As in most any vocation, those of us in the combat simulation press have our series of words that get worn and abused. You know, terms that get used over and over again in about a hundred different ways until you can't stand it anymore?

This month it looks like the magic word is "immersion". It seems like an awfully vague term, and the way most folks use the word it could stand for almost anything. The goal today is to make an (admittedly vain) attempt to define the meaning of immersion - at least beyond mere jingoism.

Immersion by its very definition implies an "insertion" or "plunging". That certainly seems to be a good starting point - the implication that you literally plunge into this alternate game world so that it completely replaces the real world. Gaming being among the best expressions of the escapist pursuits, perhaps the best yardstick to measure the quality of a game is how thoroughly the game creates the illusion of being somewhere else.

That still remains a very subjective description. How do you quantify how effectively a game puts you in another world? Can we even agree that immersion is a measure of escape in the first place? To this end we quizzed a few familiar faces from the simulation gaming press and asked the question, "What does immersion mean to you?"

"For me, a computer game is immersive if it dominates my thoughts and senses so thoroughly that I forget I'm just playing a game."
- Robin G. Kim, Computer Gaming World

"Immersion means to me: a persistent and believable environment that heightens the sense of disbelief and contributes to the illusion that the war and the individuals in it, especially, the player's alter ego and team-mates, matter."
- Len Hjalmarson, Combat Simulations

"Feeling like I'm there. Sucking me in to the experience." - Rod White, PCM&E

"Losing track of the outside world (especially losing track of the passage of time) to some degree; the better the game, the more you lose track."
- Scott Udell, Computer Games Strategy Plus

"...if a sim makes you feel like you'll be letting "someone" down if you leave it before completing a mission/task /race/whatever--that's immersion."
- Ben Chiu, Microsoft Press

Writers tend to be an independent lot, so it makes it all the more amazing that there's an apparent consensus. Each one basically takes different approaches towards a common concept, although there are two dominant themes. The first theme is "losing time," and the other is the virtual world becoming dominant or equal to the real world - either in replacing stimuli or creating a feeling of "importance" to the virtual world.

But how do you recognize it when you see it in a game? At COMBATSIM.COM, we frequently like to describe a game as "extremely immersive", but what is it that makes one game more immersive than another?

"To draw me into its world, a game must emphasize just the right combination of elements--a harmonious balance is far more important than excellence in any one area." (Robin)

"...If the game is more believable, looks more like the real world, does a better job at helping me care about my alter ego and what happens to my platoon/squad etc, connects events in a more logical and obvious way, is less predictable (while remaining true to reasonable strategic and tactical considerations)... then it is more immersive" (Len)

"...If it's a sim it's the feeling of being there, the feeling of being fooled into believing the experience is a real one, forgetting about everything else around you because of it. If it's a strategy game like C&C, or a 3D/shooter it's being drawn in to the game, becoming part of it because of the compelling gameplay, once again being a game so fun in atmosphere that you forget about everything else around you. Becoming one with the game." (Rod)

"All parts of the game--interface, story (if it has one), information presentation, environments, etc.--fit together... they flow along without any one part interrupting the experience to a great degree." (Scott)

"...It can't really be attributed solely to just a single thing like graphics, sound (which many people tend to underestimate their overall effect on if a sim), or any other feature. But generally overall implementation and the little details are more important for immersion than say photo-realistic terrain or other things that most casual players consider 'realism.'" (Ben)

Once again, there is an remarkable degree of agreement. It isn't just one particular thing that makes one game more immersive than another. Rather, it is the whole *instead* of the parts - the synergy - which makes a game succeed in creating a compelling alternate world.

A Voom With a View (Virtual Cockpits)

Personally, I lean towards thinking of immersion in very physical, practical terms. Anything that helps me intuitively feel that the world is real is a big factor towards immersion. From this point of view, virtual cockpits are a really big thing: being able to fly "seat of the pants" in the Longbow 2 cockpit, looking off to one side in EF2000's ground breaking padlock system, or even bouncing in the commander's gun cupola for M1 Tank Platoon 2. These are all designed to really "drop you into the seat".

