse interface requires is unable to access certain parts of the screen due to the way the mouse jumps between points on the screen rather than approaching them at the speed of the user's movements. It can also be a little tricky to operate in that rotating your wrist or arm even a small amount can affect the accuracy of the mouse input.

The Unity3D game incorporates the motion-based mouse interface and the Oculus Rift devices well, allowing the user to aim and shoot at approaching enemies using the wrist-bound device while being able to look around the environment using the headset.

For a demonstration of the game being played, view the videos below.

Demonstration



Future Work

The motion-based mouse interface has plenty of room for improvement in terms of ease of use and resolution of input, as mentioned above. It also is unable to detect the exact amount the user has moved their arm, limiting the user's movements to a single speed. Despite the game being fun regardless of these issues, these small flaws are enough to break the immersion of the Unity3D game.

Another possible improvement would be to make the wrist-bound device utilize wireless communication and a battery to cut down on the amount of cords the user is required to keep track of.



There are numerous options for improving the Unity3D game as well. For instance, the game does not technically qualify as a game. It is currently more of a technical demonstration due to the fact that there are no win/loss conditions. The player just shoots "zombies" indefinitely until they wish to stop.

The game in its current state has no art assets, either. In order to really immerse the player, the game would benefit greatly from using more complex zombie models and animations. Textures for the ground, a realistic skybox, and a convincing environment would also improve player immersion greatly.