Virtual network marathon: Fitness-oriented E-sports in distributed virtual environment

Abstract

E-Sport is a newly emerging research field, especially in China, which has attracted many people's attention. In this paper, an innovative distributed online game platform is designed for fitness-oriented E-Sports, supporting multi-players or athletes. To provide users with more sense of immersion, technologies of virtual reality and sport simulation have been integrated into such system. Taking prototype system of Virtual Network Marathon as an example, detail designs are focused on the five aspects: story design, network communication, human computer interface, hardware interface and 3D render engine. All these design philosophies gain advantages of scale expandable, functions extendable, an efficient communication protocol and real-time rendering. Users at a distance can deeply immerse into virtual environment and enjoy exercise, competition and entertainment. Implementation of system is also described to validate the feasibility of our method. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.