Low Cost Projection Environment for Immersive Gaming

As computer performance and graphics hardware continue to improve, the gamer is increasingly being presented with richer and more realistic visual environments. Viewing these virtual environments is generally still based upon display technology that does not exploit two very important characteristics of our visual system, namely stereoscopic vision that is responsible for the enhanced depth perception we see in the real world and a wide field of view that allows us to sense activity in our far peripheral vision. In what follows it will be argued that for immersive gaming a wide field of view is both functionally more useful and places less stress on the visual system than stereoscopic viewing. In order to support gaming with a wide vertical and horizontal field of view a low cost projection system will be introduced and the implications for game developers discussed.