Real-Time Immersive Table Tennis Game for Two Players with Motion Tracking

Presented in this paper is a novel real-time virtual reality game developed to enable two participants to play table tennis immersively with each other´s avatar in a shared virtual environment. It uses a wireless hybrid inertial and ultrasonic tracking system to provide the positions and orientations of both the head (view point) and hand (racket) of each player, as well as two large rear-projection stereoscopic screens to provide a view-dependent 3D display of the game environment. Additionally, a physics-based ball animation model is designed for the game, which includes fast detection of the ball colliding with table, net and quick moving rackets. The system is shown to offer some unique features and form a good platform for development of other immersive games for multiple players.