Next Generation Gaming - Interactive curriculae of TU Ilmenau

Head mounted displays (HMD) are not new. Actually they already come into existence in the late sixties of the previous century. However, so far they very only used sparsely. They were in particular used for research in the context of Virtual Reality (VR). Due to their heavy weight and the rather low quality of the display they could actually only be used for short periods. Further, in particular for higher resolution displays one had to pay some thousand or even ten-thousand dollar, making them practically unaffordable for private users. Additionally, for actually diving into a virtual world, a precise tracking system, tracking the position and orientation of the user’s head is required to achieve an immersive impression of the virtual environment. Again, those system were either of rather low quality or very expensive, preventing a usage by consumers. While still only available as pre-release for developing purposes, the Oculus Rift is the first HMD providing a high-resolution, high-immersive VR display at a reasonable, affordable price. In its second release the system already integrates a tracking system, giving anyone full access to VR. Obviously, the game industry has quickly adopted this trend. Today, already a couple of current games have been adapted to work with the Oculus Rift. However, future opportunities go far beyond this. Not at least the acquisition of Oculus VR by Facebook for 2 billion US dollars showed that people see a great potential in this development. Will the revolutionize digital games? Which games will benefit from this development, which won’t? Will there be a new generation of games? Will the users finally accept this? Which (other) application scenarios are possible? Will our way to play games change? Or is there another story behind all this? In this research seminar students will have the opportunity to investigate into these and many other questions, examine trends and create their own concepts, ideas as well as application/game prototypes. The individual research topics and the methods selected will be presented and discussed with other participants

• Amount of participation in group discussions as part of a regular seminar attendance (10%)

• Quality of the presentations of concepts, methods, research projects, and results (20%)

• Quality of research (empirical study, application design and/or realization) and scientific paper (50%)

• Quality of peer reviews (20%)

• Video, etc. (optional) (up to 20% bonus)

• Amount of participation in group discussions as part of a regular seminar attendance (10%)

• Quality of the presentations of concepts, methods, research projects, and results (20%)

• Quality of research (empirical study, application design and/or realization) and scientific paper (50%)

• Quality of peer reviews (20%)

• Video, etc. (optional) (up to 20% bonus)