Chapter 7Serious Games for Health and Safety Training

Rafael J. Martínez-Durá, Miguel Arevalillo-Herráez,Ignacio García-Fernández, Miguel A. Gamón-Giménez,and Angel Rodríguez-Cerro

7.1 Introduction

Children do not learn to walk, talk or play football from a series of lectures. Instead,they learn by getting immerse in the activity. Although current technology allowsthe construction of immersive instructional environments for skill training, there arecost reasons that, in many occasions, make them impracticable. Fortunately, thiscost can be ameliorated by using simulation technology to produce computer-basedproducts at a reasonable cost. One such product is serious games. Serious gamesoffer an engaging and innovative medium for delivering training to students whoare more comfortable with hands-on learning (Dickinson et al., 2011).

Serious games have been applied in a broad spectrum of application areas,e.g. military, government, educational, corporate, and healthcare (Backlund et al.,2007a). Another possible area of application of this kind of techniques is safetytraining. According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, “everyyear, 5,720 people die in the European Union as a consequence of work-related acci-dents, according to EUROSTAT figures. Besides that, the International LaborOrganization estimates that an additional 159,500 workers in the EU die every yearfrom occupational diseases. Taking both figures into consideration, it is estimatedthat every three-and-a-half minutes somebody in the EU dies from work-relatedcauses”. Serious games constitute and alternative for safety training, and they arebecoming popular mainly because of their potential to allow learners to get involvedin scenarios that would not be feasible in a real world context because of cost, timeor safety reasons. Either on their own or as a supplement to other existing moreformal ways of safety training, serious games provide an opportunity to emphasizesafe behaviors in the workplace.

In this chapter, we focus on the application of serious games in safety training.First, previous work on this topic is reviewed, and some existing serious games forhealth and safety training are described. Then, we give a series of guidelines for

R.J. Martínez-Durá (B)Instituto IRTIC, Universidad de Valencia, Paterna, Spaine-mail: Rafael.Martinez@uv.es

107M. Ma et al. (eds.), Serious Games and Edutainment Applications,DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-2161-9_7, C© Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011

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the design and evaluation of this type of computer applications. Next, technologicalaspects are described. Finally, future trends are analyzed and conclusions from thechapter are drawn.

7.2 Serious Games in Safety Training

Several applications of serious games for safety training have been reported.Although space limitations do not make it possible to provide a complete reviewof all these games, some relevant examples are presented in this section. These havebeen organized around three major application areas: construction, public safety andpedestrian safety. Some serious games outside these major areas are also presented.

7.2.1 Health and Safety in Construction

Fatal injury rates in the construction industry are higher than in most otherindustries. Falls from heights, trench collapses, scaffold accidents and electricshocks are common hazards, some of which can be avoided by wearing ade-quate personal protective equipment or by following proper safety procedures.Construction safety training is thus an essential issue as a prevention mechanism,to assure the safety of all people working in this industry. Serious games provide analternative to traditional training in this context and some efforts have already beenmade in this direction.

As an initial investigation into applying edutainment in the construction trades,Dickinson et al. (2011) have reported on a positive experience using a serious gamefocused on teaching trench health and safety lessons. In this work, authors made asignificant effort to provide a realistic looking environment and a rich interactivecontent to allow the student to establish intuitive relations between the contents ofthe lesson and the situations where the knowledge can be applied. In this game,students can freely move around a 3D environment as if they were walking; theyuse the mouse to control their view point; and they can interact with objects in theenvironment by clicking on them. To this end, a visible cursor provides informationon possible actions that the user can perform with each object. The training materialis structured around three scenarios that take place on a common simplified con-struction site. Each of these scenarios has a different goal, and uses a storyline tofavor student engagement. In the first scenario the user must safely retrieve a tool-box from the bottom of a trench, locating required tools and avoiding unsafe entrypoints. In the second scenario, the student has to investigate the possible cause ofa trench collapse, considering inadequate storage of equipment, improper trench-ing for soil conditions, weather conditions and surcharge. In the last scenario, thestudent has to play the role of a supervisor and plan five trenches on the job site,each with its soil type, obstacles and shoring requirements. An increasing levelof difficulty is associated with each scenario. In the first one, an avatar plays the

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role of a supervisor and warns the student when unsafe actions are carried out.In the last scenario, students are not warned and serious injuries to an avatar thatrepresents a co-worker are possible. The game was implemented using MicrosoftXNA Game Studio 3.1 in the Microsoft Visual C# 2008 integrated developmentenvironment.

