Augmented-Reality Sporting

Augmented-Reality Sporting, ARS, or aSports is a term applied to a variety of competitive gaming experiences made popular in the 26th century with the rise of sim-arenas across human space.

Augmented-Reality Sporting is a very loosely defined category of competitive athletics, but commonly is played within a sim-arena, holo-court, or repulsor court. ASports are often grouped together with vSports, a sub-genre of eSporting using virtual-reality equipment, however they are not the same as they express different mechanics and operate on fundamentally different principles. VSports simply give the user sensory input from a virtual space; ASports are played within a physical space augmented with technological equipment and arena elements.

Gravball
 is among the least expensive aSports due to simply requiring a specialized ball known as a Gravball and the flat space of a repulsor court. Because of the game’s cheap nature, it’s popularity in school physical education classes, and the game’s simple ruleset, Gravball has cemented itself as the most popular competitive sport in human space for nearly a century.

Many local variations of the game has arisen over the years, such as changes to the size of teams to the size of the court and goals, and even completely new mechanics, as is the case with the Ricochet variant. In most cases, Gravball is played with teams of five on the court at a time, goals are constructed as wireframe cubes at each end of the court, and points can be scored either by running the ball into the goal or by throwing it in without an interception.

Ricochet
Ricochet is a variant of Gravball created by the during the  but made popular by its inclusion in   exercises after the war. It’s quite different from standardized Gravball, due to the inclusion of sim-rifles, cover, elevated platforms, and other map elements from different War Games gametypes, making it more like Breakout or Splitgate than its original Gravball roots.