SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION

Sidh – a Game Based Firefighter Training Simulation Per Backlund1, Henrik Engström1, Cecilia Hammar2, Mikael Johannesson1, Mikael Lebram1 1 University of Skövde, 2Swedish Rescue Services Agency {[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]} Abstract This paper presents Sidh – a game based firefighter training simulator developed in cooperation between the University of Skövde and Swedish Rescue Services Agency. Sidh is based on computer game hardware and software solutions but adds a novel interaction model and gameplay specifically developed for the purpose of training firefighters. The simulator environment is a Cave where the player is interacting with the game through a set of sensors. Players move in the virtual world by movements in the physical world and a substantial physical effort is required to accomplish game tasks. Sidh has been used in a feasibility study where 31 firefighter students have been playing the game and the performance of these students as well as their reflections from using the game have been analyzed. Results from this study show that Sidh is a useful complement to traditional training methods and that the subjects give very high grades on the entertainment value of the game which indicate that this form of training may be selfmotivating which is an important issue for voluntary, after-hours training. Keywords--- Educational games, serious games, simulator training, firefighter training, virtual environments

1. Introduction The firefighter profession is one of the most stressful and dangerous, exposing its practitioners to tasks that are highly demanding, both physically and psychologically, in extreme environments [1]. One common task is to enter a building on fire and to search for victims. This activity, in this paper referred to as Breathing Apparatus Entry (BAE), requires a systematic and thorough scanning of the building where the sight may be extremely limited due to smoke. This in combination with the heat from fires forces the firefighters to crawl on the floor. When a victim is found, it must be dragged to a safe environment before the search can continue. The training for BAE is traditionally performed in training areas with buildings of different types where victims are replaced with dummies. These methods have been shown to be effective but they are not optimal for all situations. First of all, they are relatively costly as they require trained instructors and access to a dedicated training area where each type of environment (e.g. hotel, ship, train,

gas-station etc.) requires a separate physical model. Moreover, if the same persons participate in repeated exercises they should ideally be exposed to new models.

Figure 1 The cave architecture used for Sidh A complement to real-world training areas is to use virtual environments [2]. In this paper we present Sidh – a game based firefighter training simulator developed in cooperation between the University of Skövde and Swedish Rescue Services Agency. A unique feature of Sidh is that it is based on cave-technology which allows the user to move freely inside a small room surrounded by screens (Figure 1). The projection on the screens use fixed angles which means that the orientation in the virtual world corresponds to the orientation in the real world. Sensors read user movements which gives a natural interface to the game and puts a physical load on the user. The latter is a central characteristic of BAE. An important property of Sidh, which differentiate it from traditional simulators, is that it is game based. Game technology, hardware as well as software, has been used to produce the application. More importantly, the application itself is deliberately designed to be a game. The goal is to provide its users with an entertaining and motivating experience combined with learning goals. In this way learning becomes self-motivating and the system may be used for off-hour training. Sidh has been used in a set of experiments where firefighter students have been using it to prepare for a BAE exercise. Partial results indicate that the simulator gives a realistic and meaningful preparation for the BAE exercise. In addition, the students report that the simulator is both physically demanding and entertaining. Sidh is hence an example of a serious game [3; 4] i.e. a computer game that engages the user, and contributes to the achievement of a defined purpose other than pure entertainment

In this paper, we present Sidh and the experiments conducted. The paper is organized as follows: In section 2, we give some background to serious games and firefighter training. In section 3, we present the problem and methods we have used. In section 4, we give an overview of the simulator environment and the game development. In the subsequent section, we present results from a set of experiments where Sidh have been used. In section 6, we elaborate on the future work and finally in section 7, we draw some conclusions.

2. Background In this section we give a brief account for our view on the concept of serious games and serious gaming, i.e. the activity of using games for purposes other than entertainment. We also summarize previous work on firefighter simulations and give a brief background on Swedish firefighter training.

