sPortal - a Natural User Interface for First-Person Game Controls

sPortal is an interactive approach for first person video game control via a natural user interface. It introduces an improved full-body motion-based game experience, focusing on physical walking, running and jumping as input methods. It facilitates physical exercising whilst playing computer games.

sPortal provides a new game experience based on customized levels created for the video game Portal 2 that are designed around specific exercises.

Our approach currently supports walking-in-place (WIP) and suspended walking as input modalities. For continuous body movement detection, sPortal uses a sensor fusion of Wii Remotes and Kinect to recognize walking phases and physical exercises. The positions of all body parts are continuously tracked by the Kinect allowing their relations to be evaluated in real time to recognize exercise movements. As an alternative to unaided walking in place, players can be suspended during walking when wearing a harness. The harness which is attached to the ceiling with an elastic rope, which allows for near-natural walking on a slippery board. It also includes warm-up as well as training levels we created based on selected sequences of exercises.

sPortal was developed during our master project in the team of 13 students. My tasks were research and creating an exercise programm, implementing of movement detection with Kinec for some exercises, level design, shooting and editing the videos, testing and evaluation and some others.