A $1.5 Gesture Recognizer as Input Device for a Multi-Platform Virtual Game Controller

Current high-end computer games mostly are developed simultaneously for several dierent plat- forms like e.g. PC, XBox c or Playstadion c . These sys- tems often have varying individual input devices. The necessity to consider all of them during the development process potentially obfuscates development and might increase cost signicantly. To overcome this problem virtual control devices can be introduced. Our paper has two main contributions. First, the design and im- plementation of a virtual game controller as an inter- face between any application in the context of video games and any kind of hardware input devices on mul- tiple platforms are discussed. Second, a modication of the $1 gesture recognizer introduced by Wobbrock et. al. is presented that speeds up the recognition of two- dimensional gestures signicantly. Finally, we demon- strate the usage of the gesture recognizer as a high-level input device for our multi-platform virtual controller.