DIFFERENT SIMULATIONS OF A BILLIARDS GAME.

Performance improvements in graphics hardware have made it possible to visualize complex virtual environments and provided opportunities to interact with these in a more realistic way. In this paper two different types of Virtual Reality applications for simulating a billiards game are presented. In one application a commercial haptic interface is used to provide a force feedback, thus rendering the interaction realistic and exciting to the user. However, there are limitations due to the use of a commercial haptic device which has not been specifically designed for this game and thus limits the workspace. Also, in the commercial device, it is not possible to use the left hand when aiming and striking the ball, as you can in a real game of billiards. In order to overcome these limitations another type of simulation has been developed using a real billiard cue; its movements are reproduced in the virtual environment using a visual marker detection system. No force feedback is provided to the player. In the game simulations the virtual environments have been built using the development environment XVR in the first simulator and OpenSceneGraph in the second; rigid body dynamics have been simulated utilizing the ODE and PhysX physics engines. ARToolkit was the visual marker-based detection system utilized to replicate the movements of the real cue used by the player in the virtual environment of the second simulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]