(F-22 ADF wide-angle cockpit)

EF2000's cockpit really deserves special note. For the first time a player could really fly in one direction while "turning your head" in another direction - continuously and smoothly. In fact EF2000 (and F22ADF, for that matter) completely eschewed the traditional bitmap cockpit altogether (something that will likely happen more often in the future as graphics performance improves) in favor of the 3D cockpit. All the orientation cues in the padlock made it clear what direction you're looking relative to the cockpit, so the player knows exactly what direction the enemy was relative to him, and still be able to fly the jet intelligently.

At that point dogfighting changed from interpreting a series of odd displays meant to help you chase your enemy around the sky to a relatively simple system that effectively mimics actually sitting in the cockpit. Thus, while one could argue that Falcon 3's multi-window padlock was just as effective as EF2000's, the "through the pilot's eyes" interface is easier to adapt to, more intuitive, and helps to suspend disbelief.

Many works on product design have stressed that the ideal interface design is the one that is totally transparent, and "through the eyes" is definitely a step in the right direction.

(Jane's F-15 cockpit)

Another padlock worth mention is the Jane's F-15 padlock. F-15's virtual cockpit tends to be a little short on visual cues when tracking a target, but it offers the greatest degree of realism. The padlock view can be set to represent the restrictions of the pilot's neck. It even models how a pilot has to turn his head from one side to another when trying to keep sight of a bandit at his six.

  Perhaps even more intriguing was the potential to lose a lock if you took your eyes off of the target for more than a moment. In fact the game only allowed players to padlock targets that they've first acquired visually. In the case of F-15, modeling the "human factors" not only adds to the importance of "lose sight, lose the fight" - but these limitations also help you feel that a real flesh and blood pilot is sitting at the controls, and not merely a keyboard-controlled automaton.

So with all this talk about virtual cockpits, one would think that so-called "Virtual Reality" gear would be just the ticket. The answer to that is that it indeed is, but at present the vision is far greater than the implementation. Just as man dreamed of flying (and made countless failed attempts) over the past centuries, so we can envision the possible benefits of virtual reality equipment, but the technology is simply not mature enough to be enjoyed.

Yet imagine just a few of the possibilities for sim players - Apache helicopters (and a handful of modern fighters) aim their sensor gear and weaponry based on the direction the pilot or gunner is looking. In a similar fashion, advanced VR equipment would let players look through their virtual cockpits and aim their optics or guns in exactly the same fashion, - which is much better than merely paging through target lists. Fighter pilots could circle a point on the ground and keep a close eye on it without making any special effort - either for bomb damage assessment, monitoring flight deck conditions on an aircraft carrier, or simply inspecting a possible low-threat target.

  Even this doesn't touch on how much more realistic dogfighting can be. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your point of view), the usuable display resolution and framerates of current and near-future games are thoroughly outpacing the ability of miniature display and head tracking technologies to keep up, so VR will remain merely an intriguing concept and technology exercise for the forseeable future.

What Not to Do in a Campaign

Dynamic campaigns are very important in creating a sense of immersion - partially because they generates a feeling of importance (even responsibility). If nothing else, they create the absence of scripting, which is an advantage in and of itself.

The key factor in the role of the dynamic campaign is that its plot (at least in theory) is infinitely branching - and the player is at least partially responsible for how it changes. In a campaign where there are countless shades and styles of victory or defeat, every action the player takes matters over the long term in some way.

  Take a jet fighter sim for example. If the player maintains an air dominance posture, his ground forces may be completely unimpeded by enemy airpower, but the enemy will still be operating at full capacity behind his own front lines. On the other hand, taking a methodical approach to destroying enemy air defences may pay off in allowing deep strikes against lucrative targets, but without decisively maintaining control of the skies, the player risks very damaging counterstrikes.

  Either way, in a true dynamic campaign, each unit in the air or on the ground has some significance in the greater picture, so defending it or destroying it has more meaning than racking up bonus points, picking up a new medal, or getting access to the next mission in the campaign.