2.1. Serious games Today, the term serious games is becoming more and more popular, see e.g. [3] and [4]. The term itself is established, but there is no current singleton definition of the concept. Zyda [5, p.26] defines a Serious game as: “a mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules, that uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives.“ Furthermore, Zyda [5] argues that serious games have more than just story, art, and software. It is the addition of pedagogy (activities that educate or instruct, thereby imparting knowledge or skill) that makes games serious. However, he also stresses that pedagogy must be subordinate to story and that the entertainment component comes first. In our work we define serious games as games that engage the user, and contribute to the achievement of a defined purpose other than pure entertainment (whether or not the user is consciously aware of it). A game’s purpose may be formulated by the user her/himself or by the game’s designer, which means that also a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) game, used for non-entertainment purposes, may be considered a serious game. Serious games can be applied to a broad spectrum of application areas, e.g. military, government, educational, corporate, and healthcare. A question of interest concerns the claimed positive effects of such games, or of applications from related and sometimes overlapping areas such as e-learning, edutainment, game-based learning, and digital game-based learning. In addition to obvious advantages, like allowing learners to experience situations that are impossible in the real world for reasons of safety, cost, time, etc. [6; 7], serious games, it is argued, can have positive impacts on the players’ development of certain skills. We also note that some of these positive effects of gaming are not necessarily associated with any specific training or information objectives. As discussed by Mitchell and Savill-Smith

[8] analytical and spatial skills, strategic skills and insight, learning and recollection capabilities, psychomotor skills, visual selective attention, etc. may be enhanced by playing computer games. Other reports [9] have also pointed out the positive effects on motor and spatial skills. More specific positive impacts have been reported, e.g., by Enochsson et al. [10], who found a positive correlation between experience in computer games and performance in endoscopic simulation by medical students. The better performance of gamers is attributed to their three-dimensional perception experience from computer gaming. Backlund et al. [11] investigate the correlation between; playing racing, action, sports computer games and driving behavior. A survey conducted at three driving schools, questioned driving students about their gaming habits. The driving instructors evaluated their students’ driving skills and traffic safety attitudes. The results indicate that experience in computer games can have a positive effect on some aspects of driving. Experienced gamers were ranked significantly higher by their instructors regarding their overall driving skills compared to students with low experience in computer games. However, no evidence was found to indicate that experienced gamers have a worse attitude towards fellow road-users or traffic safety. The positive effects of games may hence be further utilized if we can identify the correct content and accurately exploit the user’s experience as a driving force for developing serious games. Swartout and van Lent [12] identify the areas of experience-based systems and experience-based education as potentially benefiting from such a game-based approach. The general idea is to influence users by exposing them to some type of experience. Even though gaming is not a replacement for simulation it may well serve as a complement in some regards [13]. In this sense we find the intersection between gaming and simulation to be an interesting one.

2.2. Virtual Environments for Firefighter Training As firefighters have to handle extreme tasks there is a continuous need to develop training programs to prepare for such tasks [14]. There exist a number of reports of the use of virtual environments for firefighter training in the literature. Tate, Sibert and King [2] present a study where a virtual environment training system was used to prepare shipboard firefighters for a mission. The virtual environment allowed users to navigate in a 3D-model of the ex-USS Shadwell fire research and test ship. A group of 12 trained firefighters participated in a study where their performance in a firefighting training mission was evaluated. Half the group was offered traditional mission preparation and the other half prepared using the virtual environment. The result of the evaluation showed that the second group had a better performance than the group using traditional preparation. In a different study, Julien and Shaw [15] present a virtual firefighter command training environment which

allows its users to inspect a house on fire and to command virtual firefighters. The fire is extinguished by issuing the correct sequence of commands to the firefighters. Perdigau, Torquit, Sanza and Jessel [16] present an application for managing virtual reality scenarios and their main scenario is a Firefighter Training Simulation used for crisis situations training and understanding. There are also examples on commercial simulation software used for firefighter training. The tactical command trainer is a tool from VectorCommand Ltd [17] which allows users to train emergency management.

2.3. Swedish Rescue Services Agency The Swedish Rescue Services Agency (SRSA) is the government authority responsible for the training of fire & rescue operatives. All municipal fire & rescue services staff are trained and certified by the SRSA. Breathing apparatus entry (BAE) is one of the tasks a firefighter has to perform. It is of crucial importance that the firefighter can remain orientated with very limited or no vision in a building. Traditionally the firefighter students practice search methods with and without smoke in different physical buildings. When training is done without smoke the students use a mask that reduces the field of vision (Figure 2). To evaluate performance an instructor must be present. The training is time consuming and requires flexible buildings. The optimal training for BAE search methods would be in an environment with a great number and types of buildings. Training would also be more efficient if students could practice individually yet with professional feedback and evaluation.