Another serious game which is worth mentioning in the construction area isSafety Inspector, that was been presented by Lin et al. (2011). In this game, thestudent assumes the role of a safety inspector, and has to explore the jobsite to iden-tify potential dangers in a limited amount of time. Successfully identified hazardsare awarded and illustrated with extended explanations on best practices, applica-ble safety rules, and corrective actions. This game was programmed by using therendering, physics and animation features provided by the commercial game engineTorque 3D. The assessment of the results revealed that students enjoyed the learningprocess and showed a positive attitude towards using the game scoring as a way toreflect their safety knowledge.

In this sector, it is quite common to display visible danger warnings or symbolsto warn the user about unsafe actions. Figure 7.1 shows an example of this type ofprocedure.

7.2.2 Public Safety

“Games with serious purposes are establishing a presence in the training ofthose responsible for public safety. Police and fire departments, hospitals, stateand local emergency management agencies, and local decision makers are usingserious games increasingly, focusing on situations that require strategy, tactics,coordination, and communication” (McGowan and Pecheux, 2008).

Fig. 7.1 A sample scene of a simulation tool with a focus on safety

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As a first example, Hazmat: Hotzone (Carless, 2005; McGowan and Pecheux,2008) is a serious game that aims at training firemen to respond to the release ofchlorine gas in a shopping mall. In this game, players may take the role of eithera hazardous material technician or the incident commander and must decide howthey rescue and decontaminate as many civilians as possible by using limited equip-ment. This includes the execution of a number of actions, namely: set up a securityperimeter, neutralize the gas source, and evacuate and decontaminate civilians andthemselves. The game allows trainers to vary some parameters to adjust the level ofdifficulty, such as the number of civilians or the amount of equipment.

Another good example of this type of serious game is Sidth (Backlund et al.,2007a), a game-based firefighter training simulator developed in cooperationbetween the University of Skövde and the Swedish Rescue Services Agency.Rescues of victims from buildings on fire require the use of a breathing appara-tus, and the heat and smoke from the fire usually force the firefighters to crawl onthe floor. Training firefighters for this type of situations is traditionally performedin areas which have been specially designed for this purpose. Victims are replacedby dummies and firefighters have to rescue them from inside the buildings. When adummy is found, it is dragged to a safe environment and the search continues. Thisapproach requires both trained instructors and the availability of different set-ups tosimulate different environments, such as hospitals, hotels or gas stations. The gameSidth is based on cave technology (Cruz-Neira et al., 1992), and allows the user tomove freely in an empty room surrounded by screens, using sensors to read usermovements. The main goal of the game is to get the players to develop systematicand thorough search behavior in the presence of physical tension and other stressfactors. To this end, the player has to scan various locations and evacuate any vic-tims found. The health status of the player and the score are continuously presentedin the game. The health status is decreased by time and distance moved, and alsodepends on the player position, causing that the mission fails if it reaches zero. Thescore system assigns the player a basic score that depends on the percentage of thelocation which has been covered, and this is multiplied by a factor related to thetime remaining and the number of previous attempts at completing the level. A scanis considered successful if all rooms have been visited and all victims have beenevacuated within the time limit. The game contains 13 levels that model typical res-cue scenarios. When a location is successfully scanned, the game advances to thenext level. After a mission, the player obtains feedback about the areas which werescanned, by means of a map of the premises.

7.2.3 Pedestrian Safety

Virtual reality has also been used to train children in pedestrian safety. In McComaset al. (2002), a desktop virtual reality application to teach children to safely crossintersections is evaluated. The objective of this study was to determine whethervirtual environments are appropriate for this purpose and to what extent thesafety learning transfers to real world. An experiment involving children from two

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schools (urban and suburban) was run. The results showed that, although improvedstreet-crossing behavior transferred to real world behavior in the suburban schoolchildren, this was not the case in the urban school.

