Collaborative gaming in augmented reality

We introduce a local collaborative environment for gaming. In our setup multiple users can interact with the virtual game and the real surroundings at the same time. They are able to communicate with other players during the game. We describe an augmented reality setup for multiple users with see-trough head-mounted displays, allowing dedicated stereoscopic views and individualized interaction for each user. We use face-snapping for fast and precise direct object manipulation. With face snapping and the subdivision of the gaming space into spatial regions, the semantics of actions can be derived out of geometric actions of the user. Further, we introduce a layering concept allowing individual views onto the common data structure. The layer concept allows to make privacy management very easy by simply manipulating the common data structure. Moreover, assigning layers to spatial regions carefully, a special privacy management is often not necessary. Moving objects from one region into another will automatically change their visibility and privacy for each participant. We demonstrate our system with two example board-games: Virtual Roulette and MahJongg, both relying heavily on social communication and the need of a private space.