Figure 2 Firefighter training

3. Problem and Methods The training methods traditionally used at the SRSA have been shown to be satisfactory in most ways. There are still situations where more flexible training methods are required. For example, the environmental regulations may put limitations on real fire exercises. In addition, the cost of exercises may be too high to allow for large amounts of training in different environments. For reasons such as these, the SRSA has taken an interest in

the possibility to use game based simulators. Although the use of virtual environments for firefighter education has been reported in the literature, there is no reported use of game based simulators, to the best of our knowledge. BAE training is a substantial part of the curriculum in firefighter training and it was hence selected as the target domain. An important ability required for BAE is to navigate and memorize locations. This requires a sense of orientation. In a conventional computer game, the user is fixed while the virtual world rotates. To better make use of the users sense of orientation Sidh is developed for a cave environment where the player may rotate in a fixed virtual world. Each screen has fixed camera orientation and the camera position is updated when the player moves. This means that if a player is entering a door facing north (in the actual world) the player will have to return back through the door by heading south (in the actual world). The sense of orientation will hence help the user to navigate in the virtual world. Another property of BAE is that it is a strenuous physical activity. The search and rescue task has to be accomplished at high heart rates and with high deep body temperatures [18]. To incorporate this, a design goal for Sidh was to include physical motion as the interaction model. In combination with heat and other stress factors, this will make the user experience some of the tensions of real BA firefighting. Given these goals concerning the educational part of the game, the second and equally important goal with Sidh was to produce an entertaining game which would attract firefighter students to voluntarily spend time on training. This is a non-functional and fragile goal which relates to the art of computer game design [19]. One key problem of this project was hence to balance the nonfunctional game design goals with explicit learning goals from the curriculum for firefighter training and to make these goals a part of the game play. The development of the game was conducted using an iterative collaborative design method [20; 21]. Codesign aims to consider and possibly involve all stakeholders that may be somehow influenced by the technology. A group composed of instructors from SRSA, researchers and game developers from the University of Skövde developed the game-design at frequent seminars. The game went through a number of prototype stages. At each stage prototypes were tested by students and firefighter instructors. The experiments using the final version of the game was conducted on a group of 36 firefighter students where the vast majority had no previous experience of BAE. The group was divided in two halves referred to here as A and B. Participation was voluntary and 31 students accepted with 15 students in group A and 16 in group B. There were no notable difference between group A and B with respect to age or gender. For both groups the average age was 24 years and 13% of the students were females. Participation was compensated with a gift worth approximately €8 for each session.

Group A were offered two sessions in Sidh separated by approximately a week. Each session lasted for a maximum of 30 minutes. After these two sessions, the subjects performed an individual search mission in a training area. The participants of group B started with this search mission and were then offered a single session in Sidh. The experimental setup allows for comparisons of the performance in the search mission of students that prepared by playing Sidh with those that did not. In addition, questionnaires and monitoring of the performance in the game allows for analyses of the game using data from both groups. The performance of the subjects was monitored during the game both through a camera in the ceiling and through logging functionality in the software. This includes both discrete sampling of user operations (position, direction and nozzle action) as well as through an ingame recording mechanism.

sensors attached to the boots of the player. This means that the player can navigate the virtual environment by facing the desired direction and walk or run on the spot. The speed is controlled by the frequency of the steps. When the player carries a victim in the game, a higher step-frequency is required which results in a higher physical load put on the player just as is the case in a real situation.

4. Sidh The Sidh game includes a physical simulator environment as well as a game design and content. The game content has been developed using the Half-Life 2 game engine [22]. This engine has been modified to support the highly specialized hardware environment that has been developed. This section presents the simulator environment as well as the game content.

4.1 Simulator Environment The base for the simulator environment in Sidh is a cave [23] developed at the University of Skövde (Figure 3). The player is surrounded by four screens (1.6 x 1.2 meter each) covering the majority of the field of view. Each screen is projected by a LCD projector connected to a dedicated client PC. The simulation runs on a server PC which synchronizes the clients to run identical simulations except for their camera angle.

