Brian C. Xu¹ and Robert Gehr², ¹USA, ²California State Polytechnic University, USA

Often, people's busy schedules and lack of equipment make it difficult for them to get solid baseball training hours [1]. This paper seeks to remedy this issue by investigating the efficacy of a virtual baseball training solution [2]. The solution proposed in this paper involves developing a virtual reality baseball simulation aimed to accurately simulate an environment where baseball hitting can be trained in a context that does not require access to expensive baseball equipment or a huge time commitment. The baseball training solution was successfully made in the Unity game engine and deployed to the virtual reality Meta Quest 2 platform. One primary feature of this solution is the pitching mechanism where pitches are thrown to the player accurately [3]. Another feature of this solution is the ability to translate the player's movements in real life to the player's movements in the simulation. The solution was tested in the following experiments: one to test the improvements of player's skills, and one to test the entertainment levels of different age groups. After collecting data, we found that players did improve from our solution, and that little kids/older adults enjoyed our solution more than teens and those in their 20s. Based on the results of the data, we believe that further research in baseball training solutions that utilize virtual simulations would be worthwhile. Future methodologies may improve upon fidelity and accessibility.

VR, Baseball, Unity, Simulation