A few weeks back an editorial appeared on frugalsworld by Mark Bush. His discussion raised some interesting points about the nature of simulation reality and suspension of disbelief. I've pulled some quotes from Mark's article together with part of a discussion at COMBATSIM.COM™ from 1997 and '98 as the basis of a consideration of the finer points of immersion and the "willing suspension of disbelief."

In his article Mark comments that, "What most of us appear to be looking for is the chance to be a pilot for a few hours. We are really trying to simulate the experience of being a pilot rather than trying to simulate flight as such. When we sit down to Falcon 4 or Mig Alley or whatever may be our sim of choice we are looking to lose ourselves in this fantasy world .... You could say that we are looking for a pilot sim rather than a flight sim."

Some of you are undoubtedly looking primarily for a pilot sim, others for an aircraft sim. Still others are looking for a realistic combat environment (read: dynamic or very close to it). But Mark's point about "the experience" of being a pilot (an air combat pilot, that is) is the real linch pin.

F80 in MiG Alley

In late 1997 and then in 1998 I wrote an editorial about immersion and campaign systems, and later expanded my thinking using the analogy of a wheel - the hub and the spokes. In that article I argued that dynamics were the key in "the willing suspension of disbelief" (Coleridge).

I still think that I was right. But my focus on dynamics tended to obscure the real issue: believability. The problem is that where dynamics is definable and mostly quantifiable, believability is very personal and takes in some subjective elements. In fact, "believability" is not merely subjective, it is itself both fluid and dynamic. Mark gets at the "subjective" component as his editorial continues...

"So how important is a realistic FM in sims. If we are honest about it, most of us would not recognise a realistic flight model if it jumped up and bit us on the ass!! Now I'm not saying that most of us don't understand the physics behind flight or what mathematically constitutes a good flight model. In fact many of us have a very thorough understanding of the subject. What I am saying is that most of us have no clue what it really feels like to fly a real military jet.

"The reality is that we have no frame of reference as to what is a good flight model. We go by feel and opinion most of the time. If in our opinion it doesn't feel like we imagine the real jet feels then it ain't gonna hold us in that little fantasy for very long is it. And there's the rub. It doesn't matter how accurate the FM is, if it doesn't convince us that it feels like the real thing then we won't buy into it. As most of us don't know what the real thing feels like the importance of accuracy is just an illusion. "

TAW War Room

"What is more important is what it takes to convince us that it feels real. This depends to a large degree on our background and outside interests . . . . If you are more of a propeller head like me and got your references from reading Janes and talking to real pilots and learning as much as you could about the planes etc then your expectations are a little higher.

"For me a simplistic avionics suite kills the immersion and pulls me out of that little world. Does that mean the avionics and flight model have to be accurate? No, it just means that they have to be convincing. "

And this, likewise, is extremely personal. Mark makes the point that it takes more to convince him that these things are realistic than it does some others. This truly is "the problem," from the standpoint of the combat simulation designer.

Going Deeper

But there are some deeper forces at work here, Luke! I am thinking of Andy Hollis' argument that while F15 lacked a fully dynamic campaign system, it still had excellent immersive powers. Andy's description of the F15 campaign ran like this:

"F15's campaign system is very dynamic. It also is not like any currently existing system, so trying to use labels like "semi-dynamic" or "fully dynamic" as people have come to use them would be inaccurate.

F15 Map

The goal of a dynamic campaign is to provide a compelling series of missions that combine together to provide a sense of : 1) overall purpose, 2) progress and cause/effect due to the player's actions, 3) being part of a much larger world, where the actions of others have causal effect, not just your own, and 4) continuity through resource management (planes, ordnance, aircrews) and world integrity (dead things stay dead and regenerate over time as appropriate).

The final key element, though, is variety, which provides for replayability and a strong sense of the unexpected. This can be accomplished in more than one way and each way has its advantages and disadvantages."

  Looking back now, I think the element Andy neglected was the "feel" of the environment itself, though he might have intended to include that feeling in his reference to the "larger world." There is little question in my mind that Andy understood these things intuitively, even if in this case he didn't quite put it into words.

USAF Pilot Records

I would argue that that feel of a dynamic environment is paramount in creating believability and even raw "fun." And the dynamism of that environment extends to both simulation and interface. What I mean by the dynamism extending to the interface is the flow between missions and the form and frequency of supply of intelligence (debriefing, mission assessment, pilot records, mission planning elements etc.)

And here is where Pixel Multimedia and JANE's have come close to solid gold with USAF, and where Rowan and Empire have come close to solid gold with MiG Alley. USAF has an AWACS like interface which helps provide a sense of dynamism, and the strength of the graphics engine contributes greatly to an immersive environment. The detail of pilot records helps greatly to the sense that missions really matter.

MiG Alley, on the other hand, in its fifth campaign allows a degree of player interaction that surpasses even Falcon 4.0. The amount of information available on a particular target and the ability of the user to determine both strategic and tactical dimensions contribute greatly to immersion via the sense of responsibility for the overall campaign.

I have used this term "immersion" a number of times now. How do I define it? Immersion occurs when a game looks more and responds 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 logical and believable manner, is less predictable (while remaining true to reasonable strategic and tactical considerations), has an interface which is unobtrusive and fluid, and also supplies important tactical and strategic information relatively transparently, then it is more or less immersive.

In the end, it seems that "immersion" is a very broad topic, and each of us will find that different approaches enhance our own experience. The success of USAF is due in large part to a dynamic balancing of a number of factors that are important to a very broad cross section of the sim community. MiG Alleys appeal is quite different, but in the end may prove almost as broad via an entirely different set of "spokes."

An Art and a Science

The problem is that simply assembling the correct spokes to a solid hub may not in itself make for the perfect simulation. What I am getting at here is that there is a "gestalt" to good simulation design that makes it more of an art than a science. In fact, art and science must come together to make a really good simulation product, because "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts."

But whatever the reasons that a particular military simulation appeals to you, most will agree that it must immerse the virtual pilot in a believable world. If it can do that without demanding that one read a four hundred page manual and spend fifteen hours flying each and every week, it will increase the economic viability of the developer. In the end, that is a very important goal!