The pre-written (scripted) campaign has its advantage in that the designer has total control of the structure and aftermath resolution for each mission. This allows missions and the campaign to have some creative "plot twists". Unfortunately, once the mission has been played once, the player has a good idea of what to expect, even when random variables are thrown in to attempt to add variety. Once your mission falls into the "rerun" category, the game ceases to be an adventure - rather, it becomes a sequence of decision points where you try to outwit the enemy.

Perhaps the biggest reason that "canned" or pre-scripted missions destroy immersion is not merely because they lack the persistence and continuous flow of a dynamic campaign, but because too many of them fall into the "puzzle" trap. I'm sure that almost any hard-core gamer knows what I'm talking about. If you could finish a given set of canned missions quickly, the whole game would be over very soon, and you would feel like you didn't get your money's worth.

  Mission designers get around the lack of replayability by making the missions extremely difficult so that you usually need to play each one many times over - you eventually find that you have to be at a certain place at a certain time doing a certain thing in a particular order.

It doesn't take long before you realize that what you're doing isn't playing a simulator, you're solving a puzzle. Even the greatest games ever made can shock players into losing their suspension of disbelief over a game world if they realize that the mission design requires that they try again and again until they figure out which weapon goes with which enemy at what time. Certainly this kind of "try, lose, repeat, try, lose, repeat" business has less to do with simulating warfare than it does with Myst.

Time Flies...

The issue of temporal displacement comes up. No, it's not an episode of Star Trek, but sim players seem to agree that a really good game can throw you many hours into the future without having noticed. So does this make super-addictive games like X-COM more immersive? It's certainly not that realistic. There isn't any use of a first-person viewpoint anywhere. In fact, all things considered, it's just a strategy game. Yet for the time you are playing it, it tends to completely encompass your world.

The dynamic campaign helps suck the player in because of it's persistence and continuity. But there is another fundamental aspect of dynamic campaigns that is frequently overlooked. One of the critical aspects of really holding a player into the game is - for lack of a better term - "newness".

  This is not quite the same thing as randomness and variety isn't exactly the right word, either. A mission generator can put various random enemy units in random locations, there is nothing really special about that. Instead, "newness" is the promise of surprise: that as long as the player keeps on playing, he will constantly encounter new things.

  Strategy games like Civilization and X-COM do this by implementing technology trees. Sims with pre-scripted missions make a futile attempt at doing it by introducing new enemy units and targets in each mission - but that newness really only lasts for one attempt at the mission.

(ADF Paratrooper Attack)

Achieving surprise over the long haul is very difficult, especially without crutches like progressive technology trees. So the ideal dynamic campaign must try harder to create the necessary variety - for example, an enemy airstrike may be two lone craft, or it may be a strike package of a couple dozen craft of various kinds. They may try hiding from radar, hiding in the sun, sneaking up a six o'clock low, or flying brazenly. They may try deceptive tactics or try to burn their way through at top speed. The strike may turn out to be a flight of heavy bombers, helicopters, a gunship, a cruise missile, maybe even a cargo craft dropping airborne units or making an unprepared field landing.

  Equally important is the human element. Human beings don't always respond in predictable ways. A fatigued driver or pilot may react differently than the same driver or pilot on his first flight. Perhaps a tired pilot will get lost or be separated from his fllight. Maybe they will make a mistake in the heat of combat. If the situation is bad enough, it should be possible that they will break off and flee. This special kind of unpredictability makes the player think "what will the next mission bring?" and it is at this point that a player can find himself up at 4:30AM on a Monday morning wondering what happened to the weekend.

Realism: Foundation, Rooftop, or Swimming Pool?

One thing that is important to clarify is that in the same way that the words "realistic" and "complicated" are not necessarily interchangeable, neither are the words "realistic" and "immersive". Realism's role in immersion is to ensure the suspension of disbelief that is so important to simulations. However, realism by itself does not necessarily draw the player into the experience. This is where much of the art of simulation development lies.

