Audio defence is a perfect comparison. The difference is that VR is normally with a headset, i.e. your phone physically strapped to your face. And for sighted players there are visuals too, which update to where you're facing in the same way that the audio does.

Did it work well for you then? What do you think about the potential of the tech for blind accessible gaming?

Here's a VR audio game for Android, just a little standard blind swordsman game that was made in a game jam, but having the people around you makes it a bit different from the usual:

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment … h=3e5e23e2

The developer recommends using a headset so it can pick up on subtle head tilting etc. You can get very cheap headsets for less than $10 that are just a cardboard phone cradle with headstrap and lenses, e.g.

https://www.amazon.com/Cardboard-Virtua … with+strap

For PC you would need to spend a very large amount of money on an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive. They have very high system requirements.

At the moment I don't think many blind gamers really get how VR works and how it could be relevant to blind accessible gaming, assuming instead that it's just about visuals.... but if you can just have a play around with your phone you can start to get an idea of that without having to shell out a load of money on fancy kit.

Have you tried it SLJ?

Microsoft are working on augmented reality, whereas sony/oculus/htc/samsung/google etc are working on virtual reality.

What the two approaches share is being able to track where your head is pointing, and update the output to reflect that, so sounds, visuals etc are located where they would actually be relative to your head. 

Where they vary is that virtual reality shows the visuals through screens strapped to your face, so you just see what's on the screens and nothing else. So you might for example be in a fantasy world looking at a monster sat on a rock.

In augmented reality the display also shows what is in the room in front of you, the visuals are layered on top of the real world. So you might for example be in your living room looking at a monster sat on your coffee table.

Pokemon Go is another example of augmented reality, as you move your phone around you are shown the view from the phone's camera, with the graphics of the pokemon layered on top, appearing to actually sit somewhere in the real world.

Yes, Audio defence is the closest comparison. However Audio Defence is a niche example, most iPhone games do not work like that. Every VR game works like that. So if a game happens to be accessible without visuals, in a similar way to GTA or Resident Evil for example, the game will already have Audio Defence style audio panning in it.

The more expensive VR headsets also have tracked controllers, something you hold in each hand that allows the system to know exactly where your hands are, as well as where your head is. For example one of the launch demos is firing a longbow at a target, you point one hand towards the target as Iif you were holding a bow, and use the other hand to pull back the string as you would do in real life, and press a button on it to release the string.

As fro head tracking, we do have Aprone's See Monkey. That is usb, but that's not a huge deal. It's 50 bucks so not too bad at all, and extremely! durable. He did various tests to prove it, like running over it with his car, and even as much as lighting it up in the fire! with very minimal damage.

I've been wanting to try this out but haven't had the time lately.  I'll get it done in the next couple of days, time permitting and let you know what I find, if noone else does it first.