In this same direction, Liu (2006) presented a cartoon game design to educateChinese children on traffic safety. The game uses non player characters to guide thegame and explain the meaning of different traffic signs and safety regulations, byusing text and sound.

Yet another simulation game designed to transfer knowledge about safepedestrian behavior to school children has recently been reported in Ariffin et al.(2010). The game presents users with a range of very commonly-encountered sit-uations and pedestrian environments. In particular, three different scenarios weredeveloped, using color and realistic traffic sounds to help game engagement andfacilitate the acquisition of knowledge. At each scenario, the score is increased eachtime the player accomplishes a task. When a player fails at completing the task, sheis re-directed to a tutorial that instructs the player on specific road safety measures.

7.2.4 Other Example Applications

The use of serious games in safety training is not limited to the three previous areasof application. On the contrary, there exist many other cases in which serious gameshave been used for a wide range of purposes. This includes Serious Gordon (Nameeet al., 2006), a serious game to teach the basics of food safety to workers in thefood industry. This game aims at developing a set of nine competencies, namely:(a) wear and maintain uniform/protective clothing hygienically; (b) maintain a highstandard of hand-washing; (c) maintain a high standard of personal hygiene; (d)demonstrate correct hygiene practice if suffering from ailments/illnesses that mayaffect the safety of food; (e) avoid unhygienic practices in a food operation; (f)demonstrate safe food handling practices; (g) maintain staff facilities in a hygieniccondition; (h) obey food safety signs; and (i) keep work areas clean. Both technicaland pedagogical evaluations of the game were carried out. Technically, users foundthe game easy to navigate and control. From a pedagogical perspective, the gameproved successful at teaching learners induction skills required as part of food safetytraining.

A similar approach to that used in Backlund et al. (2007a) in the firefighter train-ing simulator Sidth described above, was employed by the same authors in Backlundet al. (2007b), this time with a focus on driving. In this particular set-up, a car is sur-rounded by seven screens, each showing the output from a LCD projector controlledby a standard PC, and the car movement is simulated by using sound, vibrations andcontrolling the car’s fan so that its force is linear with the speed. Authors used thegame to collect data over different traffic safety variables, such as speed, headwaydistance and lane change behavior, from 70 subjects, and concluded that game basedsimulations can be used to enhance learning in driving education.

In Chittaro and Ranon (2009), a serious game aiming at developing personal firesafety skills is also presented. The game focuses on building evaluation procedures,

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and aims at citizens, rather than first responders such as firefighters. The game isorganized in levels of increasing difficulty. In each level, the player is presented witha different fire emergency, and has to evacuate the building. To this end, the playerhas to make use of the most appropriate procedures and avoid other inappropriateactions (e.g. taking the elevator). Scores are calculated according to the time takento evacuate and the actions performed in the game.

7.3 Design and Evaluation

A common mistake in the design of serious games is to assume that learnerswill be motivated to learn just because the learning contents have been wrappedwith a game. It is not sufficient that the player enjoys the game. She must alsomeet the intended instructional objectives. For this reason, the design of a seriousgame should be supported by well-accepted instructional theories and the use ofappropriate game design principles.

As in any software development methodology, an analysis stage should precedeany implementation efforts. This step should aim at identifying the organizationneeds in terms of health and safety. This may include a review of previous dataon injuries, near misses or cases of ill health; and a series of discussions with theworkers. Then, we shall decide on the most appropriate style of game for our par-ticular training priorities. In general, two major approaches can be adopted in theimplementation of serious games for safety training:

(a) Mission-oriented interactive games in which the player has to undertake anumber of previously designed tasks applying safety procedures.

(b) Observation-based games in which the user has to observe the behaviorof avatars in a scene to detect situations which do not conform to safetyregulations.

A set of heuristics that can be used to carry out usability inspections of videogames has been presented by Pinell et al. (2008). These can also be used as designguidelines:

• Provide consistent responses to the user’s actions.• Allow users to customize video and audio settings, difficulty and game speed.• Provide predictable and reasonable behavior for computer controlled unit.• Provide unobstructed views that are appropriate for the user’s current action.• Allow users to skip non-playable and frequently repeated content• Provide intuitive and customizable input mapping.• Provide controls that are easy to manage, and that have an appropriate level of

sensitivity and responsiveness.• Provide users with information on game status.• Provide instructions, training, and help.

