AirKanoid – Visual Presentation vs. Physical Proximity in Mixed Reality Entertainment Applications by Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath, Martin Faust, Hartmut Rosch.

A pervasive game like AirKanoid (see Figure 1) gets the game out of the computer and in direct contact with the players by combining the best of two worlds: Flexible and variable representation of the game from the virtual world, and unrestricted bodily movement and physical challenge for the players from the actual world. (...) AirKanoid is a MR remake of Taito's classic Arkanoid game1 (see Figure 3). Other games in this tradition are Atari's Breakout, and Pong. AirKanoid takes over the main game concept of bricks and paddles and adapts it to a more general and natural way of interaction. The main difference is the use of our graspable AirBats as interfaces for controlling the paddles.

Why do I blog this? the idea is funny, and the paper describes an interesting evaluation, relying on various indexes (performance, ease of play, awareness, experience, place).