Towards Immersive Mixed Reality Street Play: Understanding Collocated Bodily Play with See-through Head-Mounted Displays in Public Spaces

2025-05-18

AI Summary

This study investigates the social implications of mixed reality (MR) street games enabled by transmissive head-mounted displays (HMDs) in authentic public urban spaces. Addressing a critical gap in prior work—namely, the scarcity of in-the-wild empirical studies, particularly those examining co-located multiplayer interactions and embodied engagement—the research employs Research-through-Design (RtD) to develop the Multiplayer Omnipresent Fighting Arena (MOFA) probe series and conduct the first field experiment of MR street gaming in open city environments. Through ethnographic observation and interaction analysis, we identify six social influence factors, three recurrent interaction conflicts, and four emergent collaborative patterns, distilling three core challenges and opportunities: social acceptability, spatial coordination, and improvisational collaboration. The study contributes the first empirically grounded, city-scale framework for MR interaction in public space, offering both theoretical insights and practical design guidelines for immersive experiences in shared urban environments.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

We're witnessing an upcoming paradigm shift as Mixed Reality (MR) See-through Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) become ubiquitous, with use shifting from controlled, private settings to spontaneous, public ones. While location-based pervasive mobile games like Pok'emon GO have seen success, the embodied interaction of MR HMDs is moving us from phone-based screen-touching gameplay to MR HMD-enabled collocated bodily play. Major tech companies are continuously releasing visionary videos where urban streets transform into vast mixed reality playgrounds-imagine Harry Potter-style wizard duels on city streets. However, few researchers have conducted real-world, in-the-wild studies of such Immersive Mixed Reality Street Play (IMRSP) in public spaces in anticipation of a near future with prevalent MR HMDs. Through empirical studies on a series of research-through-design game probes called Multiplayer Omnipresent Fighting Arena (MOFA), we gain initial understanding of this under-explored area by identifying the social implications, challenges, and opportunities of this new paradigm.

Problem

• Understanding collocated bodily play with MR HMDs in public spaces
• Exploring social implications of immersive mixed reality street play
• Addressing challenges of MR HMD-enabled gameplay in urban settings

Innovation

• Using see-through HMDs for public MR street play
• Exploring collocated bodily play via MR HMDs
• Conducting real-world studies with MOFA game probes