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• Provide visual representations that are easy to interpret and that minimize theneed for micromanagement.

Validation of traditional games focused on entertainment does not require scien-tific evidence about their quality. In fact, although there exist common guidelinesand recommendations to favor game engagement, the parameters that define a“good” game are ill-defined. From an industry perspective, a good game is one thatsells well. This is different when a game has a purpose other than entertainment. Inthe particular case of educational games, it is necessary to validate the contributionof the game to the consecution of the learning objectives.

Although many other newer approaches exist, Kirkpatrick framework (1959) isstill being used as a reference model to evaluate training; and the model proposedcan be also be applied to assess serious games which have a focus on learning.According to this model, evaluation of training effectiveness is organized in fourlevels. The information gathered at one level is used for the evaluation of the next,and each successive level is used to obtain more precise details on the effectivenessof the program. The four levels described by Kirkpatrick are as follows:

• Level 1. Reactions. This level measures the reaction of participants to the train-ing program, mainly in terms of learner’s satisfaction. Positive reactions arenot a guarantee for learning, but negative reactions usually impede learningand should be considered to improve the learning program. Feedback question-naires and informal comments from participants are common ways to extract theinformation required at this stage.

• Level 2. Learning. In this level, the learner’s progress in skills, knowledge orattitude is measured. Indeed, these are variables which are far more difficult andlaborious to measure that those at level 1. Possible approaches to evaluate theseaspects in the context of serious games are comparing knowledge before and afterplaying the game (e.g. Bellotti et al., 2009), or using an experimental group thatplays the game and a control group that is taught by traditional methods (e.g.Eagle and Barnes, 2009; Froschauer et al., 2010).

• Level 3. Transfer. At this level, we try to evaluate to what extent the knowl-edge and skills acquired through the training program are used in the learner’severyday activities. This information can be obtained by e.g. on-the-job observa-tions or reports from peers, customers or the participant’s manager. This level isespecially relevant at serious games for safety training.

• Level 4. Results. In this level, assessment focuses on business results. Financialreports or quality inspections may be used to analyze the impact of training in thebusiness’ objectives. In the case of serious games for safety training, an objectivemeasure of success is usually a reduction in the number of work related accidents.

Although level 4 results are perhaps the most relevant ones, these are sustainedby all three other inferior levels. This implies that to achieve the desired resultsat this level it is necessary to ensure that the other levels have been appropri-ately covered. A boring game may cause negative reactions and not engage the

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player, making her adopt a passive attitude that hinders learning. On the otherside, an attractive and enjoyable game may encourage a positive player’s attitudetowards learning. In a similar way, a game design which focuses on provid-ing large amounts of information may fail at level 3 and not have the desiredeffects. On the contrary, a game design that includes typical scenarios at the work-place may reinforce learning by association and benefit knowledge transfer at thislevel.

In some sense, serious games for safety training need to focus not only on thecontents that should be taught but also on raising the worker’s awareness aboutsafety rules and regulations.

7.4 Technological Issues

In this section we describe different technologies for development of serious gamesaiming at risk prevention. These technologies are not used strictly for that purpose,but they are aimed for building virtual reality environments with a high degree ofaccuracy. As for today, the most powerful applications use local rendering engines.However, it is worth mentioning that a new trend that deals with 3D applications thatexecute on Web browsers is emerging. This section has been structured around foursubsections. They deal with the representation of virtual environments, the simula-tion of the physical behavior of the virtual world, the use of virtual actor or avatarsin the virtual world and the evaluation and the generation of feedback.

Indeed, simulation is an essential part of training games, and a close relationexists between these two fields of research. For this reason, most of the technologicalissues discussed here are equally applicable to the development of simulation tools.

7.4.1 The Virtual Environment

Nowadays, gaming goes through providing the user with graphical representationof the gaming scenario. Current technologies allow the creation of a virtual envi-ronment which is a 3D geometrical description of such a scenario, which can benavigated and modified in some ways.

7.4.1.1 Geometrical Modeling

A virtual environment has to be populated with elements that reproduce the objectsthat appear in the real or imaginary world of the game. These elements have to becreated by means of geometric modeling software and have to be loaded into thegame application.