Figure 3 The Sidh game environment User interaction in a cave requires other steering and control devises compared to the typical mouse and keyboard for traditional PC applications. For Sidh, a specialized interaction solution was developed that uses gesture-based steering [24]. The user selects a direction by pointing with a Fogfighter nozzle (Figure 4, right). The movement speed is controlled through accelerometer

Figure 4 The air mask with Savox unit (left) and the Fogfighter nozzle (right) used by players. In addition to controlling the direction, the Fogfighter nozzle is also used to record the vertical height of the player’s arms. This is used to mark actions (start search, end search, pick up victim and drop victim) as well as to control the camera when the player is crouching. When the player is crouching the camera is lowered and this gives a better field of view in smokefilled areas (Figure 5). The simulator is equipped with a 5.1 sound system with speakers placed outside the cave. Radio communication from the instructor in the game is transmitted through an intercom system and the player is equipped with an air mask (Figure 4, left) with a Savox unit (a radio communication interface integrated in the mask). The Sidh game developed for the simulator is based on the Half-Life 2 game engine. The engine has been modified to support the cave environment and the specialized interaction. Five instances of the game are running on separate computers where one is the main instance (server) and the others are spectators to the server with the camera located at the same point, but with different yaw angles. The sensors values are provided to the game through a joystick API and specialized algorithms have been developed to map sensor readings to game actions. A major advantage of developing a game as a modification of a commercial game is that it gives sophisticated tool support. Further development of missions and locations is easily conducted using the Hammer world editor supplied with the Half-Life 2 game.

Figure 6 The map presented to the player after a completed mission. The circle indicates the start position and the dark grey area is the area scanned by the player.

Figure 5 In smoke-filled areas the sight is clearer when the player is crouching (bottom) compared to an upright position (top)

4.2. The Sidh game The learning objectives of the game are grounded in the curriculum for the Swedish firefighter training program. The main goal of the game is to get the players to develop systematic and thorough search behaviour in the presence of physical tension and other stress factors. The game objective in Sidh is to scan various locations and to evacuate any victims found. A nonplayer character (NPC) instructor briefs the player before a mission and gives feedback on the outcome when the mission is finished. When a player successfully scans a location the game advances to the next level. A scan is successful if all rooms have been visited and all victims have been evacuated within the maximal time allocation. The score system gives the player a base score in proportion to the percentage of the area that has been scanned. The base score is multiplied with factors related to the remaining time and the number of attempts required to finish the level. In the debriefing after a mission (successful or not) a map of the premises is presented to the player (Figure 6). This means that the player will get feedback on which rooms and areas that were scanned and which were not. If the mission failed, it will be easier to succeed in the next attempt as the player has received additional information on the layout of the location.

The scan percentage is computed based on the orientation of the player and the sight distance. The amount of smoke in a room affects the sight distance. If a player crouches in a smoke filled room the sight distance increases. The health status of a player is continuously presented in the game and if the health meter reaches zero the player “dies” and the mission has failed. The health is decreased by time and by the distanced moved inside the location. The decrease is bigger when the player is acting in an upright position (i.e. is not crouching) in a room filled with smoke. A player may reload its health by returning to the instructor who is located outside the dangerous environment. One of the goals with the game is to expose players to physical and psychological stress factors of real BAE. The physical stress factors are covered mainly by the interaction model which requires real physical motion. In addition, players wear a breathing mask (with the tubes detached), boots and a firefighter coat. This in combination with the heat from computers and projectors raises the temperature of the players. An initial idea was to use infra-heaters from the top of the cave but this was dismissed as it would make the environment too hostile. To increase the psychological stress on players, victims may start to scream hysterically in some missions. In addition, the NPC instructor gives very harsh feedback when a mission has failed. 16 levels have been developed for the game of which one is a tutorial and two are bonus levels introduced to provide some variation to the players. The remaining 13 levels have been designed to model typical and varying scenarios for BA firefighting. Table 1 gives a brief description of the game levels and the learning objectives behind them.

Table 1 The levels of the game and their learning objectives. Nr

Description

Objective

0

Tutorial

To handle the interaction model and the purpose of the game

1

Two room apartment

To get a first contact with the game

2

A club building

To realize that time is limited

3

Garage

To realize that a low position is advantageous

4

Bonus level

To get a break

5

A one room apartment

To look in closets

6

A six room youth hostel

To handle large number of rooms

7

Office space

To handle complex corridor architecture, closet

8

A grocery

To handle areas divided by shelves

9

A three room apartment

To handle heavy fire, closet and limited time

10

A large apartment

To handle extremely limited sight in a complex design

11

Basement storage area

To handle fenced areas with lots of junk.

