INSIDE: Using a Cubic Multisensory Controller for Interaction With a Mixed Reality Environment

Introduction

Technology increasingly assists the creation of new environments by achieving distortion, strengthening or replacement of reality. The real or physical world which we live in consists of physical objects that we can feel with all our senses. Through technology, our senses can be augmented offering the opportunities to experience new environments. In a different reality, it is not mandatory for all our senses to participate. However, the more of them participate the easier it becomes for the user to experience the illusion of immersion, that is, the feeling of experiencing something real rather than something unreal (O’ Sullivan & Igoe, 2004). Human sight is the sense that can mostly be augmented since what we can perceive is what we define as real (Welch, 1978).

The term of virtual reality is often mistaken for environments not fully generated by a computer so the boundaries between different categories of such environments are somewhat blurred. Mixed reality combines knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines, like computer vision, signal processing, graphics, user interfaces and sensors (Costanza et al., 2009). Experiences that do not fully fit into the real or virtual world transform existing technologies, relationships and locations into a game platform, by expanding their structure mixing it with daily experiences (Bonsignore et al., 2012).

The aim of the game Inside is to familiarize the user with a mixed reality environment through a tangible interface where the input devices play the central role and the screen is a window to the virtual world. Unlike most mixed reality applications, the human sight is the one that we try to displace in an attempt to give users an illusion that blends the real and the virtual without the need to augment their sight. Gestures and physical world actions are mixed and affect the progress of the game and vice versa. That is, conditions and actions in the virtual world can affect the physical world. A special cubic multisensory controller is designed, and its purpose is to make the user immerse between the physical and the synthetic world exceeding ordinary gameplay.