An important issue when developing a simulator is the possibility of buildingcomponents that can be used in several projects. From this point of view, we canclassify the elements of a scenario in three major categories:

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• Generic elements. There exist some elements which are common to many virtualenvironments across various application areas, such as the terrain or the sky.

• Typical components in a certain area. These are elements which commonlyappear in certain types of applications, such as scaffolding elements in safetytraining applications for the construction sector.

• Other application-specific components. Elements which are present in a singleapplication or a reduced set of applications.

The re-usability is very high for generic elements and hence important researchefforts have been made to produce both efficient and realistic modeling approaches.Techniques such as the so called skybox consist of enclosing the scene within acube, and using cube mapping to project the sky and other unreachable objects ontothe faces of the cube. Various methods for terrain representation have also beendeveloped (e.g., Pla-Castells et al., 2006).

These models can be built either procedurally (by means of algorithms) duringthe rendering of the scene (Ebert, 2003) or using modeling, rendering and/or com-positing software, such as Autodesk R© 3D Studio Max R©. Models created by suchsoftware can easily be exported to different formats which can be loaded by the 3Dprogramming libraries that are used for the development of the game. For exam-ple, models created with Autodesk R© 3D Studio Max R© can be saved in the formatused by the scene-graph library OSG, which will be discussed later, using the osg-Exp (Jensen, 2002) plugin. However, as digital assets have to be easily transportedthrough the content pipeline, from whatever digital content creation tool to whateverruntime engine, the use of a intermediate format, like COLLADA is recommended.

7.4.1.2 Real Time Rendering Engines

Rendering of a complex 3D scene can be a time consuming task. For this reasonReal-time rendering is usually achieved by using libraries or engines which havebeen specially built for this purpose. These software tools also make it easier thetasks related to organizing the element in a hierarchy both for rendering and forupdating the state of the scene. In addition, they provide tools for applying the mostrecent techniques on illumination, shading and rendering of different effects.

Within the open source category, one of the most spread engines isOpenSceneGraph (Wang and Qian, 2010) and Java3D, in between many others.OpenSceneGraph (OSG) is an open source library for high performance real-timerendering which is widely used in a number of computer graphics related fields. Itsfunctioning is based on the concept of a Scene Graph, a data structure that definesthe spatial and logical relationship between the components of a graphical scene.This data structure takes the form of a directed acyclic graph (DAG), which con-tains nodes that represent components or operations that generally propagate tochildren. Java3D uses a scene structure which is very similar to that used by OSG,and also allows an easy construction of complex scenes which can be manipulatedby using high-level constructs. An example of a game scene produced by using OSGis provided in Fig. 7.2.

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Fig. 7.2 A scene produced by using the OSG engine

Other common scene graph management libraries include:

• OGRE (http://www.ogre3d.org): The Object-Oriented Graphics RenderingEngine is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine written in C++ designed to makeit easier and more intuitive for developers to produce applications utilizinghardware-accelerated 3D graphics. The class library abstracts all the details ofusing the underlying system libraries like Direct3D and OpenGL and provides aninterface based on world objects and other intuitive classes.

• Irrlicht Engine (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net): It is a cross-platform high perfor-mance real-time 3D engine written in C++. It is a powerful high level API forcreating complete 3D and 2D applications like games or scientific visualizations.It integrates all the state-of-the-art features for visual representation like dynamicshadows, particle systems, character animation, indoor and outdoor technology,and collision detection.

• Delta3D: http://www.delta3d.org: It is a widely used and well-supported opensource game and simulation engine. Delta3D is a game engine which is speciallyaimed to modeling and simulation in military and defense applications, coveringmany common standards such as High Level Architecture (HLA), After ActionReview (AAR). However, it is also appropriate for general purpose applications,such as civil training, education, visualization, and entertainment. Among its fea-tures, it includes large scale terrain support, and SCORM Learning ManagementSystem (LMS) integration.