12

A four room apartment

To handle doors at unexpected positions

13

A hotel corridor

To handle numerous identical doors

14

A butcher shop

To handle veiled areas

15

Bonus level

To finish the game

A late design decision was taken when the experimental setup was developed: If a player fails three times on a level the next level is loaded. The reason for this decision is to avoid that a player is trapped on one level. This could easily have been an integral part of the game logic, but it was handled manually by the experimental leader during experiments.

5. Experiments and results The Sidh game has been used in a set of experiments where a group of firefighter students have been playing the game and participated in exercises to evaluate their performance. The analysis of part of these experiments is ongoing work. This paper focuses on the game related aspects of the experiments. In this section we present the experimental setup and results based on questionnaires from the participants and analyses of the game play. The participant of group A played the game at two separate occasions, separated by approximately a week. At the first occasion they played levels 0-7 and at the second occasion they played levels 8-15. Group B played the game only at one occasion (level 0-7). The allocated time was maximized to 30 minutes. This means that each participant was playing until the final level was passed or

until the time was up. Before the subjects started to play they were equipped with step sensors, a radio, and a Fogfighter nozzle and were given brief instructions on how to use them. When they had finished playing they were asked to answer a questionnaire.

5.1 Game Characteristics First of all, the gameplay was successful in that all players except four managed to finish all levels within the allocated time. One person managed to reach level 6 before the time was up. Another person decided to quit playing at level 7 due to simulator sickness. The third person managed to level 14 when the time was up. Finally, there was one person from group B that did not play a second time (level 8-15) due to technical problems. All in all, there were 45 successful occasions with an average playing time of 24 minutes. The fact that the vast majority managed to complete their mission within the stipulated time shows that the interaction model worked well. All players managed to navigate and operate in the virtual environment. It is notable that the subjects were equipped with boots, a heavy coat and a mask, and carried a heavy nozzle while playing the game. The interaction model is hence successfully designed to be operational by using coarse movements (gross motor control). On the statement “I understood what I should do” in the questionnaire the average score was 4.6 on a 5-graded Likert scale where 1 was “fully disagree” and 5 was “fully agree”. Another goal with the game is that it should be fun and self motivating. The subjects were asked to grade the statement “it was fun”. The average for all experiments was 4.4. Interestingly, subjects from group A had a higher average (4.6) the second time they played compared to the first time (4.4). Even if it is not a significant difference it may indicate that some initial training is needed before the player is comfortable with the environment. This is also reflected in the result on the statement “I would like to play again”. Here group A had an average of 4.3 after playing two times while group B had an average of 3.9 after playing only once. This is also not a significant difference. Some of the subjects experienced problems with simulator sickness. The average for all experiments on the statement “I felt sick” was 2.1. One person decided to end the experiments due to sickness and fully agreed (5) to the “I felt sick”-statement. The same person did however return for the second session and completed it successfully and partially agreed (3) to the “I felt sick”statement. This corresponds to the trend for the whole group A which had an average of 2.5 after the first session but 2.1 after the second session. This suggests that some of the simulator sickness problems may be reduced through repeated exposure. It is worth noting that the participants who rated sickness to 3 or worse also agreed to the statement “I would like to play again” with high values (4 or 5). This can be interpreted as even if simulator sickness is present to some degree, it does

not seem to have much negative impact on the usability of the game.

5.2 Learning Effect The outcome of the learning objectives for the game may be evaluated using two different methods: 1.

2.

By studying the performance in the game. This includes comparing the result of group A in the first occasion (levels 0-7) with the performance in the second occasion. By analyzing the answers in the questionnaires.

Concerning the performance in the game it is interesting to note that there was a clear learning curve for the players. The performance of group A in their second session was significantly better than their first (using a one-tailed Student's t-tests). For example the total number of times victims were missed in group A’s first session was 21 (an average of 1.5 missed victims per player). The second session this number was reduced to a total of 3 missed victims (an average of 0.2 per player). This may obviously be explained by initial problems to navigate in a new environment. On the other hand the number of victims is higher in the second session and the levels are more complex and difficult than in the first session. Four of the levels are equipped with closets large enough for a person to be inside. Although it may not be very common for people to walk into the closet when there is a fire, it is possible that, for example, a frightened child tries to hide itself – both from the fire and from the strange looking firefighters. For that reason searching this type of objects is important. In level 2, almost none of the players looked in the closet. In this case it was empty, so no negative feedback was given during debrief if it was missed. In each of the forthcoming levels with closets, the closets contained people, with the result that a missed closet rendered negative feedback. In level 5 (a small apartment with few places to search), four of the participants from group A did not check the closet. Three of these repeated their mistake in level 7 (a large office with complex architecture) together with another four participants. Level 9 (a medium sized apartment with heavy fire and two victims of which one was in the closet) was played in the next session a week later. This time none of the participants missed the closet. This indicates not only that learning occurred, but also the importance of repetition to accomplish it. In firefighting, it is important to keep a low position to avoid heat and to get good sight conditions in smokefilled areas. In the game, players held a low position 63% of the time, which suggests that the game is successful in promoting a low position. This result is an average for all levels, except tutorial and bonus levels, for all subjects. There is a tendency for players to keep a lower position in levels with heavy smoke.

