Serious 3D gaming research for the vision impaired

This paper describes “A walk in the park” which is a serious game designed and developed for performing auditory-vision sensory substitution (AVSS) research for the visually impaired. Until now, evaluating AVSS solutions required the creation of a sensory substitution device (SSD) to test a strategy for converting images into sounds. This process often takes years to complete. 3D game engines provide a research and training platform that is capable of quickly implementing and testing different image-to-sound conversion strategies in a virtual world environment.