• Unreal Engine 3 http://unrealtechnology.com: It is under the hood of the mostvisually intensive computer and video games on the market. It is available under

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license for PC, PlayStation3, and Wii. Its main features are: multi-threaded ren-dering, 64-bit high dynamic range rendering pipeline with gamma correction,dynamic composition and compilation of shaders, post-processing effects (ambi-ent occlusion, motion blur, bloom, depth of field, tone mapping), artist-definedmaterials, dynamic fluid surfaces, soft body physics, deformable geometries, tex-ture streaming system for maintaining constant memory usage, particle physicsand skeletal animation. A development kit, named UDK (http://www.udk.com),is available which covers the complete workflow of application development,including scene edition, animation, and lighting preview.

• Cry Engine 3 (http://www.crytek.com/): It gives developers full control over theirmulti-platform creations in real-time. It features many improved efficiency toolsto enable the fastest development of game environments and game-play avail-able on PC, PlayStation R© 3 and Xbox 360TM. Its main characteristics are: roadand river tools, vehicle creation, multi-core support, and multithreaded physics,deferred lighting, facial animation editor, dynamic path finding, rope physics,parametric skeletal animation and soft particle system.

• OpenSG is a scene graph system to create real time graphics programs, e.g. forvirtual reality applications. It is developed following Open Source principles,it is LGPL licensed, and can be used freely. It runs on Microsoft Windows,Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X and is based on OpenGL. Its main features areadvanced multithreading and clustering support (with sort-first and sort-last ren-dering, amongst other techniques), although it is perfectly usable in a singlethreaded single-system application as well.

Regarding the web-browser based rendering engines, new technologies haveemerged since the establishment of the HTML5 standard. The key concept for hav-ing high performance graphics was the ability for using shaders inside the browser,taking shape data and turning it into pixels on the screen by means of using thepower of the local graphic processor. Mostly them are OpenGL based, with theadditional advantage that also exists a port for the OpenGL ES standard, usedin the mobile platforms. The most relevant technologies are WebGL, X3D, JavaOpenGL (JOGL), Lightweight Java Game Library, Stage 3D (the Molehill Adobe3D API) and the many scenegraph management engines and frameworks basedon them. Here you have only a few examples just for the shake of completeness:C3DL, CopperLicht, O3D, X3DOM, J3D, jME, Xith3D, JAGaToo, Alternativa3Dand Away3d.

7.4.1.3 Performance and Image Quality Improvement

As it has been stated before, there exist different computer graphics techniquesthat can be used to either provide more realistic effects or to reduce the process-ing required to render the scenes e.g. bump mapping and texture baking. Bumpmapping (Max and Becker, 1994) is a computer graphics technique that aims atproviding a more realistic view of an object’s surface by modeling the interaction ofa bumpy surface texture with the lights in the environment. The technique is used to

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simulate bumps, wrinkles or other effects on the object, and it does this by chang-ing the brightness of the pixels according to a height map for the surface that needsto be specified. Render to texture, also called texture baking, can be used to avoidthe application of shaders in real time and thus speed up the application. This tech-nique consists of recording one or more views of a same surface and using it/themat a later stage during program execution. This approach allows the programmerto pre-compute (offline) textures with illumination or other complex effects whichrequire heavy processing. Although the technique is very useful to model static sce-narios that will not change with time, it cannot be combined with dynamic lightingtechniques for changing objects in the scene.

At present, hardware solutions to achieve real time processing are also been used.In particular specialized Graphics Processing Units (GPU) are commonly present inmost common video cards, and allow high speed processing of graphics data bymeans of programming the five programmable stages (Vertex, Tessellation Control,Tessellation Evaluation, Geometry, and Fragment). Beside the texture techniques,many other effects can be also combined to get realistic graphics (Refractions, ani-mated textures, realtime shadows), but they are out of the scope of the chapter. For areference, see the OpenGL specification. The last one, OpenGL 4.1 was announcedon 26 July 2010.

7.4.2 Physical Simulation of the Environment

Another important technological aspect is the simulation of the game’s physics.Traditional physics engines were mainly based on solid-rigid simulations coupledwith joints. This approach does not allow simulating the behavior of objects thatcan deform elastically and, in many cases, it is limited to produce a realistic effectof only part of the objects in the scene. Nowadays, more complex models are beingsupported by moving calculations to the GPU and specialized hardware. This allowsdevelopers to simulate in real-time and with high accuracy visual effects and thebehavior of complex systems with a large amount of interactions, such as plantsmovements, trees, atmospheric effects, particle systems, fire, fluids, deformableobjects, etc.