The old bugaboo of physics comes into play here. While it is important that the simulated vehicle behave like the real one as far as performance figures go, it is even more important that it reacts to various inputs in an accurate manner. Not everyone may notice whether the M1's top speed over hardpack terrain is 50 or 70 kilometers per hour, or whether the F-16 stalls at 160 or 130 knots, but it will be very clear that something is wrong if the M1 simply "pops" over a bump with no inertia or the F-16's controls are just as responsive during a stall as they are at cruise speed.

(A-10 Cuba Belly Landing)

Even so, having true physics realism is very important to immersion because the world must behave the way you expect it to, even when it enters special situations that the programmers may not have originally envisioned (and there are many of those). The programmers at Parsoft may not have envisioned the possibility of skipping the massive A-10 Warthog across a flat body of water the same way a child may skip a stone, but it was A-10 Cuba's comprehensive physics modeling that allowed a wounded 'Hog to just make it safely onto dry land when a double flameout over the water forced desperate measures.

Furthermore, in the latter case upon reaching dry land, one wingtip dragged on the ground, hauling the 'Hog around and threatening to cause a violent ground loop. This kind of flexibility allows the players to think according to their real-world intuition rather than trying to guess whether the "rules of the game" allow someone to do this or that. Indeed, there are more than a few flight sims where even the most gentle contact with a light object will cause a catastrophic explosion, or a damaged aircraft will behave in a very random fashion rather than accurately modeling it's damaged flight characteristics.

When it comes to the avionics/electronics, managing the game design elements of on-board equipment on a modern combat craft continues to pose a stiff challenge. Accuracy is important not only for its own sake, but also because it will be more consistent for experienced gamers who are already accustomed to things like radar search patterns and weapons delivery techniques.

  Yet there are players who want to experience the same set of considerations in employing their equipment without being stuck in the details, and there are players who don't want to think about switchology whatsoever. An immersive simulation must not force novice or action-oriented players to use the full-fidelity electronics suite, but the game shouldn't stick experts with cartoon-simple systems either.

Putting it all together

So what kind of conclusions can we draw from all this? It would seem that we can readily identify several distinct components of immersion:

- Physical Immersion - This is the effort, through gameplay interface, controls, visual, aural, and tactile stimuli, to give the player the sensation of physically being present in the virtual world. It can be something as simple as a better padlock, more detailed graphics, more believable physics, or informative force-feedback - but in all cases it's directed towards "the feeling of being there."

- Environmental Immersion - This represents the modeling of a game world that behaves in a believable manner, where actions and mission results can have far-reaching effects, thus giving the player the perception of a struggle for dominance as well as a sense of responsibility to protect his assets. This can be as simple as resource management, or as complex as a totally modeled war.

- Temporal Immersion - Simply put, the consistent and uninterrupted flow of gameplay that pulls a player in and keeps him there. It is important for a game to not suddenly and gracelessly lose the perception of the world between actions, and equally important to make one mission flow seamlessly into the next. The sim must attach the importance of the greater cause at hand and yet continue to maintain variety to keep its hold on the player's attention. This continuity, while difficult to achieve, is perhaps the most telling goal of immersion, since it usually means that at least one or both of the previous categories have also been implemented well.

To their credit, most simulation developers achieve at least some portion of these goals. However, as the responses to our questions show, the immersion that makes players revere a simulation long after its first year is really the result of the *synergy* between all these various aspects.

The Future (?)

As strange as it may sound, the ultimate expression of the search for immersion may eventually result in a role-playing game. Current efforts towards improving immersion have resulted in integrating the strategy side of combat operations with the simulation side. Conceivably, the next step may be to try to emulate the life and career of the pilot to some degree and thus add role-playing elements.

Certainly there have been a couple of tentative steps in that direction, and the Producers of Team Apache have taken pains to try to emulate the limitations of a human crew (one early concept even considered the idea of running to the flight line to get to your helicopter during a scramble mission). Falcon 3, Red Baron 2, and other sims had a pool of pilots - complete with names - who have skills which developed as they survived one mission after another. As our sims begin to reach a certain level of maturity in recreating the conflict, the next step to making players feel truly involved with a game may turn out to be simulating the men behind the machines.