Free-Roam Virtual Reality: A New Avenue for Gaming

Abstract

Recent coronavirus pandemic has restricted people’s movement. This has resulted in people spending more time indoors, and quite often, in pursuits like streaming and/or gaming. Traditional gaming often requires the users to sit for hours in front of a screen. This makes the practice unhealthy, and at the same time, makes it relatively less social. Free-roam gaming is a new form of gaming that utilizes virtual reality (VR) techniques to create an environment in which the user feels present. In free-roam gaming, a camera captures users’ movements and converts into gaming actions in the game. Generally such free-roam games are conducted in large spaces to allow for free movement, and thus, allow a group of users to play the same simultaneously. This chapter explores the free-roam VR games via a case study of Zero Latency and the potential of such VR games in dealing with the isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.