An anecdotal evidence that the game requires the same abilities as real firefighting is that the two persons that got the highest scores in the game were the only two persons in the class that had experience from real firefighting. The subject with the highest score had been working for three years as a part time firefighter and the subject with the second highest score had been a voluntary firefighter for several years. The goal to expose the players for physical stress was also successful. After the experiments, the experiment leaders asked the participants the open question “how was it?” All participants mentioned the physical load in some way or another in their response (“it was tiresome”, “it was a sweaty” etc.). This was also apparent from their sweating. Unfortunately, no pulse meter was used during experiments which would have given additional information on the physical load of the game. The analysis of the questionnaire reveals some interesting differences between group A and B. On the statement “I learned something through the game” the average for group A was 4.3 while B had the significantly lower 2.8. A possible explanation to this is that group B had experienced a live search mission some days before they played the game. They may have achieved some of the learning objectives through that mission. The total average for the learning statement is 3.5 which is clearly a partial agreement to the statement. The subjects were also asked to exemplify what this learning consisted of. The result shows that 77% of the players states that they have learned things related to the objectives. There were comments such as: − − − − − −

“I must be 100% convinced that there is no one left in the room when I have searched it” “To search everywhere - even in closets” “To be careful and to search everywhere” “To be calm and to have trust in myself and not wander around too much” “I've got an understanding of how to search an apartment. Also realized that it is tiresome”. “To search systematically and make sure all areas are covered”

These comments show that the learning objectives have been met at least with respect to the subjects’ selfreported learning. As a parenthesis it is mentionable that there probably occurred some non-reported learning. A couple of the participants talked for themselves during the play session. One person cursed his bad sense of orientation, obviously aware of the importance of this skill in a search mission. Another participant started to count the doors out loud on his second attempt in level 10 (a large physically demanding apartment) which can be seen as a strategy developed during the game.

6. Future Work The partial results from the feasibility study presented in this paper give very positive indications for the usefulness of the developed game. This opens a number of interesting opportunities for future work. The motivation of using a cave is that it allows for using the real world sense of orientation in the virtual world. It would be interesting to study this effect by replicating the experiments using a PC-version of the game where the player is facing a fixed screen with the virtual world rotating. This will potentially reveal differences between the cave-navigation and traditional first-person computer game navigation. A limitation with the presented game is that it is a single player game. BAE is a collaborative task where two firefighters enter a building and a commander supervises the mission through radio communication. It would be interesting to extend Sidh to support multiplayer operation and let players communicate through radio to accomplish a mission. Another interesting future work would be to use Sidh as a preparation for specific location, as was the case in the study reported in Tate, Sibert and King [2]. Currently, plan drawings are used to prepare for missions, but the virtual experience may give additional advantages. This may be useful for fire departments responsible for locations inaccessible for live training. It may also be useful for police forces as preparation for high risk raid and tactical entry operations. One aspect of firefighting not covered in the game is to put out fires with the nozzle. Several students participating in the experiments made remarks that they would like to have this feature included in the game.

