Gaming meets Fitness: Engaging With Virtual Training Worlds
Today, Virtual Reality and movement-based, digital games have become serious and well-established training applications. Whereas in the past, exergames for the Nintendo Wii or the Microsoft Kinect turned living rooms all over the world into playful training settings, today new technologies are finding their way into the gyms and convert their training spaces into virtual sports arenas.
Although the potentials of these training applications have been proven numerous times, there are still fundamental system weaknesses left, which need to be solved in order to make the full range of engaging and effective experiences perceptible for the user.
It will be illustrated where playful fitness environments are heading if an interdisciplinary team of sports scientists, game designers, industrial designers and the target group itself are working together by means of the two examples of fitness game settings, Plunder Planet and ExerCube.
