The concept of pervasive virtuality and its application in digital entertainment systems

Abstract

Virtual reality has received a lot of attention lately due to a new wave of affordable HMD devices arriving in the consumer market. These new display devices-along with the availability of fast wireless networking, comprehensive wearable technologies, and robust context-aware devices-are enabling the emergence of a new type of mixed-reality system for games and digital entertainment. In this paper we name this new situation as “pervasive virtuality”, which we define as being a virtual environment that is extended by incorporating physical environments, physical objects as “proxy” elements, and context information. This new mixed reality paradigm is not well understood by both industry and academia. Therefore, we propose an extension to the well-known Milgram and Colquhoun’s taxonomy to cope with this new mixed-reality situation. Furthermore, we identify fundamental aspects and features that help designers and developers of this new type of application. We present these features as a two-level map of conceptual characteristics (i.e. quality requirements). This paper also presents a brief case study using these characteristics.