7.4.2.1 Main Issues in Physics Modeling

Building the physical model for a virtual world consists on defining the main entitiesthat are involved in the simulation in a dynamic manner. But it is also very impor-tant to identify the most important behaviors that have to be reproduced accordingto goals of the project. This will determine the modeling methodologies for the dif-ferent entities. As an example, for a certain project the elastic behavior of an objectcan be irrelevant while, for another project, it can be one of the most important ele-ments of the simulation. The properties of the physics models can affect in differentways the success of the game and of the learning process.

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One of the key issues is the fidelity of the models. The use of a serious game tomake the workers aware of risks at work has a particularity: in most cases the playeris familiar with the real environment which is reproduced in the game. From thatexperience, she already has a set of well-established skills and habits that she willtry to apply to the game. If the environment does not give responses very similarto real ones this causes frustration and rejection in the user and provokes a feelingthat the experience is not true, thus reducing the degree of acceptance of the newexperiences. For this reason it is very important that the environment behaves in away that is realistic enough to make the user feel comfortable and familiar.

However, the deformation of reality is a tool that can also be exploited in order toincrease the quality of the experience and of learning. A very common technique inanimation and game development is the exaggeration of the deformation of objects,to obtain a more dramatic effect. In the context of serious games for risk prevention,the exaggeration of the effects of certain actions (in the form of accidents or damageto objects) can be very beneficial to the goal of the game. Although this premise canseem contradictory with the previous statement about realism, it is not; the key isin using this technique in a selected set of situations. During the situations thatare less relevant for the goals of the game, realism is important, to make the userconfident and to create a believable situation. It is during the situations that causerisk, or when the user performs an action that can have consequences to her health,that these exaggerated dynamics are most adequate. As it is unlike that the user hasa large experience in such situations, a lack of realism will not be perceived as amistake of the game. In addition, an over-actuated behavior will help to make theuser aware of the consequences of her actions, and will reinforce learning.

Previous issues are directly related with the dynamic properties of the virtualenvironment. There is an additional factor that, although it does not relate directly tothese properties, can affect the quality of the application. This factor is the efficiencyof the implementation of the physics and dynamic models in the game. The reasonis that models that take a long time to compute the evolution of the dynamics of theenvironment can slow down the execution of the application, affecting the frame rateof the graphics application. However, in many cases accurate models, coming fromspecialized fields of engineering or physics, are computationally intensive. Thus,the election of a model has to reach a trade-off between efficiency and realism oraccuracy.

7.4.2.2 Physics Engine Selection

Taking into account the previous considerations, we give next some remarks on themost relevant physics engines, to guide the selection when developing a seriousgame:

• ODE (http://www.ode.org): ODE is an open source, library for simulating rigidbody dynamics. It has advanced joint types and integrated collision detection withfriction. Its accuracy is not very high.

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• Bullet physics (http://www.bulletphysics.com): It is a professional open sourcecollision detection, rigid body and soft body dynamics library. It is also integratedin MAYA and Blender3D.

• Newton Dynamics (http://newtondynamics.com): It is an integrated solutionfor real time simulation of physics environments. The API provides scenemanagement, collision detection and dynamic behavior.

• Vortex (http://www.vxsim.com): It simulates the behavior of vehicles, robotics,and heavy equipment in real-time synthetic environments for operator trainingand test. It is integrated in OSG and VEGA

• PhysX (http://nvidia.com/object/physx_new.html): It delivers real-time, hyper-realistic physical and environmental gaming effects: explosions, reactive debris,realistic water, and lifelike character motion. Everything is computed in theNVidia R© GPU.

• Havok FX (http://www.havok.com): It is a physic engine that runs entirely onGPU and provides failure-free physic simulation using proprietary techniques forensuring robustness, collision detection, dynamics and constraint solving. It pro-vides integrated vehicle solutions and other tools available for simulating clothes,skeletons physics and rigid body destruction.

7.4.3 Use of Avatars

Virtual actors, or Avatars, are a major element in most safety training appli-cations, and are especially relevant in observation-based games (see Fig. 7.3).Pre-recorded animations of avatars, using techniques such as motion capture, areable to reproduce detailed and natural human movements (Van Welbergen et al.,2010).

