In order for natural interaction in Augmented Reality (AR) to become widely adopted, the techniques used need to be shown to support precise interaction, and the gestures used proven to be easy to understand and perform. Recent research has explored free-hand gesture interaction with AR interfaces, but there have been few formal evaluations conducted with such systems.In this paper we introduce and evaluate two natural interaction techniques: the free-hand gesture based Grasp-Shell, which provides direct physical manipulation of virtual content; and the multi-modal Gesture-Speech, which combines speech and gesture for indirect natural interaction. These techniques support object selection, 6 degree of freedom movement, uniform scaling, as well as physics-based interaction such as pushing and flinging.We conducted a study evaluating and comparing Grasp-Shell and Gesture-Speech for fundamental manipulation tasks. The results show that Grasp-Shell outperforms Gesture-Speech in both efficiency and user preference for translation and rotation tasks, while Gesture-Speech is better for uniform scaling. They could be good complementary interaction methods in a physics-enabled AR environment, as this combination potentially provides both control and interactivity in one interface. We conclude by discussing implications and future directions of this research.

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Digital games are increasingly profiting from sensing technologies. However, their focus is mostly on sensing limb movements. We propose that sensing capabilities could also be used to engage players with proxemics: the interpersonal distance between players. We further add that wireless networks offer complementary distance zones for designers, offering novel design resources for digital play. We use our own as well as other games to articulate a set of strategies on how designers can utilize both proxemics and the new wireless proxemics to facilitate novel play experiences. Ultimately, with our work, we aim to expand the range of digital play.

Balancing play can be important for engaging people in games since it allows players with different skills and abilities to play together and still feel challenged. Balancing play in exertion games has mainly been explored by challenging the physical effort. To further our understanding of how to design for more balanced experiences, we extend this prior work by studying the affect on player's score by a score handicap. This gives the less skilled player an initial score advantage. A performance handicap was also studied by asking the most skilled player to play with the non-dominant hand. We studied digital and non-digital table tennis games, which provide different game interactions, as examples of non-parallel, competitive games. Our results show that these different game interactions influenced the impact the different handicaps had on player's scores. Therefore, we suggest the game interaction is a key element to understand the suitability of score and performance balancing methods.

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