The Royal Game of Ur: Virtual Reality Prototype of the Board Game Played in Ancient Mesopotamia

We present a virtual reality implementation of the "Royal Game of Ur", an ancient board game played by the people of Akkadian empire since around 3000 BC. The game’s rules recently deciphered from the cuneiform’s tablets have been implemented using MinMax approach with alpha-beta pruning optimization, allowing for a highly competitive game-play against even the most skilled human players. The game utilizes freehand interaction and, experimentally, a brain computer interface to roll the dice and move the pieces.