| Player Game Interaction Research University of Nevada, Reno |  |
Blind Hero: Guitar Hero for Users with Visual Impairments
Guitar Hero is a series of music video games in which players use a guitar-shaped controller to simulate the playing of guitar across numerous rock music songs. The gameplay of Guitar Hero relies on pattern matching: players match visual notes indicated by different colors that scroll on-screen to colored fret buttons on the controller and have to strum the controller in time to the music in order to score points. This game is inaccessible to users who are visually impaired as they cannot perceive what visual cues are provided. In this game music is used to facilitate pattern matching. The use of audio for sensory substitution of visual cues is complicated as this interferes with the player hearing the music.This research project explored the novel use of haptic feedback in sensory substitution to facilitate a pattern matching game. We developed a haptic glove that has little pager engines attached to each finger which are activated using a USB controller. We modified an open source version of guitar hero called frets on fire, such as to provide output using this haptic glove. Several tradeoffs were made to play the game using the haptic glove. We removed the lookahead, e.g., the ability to see which cues are coming up and instead the game is played using a "whac-a-mole like gameplay", i.e., The user Newses the button the finger is on which received the cue. Instead of 5 inputs we removed one input as the fifth input is typically provided using the fourth finger.
Media
 The custom glove we developed with a pager engine attached to each finger (excluding the thumb). Click for hi-res version. |