7. Conclusions This paper presents a game based firefighter training simulator and partial results from experiments using it. The development of the game has been conducted in close collaboration between firefighter instructors, researchers and game developers. The result of the collaboration has been successful in that goals concerning the pedagogical content as well as the entertainment value of the game have been met. Experiments using the game show that users enjoy playing the game and that they report to have gained knowledge from it. This is an important result as it witness of a successful serious game implementation. The learning objectives have been met without killing the entertainment in the game which implies that it may be useful in voluntary, off-hour training. A novel interaction model has been developed for the game. Sensors are used to let the player navigate in a cave-environment with a 360 degree field of view. The modification of a commercial computer game for this environment has been successfully conducted. The results is an environment which allows the user to act naturally using coarse body movements – the game may in fact be played without moving a finger. In the

experiments subjects were using boots, coat and a mask and had no problems to master the game although all of them reported that it was physically demanding. The result of this feasibility study gives confidence that the use of game based simulators for firefighter training is feasible. It also shows that the interaction model and the cave solution are useful. The subjects quickly learned to navigate in the environment and accomplish missions. It cost them a lot of sweat but they enjoyed it.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the firefighter students who participated in this study, and Anna-Sofia Alklind Taylor for her assistance during experiments. This work has been financed through the EU Interreg IIIC district project.

References [1]

Juriaan Bos, Eric Mol, Bart Visser and Monique FringsDresen. Risk of health complaints and disabilities among Dutch firefighters. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health 77, 6, 373-382. 2004. [2] David L. Tate, Linda Sibert and Tony King. Virtual Environments for Shipboard Firefighter Training. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 17, 6, 23-29. 1997. [3] Serious Games Initiative. url: www.seriousgames.org. 2007. [4] Phil LoPiccolo. Serious games. Computer Graphics World 27, 2. 2004. [5] Michael Zyda. From visual simulation to virtual reality to games. Computer 38, 9, 25–32. 2005. [6] Kevin Corti. Games-based Learning; a serious business application. url: www.pixelearning.com. 2006. [7] Kurt Squire and Henry Jenkins. Harnessing the power of games in education. Insight, 3(1), 5-33. 2003. [8] Alice Mitchell and Carol Savill-Smith. The use of computer and video games for learning: A review of the literature. Learning and Skills Development Agency. url: www.LSDA.org.uk. 2003. [9] Anton Lager and Sven Bremberg. Hälsoeffekter av tvoch datorspelande. En systematisk genomgång av vetenskapliga studier. Swedish National Institute of Public Health. url: www.fhi.se. 2005. (In Swedish). [10] Lars Enochsson, Bengt Isaksson, René Tour, Ann Kjellin, Leif Hedman, Torsten Wredmark and Li TsaiFelländer. Visuospatial skills and computer game experience influence the performance of virtual endoscopy. Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery 8, 7, 874–880. 2004. [11] Per Backlund, Henrik Engström and Mikael Johannesson. Computer Gaming and Driving Education. In the Proceedings of the workshop Pedagogical Design of Educational Games affiliated to the 14th International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE 2006). Beijing, China, December 2006. [12] William Swartout and Michael van Lent. Making a game of system design. Communication of the ACM 46, 7, 32– 39. 2003.

[13] Ben Sawyer. The serious games summit: emergent use of interactive games for solving problems is serious effort. Computers in Entertainment 2, 1, page 5. 2004. [14] Rick Lasky. Firefighter Survival Training: from Reactive to Proactive. Fire Engineering, June 2004, 117-119, 2004. [15] Tazama U. St. Julien, and Chris D. Shaw. Firefighter Command Training Virtual Environment. Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference. October 2003. [16] Eric Perdigau, Patrice Torguet, Cédric Sanza and JeanPierre Jessel1. A distributed Virtual Storytelling System for Firefighters Training. International Conference on Virtual Storytelling. Toulouse, France, 2003. [17] Vector Command Ltd. url: www.vectorcommand.com. 2007. [18] Clare M. Eglin and Michael J. Tipton. Can firefighter instructors perform a simulated rescue after a live fire training exercise? European Journal of Applied Physiology 95, 4, 327-334. 2005. [19] Raph Koster. A theory of fun, Paraglyph Press. 2004. [20] Olov Forsgren. Churchmanian Co-design – Basic Ideas and Application Examples. In the Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD 2005), Springer, 35-46. 2006. [21] Philippe Kruchten. Tutorial: Introduction to the Rational Unified Process. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering ACM Press New York, NY, USA, page 703. 2002. [22] Valve. Half-Life 2, url: half-life2.com. 2007. [23] Carolina Cruz-Neira, Daniel J. Sandin, Thomas A. DeFanti, Robert V Kenyon and John C. Hart. The CAVE: audio visual experience automatic virtual environment. Communication of the ACM 35, 6, 64-72. 1992. [24] Dough A. Bowman. Interaction Techniques for Immersive Virtual Environments: Design. HumanComputer Interaction Consortium (HCIC) Conference. 1998.