Compensating for Perspective-based Distortion on Large Interactive Floor Displays: the SpaceHopper Field Experiment

Very large floor displays can promote engaging public experiences, but incur perspective-related warping, making it challenging to comprehend and interact with distal objects when standing on the display. We introduce a perspective compensated view technique that maintains the relative size and shape of objects as they move away from the viewer, and explore the technique in SpaceHopper, a large-scale, floor-projected version of the game Asteroids. Players bounce on a hopper ball to control their ship in one of two control modes: bounce to repel or bounce to shoot. We evaluated SpaceHopper in a field experiment with 59 participants, finding that perspective compensated view yielded longer playing times (and higher scores) in the bounce to fire modality. Bystanders were highly engaged with players and also seemed to be unaware of the perspective warping, suggesting that visually compensating for the interactor’s perspective does not adversely impact the enjoyment of passive participants and audience members, at least under some circumstances.