XR Chess

Posted on by hxc5010

Team Name

XR Chess

Timeline

Fall 2023 – Spring 2024

Students

  • Gavin George
  • Henry Chiu
  • Joel Pimenta
  • Heet Upen Patel
  • Naila Imran

Sponsor

Professor Shawn Gieser

Abstract

XR chess offers an innovative approach to a traditional chess game. The total immersion of AR allows players to maintain their tactile connection to the game by using a virtual chess board, while also controlling their chess pieces in virtual space. The application facilitates communication between players using headsets, making it easy to track game progress and initiate games. XR chess caters to players of varying skill levels, offering an engaging and intuitive platform tailored to chess enthusiasts.

Background

Throughout recent years, the popularity of chess has been on an upward trend. An increasing number of people are coming together to master this classic strategy game. However, most people interested in Chess play online via dedicated websites like Chess.com.​

While this is beneficial from an accessibility standpoint, the social aspect of playing together in person enhances the chess experience, which is completely lost in a virtual setting. Although two players might be next to each other while playing together online, they won’t interact and communicate the same as when they play across a physical board. XR Chess will aid in enhancing the chess-playing experience to ensure that the social facet of chess is not lost.​

XR chess aims to encapsulate the game of chess in an intuitive and tactile manner. Whether two friends are playing across the room, or two rivals are across the world, XR chess will enhance the game of chess through immersion. To accomplish our objective, the chessboard and chess pieces will be virtual and overlaid on top of the user’s environment in a distinctive and visually appealing style.​

Project Requirements

XR Game: The game must be played against another opponent in mixed reality.

Chess Board Recognition: The headset shall recognize a tabletop surface and place an 8×8 chessboard on top of it.

Chess Logic: Each piece must function exactly like the physical chess pieces. This includes some special game logic such as castling and pawn promotion.

XR Movement: The game shall allow the user to have different perspectives of the chessboard. This means players will be allowed to get up and walk around the board. All the virtual pieces will remain in the same location as the player moves around.

Headset Tracking: The headset must effectively track the user’s hand movements to ensure that the move is successfully recognized. If a user can not use hand movements, the game will default to the headset controller.

Player Option: The game will allow the user to play against a computer or a real person. The computer player will allow anyone to play by themselves, or allow for easier testing of the chess mechanics without two people.

Winner Recognition: After the game is won, the game will display a winning message to the winner, and a losing message to the loser. This means that the game should recognize which player has won through some type of process.

Chess After Game: After completing a game the user will have the option to return to the main menu or replay. This will show up for all options of completing the game, which includes winning, losing, drawing, resigning, and disconnecting.

Chess Piece Highlights: The game will highlight a player’s selected piece and legal moves from their position. This will help players recognize how to move a specific piece and will ensure that no illegal moves are made.

Resign Option: The game will include an option to resign to the opponent. The resigning player will select an option to resign. If the player resigns, they will automatically lose.

System Overview

XR Chess is structured into three layers, the XR Coordination system, the UI system, and the Game Logic system. The layers together create an XR Chess software that offers users an immersive experience of playing chess in a mixed-reality environment.

XR Coordination System Layer: The XR Coordination layer controls the status and recognition of user inputs within the virtual environment and creates visual XR components such as the board and chess pieces. It uses the Quest’s onboard cameras to monitor the user’s movements in the physical space and interpret hand gestures, thereby executing corresponding actions such as picking up pieces and confirming placement to the Game Logic layer.

UI System Layer: The User Interface layer is responsible for the visual elements of our game and encompasses the visible portion of the XR layer. It also controls the navigation and interaction between the XR and Logic functions of the application. This is the front end of our product and implements components such as user-accessible buttons, menus, colors, and more in a sense that promotes an intuitive experience.​

Game Logic System Layer: The Game Logic layer is the foundation of our game and manages chess piece interaction. Whenever a chess piece interacts with anything on the board, this layer relays the necessary data to the XR layer so that it can update its’ status following the official chess rules and results. Key components of the game of chess such as move validation, checkmate detection, and capture recognition are contained within this layer.​

Results

Future Work​

While we are satisfied with what we have completed, we were not able to add all the features we would have liked due to time constraints, such as themes for the chess board and pieces or the ability to flip the chess board after a game.

Project Files

Project Charter (link)

System Requirements Specification (link)

Architectural Design Specification (link)

Detailed Design Specification (link)

Poster (link)

References

  1. Bezmalinovic, Tomislav. “MR Chess on Quest 3 Is a Stunning Showcase of Social Mixed Reality.” MIXED Reality News, 31 Jan. 2024, mixed-news.com/en/meta-quest-3-mr-chess-hands-on/. ​
  2. Frédéric Rayar, David Boas, and Rémi Patrizio. Art-chess: a tangible augmented reality chess on​
    tabletop. In Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Interactive Tabletops & Surfaces,​
    pages 229–233, 2015​
  3. Marios Bikos, Yuta Itoh, Gudrun Klinker, and Konstantinos Moustakas. An interactive augmented​
    reality chess game using bare-hand pinch gestures. In 2015 International Conference on Cyberworlds​
    (CW), pages 355–358. IEEE, 2015​
  4. Tashko Rizov, Jelena Ðoki ́c, and Milan Tasevski. Design of a board game with augmented reality.​
    FME transactions, 47(2):253–257, 2019.​

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