Exercise can improve health and well‐being. With this in mind, immersive virtual reality (VR) games are being developed to promote physical activity, and are generally evaluated through user studies. However, building such applications is time consuming and expensive. This paper introduces VR‐Rides, an object‐oriented application framework focused on the development of experiment‐oriented VR exergames. Following the modular programming pattern, this framework facilitates the integration of different hardware (such as VR devices, sensors, and physical activity devices) within immersive VR experiences that overlay game narratives on Google Street View panoramas. Combining software engineering and interaction patterns, modules of VR‐Rides can be easily added and managed in the Unity game engine. We evaluate the code efficiency and development effort across our VR exergames developed using VR‐Rides. The reliability, maintainability, and usability of our framework are also demonstrated via code metrics analysis and user studies. The results show that investing in a systematic approach to reusing code and design can be a worthwhile effort for researchers beyond software engineering.

中文翻译：

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VR-Rides：沉浸式虚拟现实游戏的面向对象应用框架

运动可以改善健康和福祉。考虑到这一点，沉浸式虚拟现实 (VR) 游戏正在开发以促进身体活动，并且通常通过用户研究进行评估。然而，构建这样的应用程序既耗时又昂贵。本文介绍了 VR-Rides，这是一个面向对象的应用程序框架，专注于开发面向实验的 VR 运动游戏。遵循模块化编程模式，该框架促进了不同硬件（例如 VR 设备、传感器和体育活动设备）在沉浸式 VR 体验中的集成，这些体验覆盖了 Google 街景全景图上的游戏叙述。结合软件工程和交互模式，可以在 Unity 游戏引擎中轻松添加和管理 VR-Rides 的模块。我们评估了使用 VR-Rides 开发的 VR 运动游戏的代码效率和开发工作。我们框架的可靠性、可维护性和可用性也通过代码度量分析和用户研究得到证明。结果表明，投资于重用代码和设计的系统方法对于软件工程以外的研究人员来说是值得的。