Tour de Tune 2
Auditory-Game-Motor Synchronisation with Music Tempo in an Immersive Virtual Reality Exergame.
Authors: Betty Yin, Samuel Bailey, Emma Hu, Milinda Jayarekera, Alex Shaw, Burkhard C. Wünsche
Screenshot of the Tour de Tune 2 game
This paper details the results of a study performed at the University of Auckland. The study investigated the use of music and virtual reality gaming to increase motivation, and reduce the perceived level of exertion during exercises. This involved the creation of a game using a virtual reality headset, exercise bike, and computer vision. A user study was performed in order to evaluate the effects of the game.
Abstract
Physical activity has numerous benefits, but a large proportion of the population do not exercise enough. Exergaming, the combination of exercises and gaming, has been suggested as a means to increase physical activity for people not intrinsically motivated to exercise. Despite promising results, usage of exergames outside research projects is limited and commercial exercise games usually do not promote a sufficient exercise intensity.
Music has been shown to be able to increase motivation and performance, and reduce the perceived level of exertion during exercises. In this research we investigate whether users’ perception of exercises can be improved by synchronising music and gameplay. We evaluate the subjective experience of our system using a within-subject comparison between four different conditions: i) control condition with no music or gameplay, ii) gameplay-only condition with no music, iii) music-gameplay condition with asynchronous music, and iv) music-gameplay condition with synchronous music.
Our results show that both of the music-gameplay conditions resulted in a significant increase in motivation and perceived value of activity, and a significant decrease in distress, when compared with the gameplay-only and control conditions. We discuss the results and their practical implications, and make suggestions for future research.
Publication
Copies are available through the usual academic suspects. DOI: 10.1145/3437378.3437379.
Award
Awarded the HIKM 2021 best paper prize by the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia.