A Framework for Supporting Immersion in Commodity Gaming

Abstract

Presented here is a case for a higher level of
engagement and immersion in gaming by proposing gaming
software support for displays that engage the players peripheral
vision. It is widely accepted that the sense of “being there” or
“presence” is heightened by “removing the frame”, that is, filling
the viewers field of view with a virtual environment. Except for a
few special cases this is almost entirely unsupported in current
commodity games, and yet the importance is readily accepted as
is illustrated by the widespread use in commercial simulators and
virtual reality environments. This paper will present the general
requirements necessary to support a range of seamless immersive
displays, that is, displays that engage a significant portion, if not
all, of the users field of view. It will further outline a software
pipeline split into two parts, a generic section that generates the
necessary visual information followed by a section that handles
the device/display specific details.
Part of the motivation stems from the realisation that there are
many possible hardware configurations for immersive displays
and it would be too high a burden on the software developer to
support them all. Equally the installation supplier does not have
access to the underlying software engine or source code. The
proposed solution then is to separate the problem into two pieces,
those that are the responsibility of the software developer and
those that are the responsibility of the display provider.