Although avatars are usually represented by polyhedral models or meshes, real-time animation requires a small number of polygons and specific data structures to

Fig. 7.3 An avatar waiting for user interaction

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accelerate the computing process (Kalra et al., 1998). Hence, a skeleton approachis generally used to control its movement. A skeleton is defined as an articulatedstructure and it is composed of a hierarchy of segments which are connected throughjoins. Different poses can be achieved by rotating the joins of the skeleton.

However, in interactive applications the use of pre-recorded animations alone isnot always sufficient. When the player gets in physical contact with other actors inthe virtual environment, it is very important that they behave in a feasible way.For this reason the combination of physics based animations with pre-recordedanimations is an active research field (Ye et al., 2008; Van Welbergen et al., 2010).

Currently, most game engines include support for avatars e.g. cry engine, unrealengine, havoc. They usually allow the programmer to control different parts of thebody, using either a muscle- or a bone-based model. Some of these also includesupport for facial expressions, and even provide library functions to control the freemovement of hair and clothes. A good example of this is NaturalMotion (http://www.naturalmotion.com), which includes an avatar control library called Euphoria.

7.4.4 Game Scoring and Feedback

In an instructional game, it is important to design a scoring system that (a) encour-ages the player (b) motivates improvement and (c) accurately reflects the user’sprogress. Although scoring already provides a useful tool from an evaluation per-spective, instructional games for safety training should also provide feedback inthis direction. In addition, this feedback shall not be limited to the player, but alsoserve to instructional designers as a means for game improvement as part of themaintenance tasks.

One common form to provide feedback is the creation of game reports that sum-marize the player’s performance and record her progress. Data recorded on thesereports are application specific, but common variables are detailed below:

• Date and time of the game• The score achieved• The time needed to complete the activity• Level of achievement of the objectives• Annotations on potentially dangerous actions

From a player’s perspective, this feedback contributes to avoiding the same mis-takes in future games. From a designer’s perspective, the reports can also be used todetermine the educational effectiveness of each task. For example, activities whichrepeatedly produced empty reports may be removed from the game, or others whichdo not achieve their instructional objective may be scheduled for improvement.

Hence, evaluation modules and automatic report generators are essential com-ponents in instructional games. The former calculate relevant statistics fromthe user activity in the session. The latter aims at producing a final documentthat summarizes the results achieved. To this end, a number of parameters and

122 R.J. Martínez-Durá et al.

performance information are stored during the simulation process e.g. the timerequired to complete the activities, the number of collision hits, and the objectivesachieved. At the end of the session, all these data are summarized under a num-ber of appropriate variables, and processed to obtain predefined metrics. A populartechnique is to use XML files to store the data generated by the evaluation module,and a Stylesheet Transformation Language (XSLT) to convert the XML data into afinal report. Chart libraries or command-line plotting programs can also be used toinclude graphs that facilitate the evaluation of the operator’s skills e.g. ChartDirector(http://www.advsofteng.com), Gnuplot (http://www.gnuplot.info).

7.5 Conclusions and Future Trends

Recognizing the important of feedback in learning, there is a current trend towardsthe development of adaptive training systems. This can be described as “seri-ous game-based systems whose goal is to engender communication opportunitiesfor players to learn about their strengths and weaknesses, receive real-time in-game assessment feedback on their performance, and share diverse solutions andstrategies during, between, and after game play in order to update and adapt theirunderstanding” (Raybourn, 2007).

Another trend consists of the use of affective computing, including the use ofaffective behaviors on game avatars to improve realism; and the recognition ofplayer’s emotions to tailor the game and increase the player’s engagement.

With regard to the technology used, the use of tools (e.g. the NVIDIA R© CUDAtoolkit) to program algorithms on GPUs and increase the processing capability arebecoming widespread. This type of tools attempt to exploit the parallelism offeredby the multiple kernels in the GPUs, allowing for more realistic simulations.

If serious games are already a means to provide health and safety training, thesenew trends and other technological developments will increase their advantages overother more traditional training methods in the near future. Nevertheless, perhaps themost challenging issues are not at the technology side. Although the achievement ofmore realistic simulations may also benefit the learning process, further research isstill needed on instructional methods that maximize the effectiveness of the training.

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