Anwendungs-Design für virtuelles Klettern

During the last years, Virtual Reality became available for many people due to recent developments in the Video Game Industries. Not only the hardware advanced, but also the quantity and quality of provided content especially created for the requirements of Virtual Reality. But even though there are attempts to transfer body movements from reality to the virtual world, for example gestures of the hands, the problem of missing haptic feedback remains and the discrepancy between the real and the virtual elements reduces the possible extend of immersion into the virtual world. To counter this problem, the Vreeclimber project of TU Wien mixes real and virtual elements. Based on a real mechanical climbing wall that can rotate and therefore enables climbing into nearly endless heights, by using Virtual Reality glasses, this plain climbing wall can be overlaid with virtual content. The worlds designed for this setup can present very high climbing walls at various places while still providing real haptic and natural climbing movements. In this thesis, based on the mentioned setup, the effect of different Virtual Reality contents on the climbing experience were studied. To achieve this, three different scenarios were created and implemented. They differed not only in their setting, but also in various effects used to enhance the climbing experience. Furthermore, it was possible to change the level of difficulty for the people who climbed. Those scenarios were implemented using the method of evolutionary prototyping and then evaluated by a small test group with a questionnaire and the methods Thinking Aloud and Observation. The evaluation showed that an accurate calibration of the real and the virtual climbing wall is essential for a positive climbing experience. Also, those scenarios with many details and effects were rated better by the people who climbed than those where the focus was put mostly on the optics. By this, insights were gained on how to design Virtual Reality content that is used with a real-world set up so that people can immerse into the worlds and enjoy their climbing experience.