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.

## List of Popular aSports

### Breakout

**Breakout** is a combat-sim style aSport often played during military simulations and is extremely popular for civilian aSport players. Unlike many combat-sim aSports, Breakout is round-based, with each player only having one "life" each round. Depending on how sophisticated a particular Breakout arena is, this life may be tracked simply by whether a player has been hit by another player or by a complex health and shields system.

Rounds are won upon only a single team standing or by a team completing the neutral objective. Earlier versions of Breakout required a team to gain possession of a neutral flag and plant it in the opposing team's spawn zone, however newer iterations have changed the rules to require the flag to be captured in a team's friendly spawn instead. Competitive matches are played until a team scores five rounds, although some championships require a team to win by two over the opposing team.

#### Breakout Blitz

**Breakout Blitz** is a variation of the standard Breakout gametype, played on much smaller arenas and usually in one-on-one or two-on-two matches. Matches are usually played first-to-three, and each round lasts a maximum of thirty seconds. Some notable differences with standard Breakout are that there is almost never a neutral objective and players do not start with a sim-weapon in their hands.

### Gravball

**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 UNSC Marine Corps during the Insurrection but made popular by its inclusion in Spartan War Games 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.