Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Ross Kukulinski speaks about "Serious Communication for Serious Games" at Serious Play Conference 2012 ABSTRACT: Voice communication is a key component of military-unit based training. Soldiers rely on communications skills on the battlefield to share information within a unit and throughout the chain of command. Both observing proper radio protocol and verbally relaying information between unit members are essential in dismounted soldier and convoy training. State-of-the-art solutions for serious games have been inadequate for reinforcing these important skills. While some games do offer integrated voice solutions, the implementation often fails to resemble realistic battlefield scenarios. And most in-game solutions also do not provide interoperability with the existing deployed base of military simulators or instructor stations. In this session, the speaker will demonstrate a new communication product that provides these capabilities. Based on input from actual military training facilities, this solution is can be used to augment existing serious game training, raising the fidelity of the simulation.
Citation preview
2
Photo by Derek Jensen
3
Photo Courtesy of U.S. Military
Roadmap
1. Serious games and teamwork2. Communications modeling3. Fidelity4. Game integration5. Network interoperability6. Final thoughts and future directions
4
Part 1
5
Serious Games are Powerful Tools
Serious Games …
• Allow soldiers to experience situations that are impossible in the real world1
• Provide improved hand-eye coordination, multi-tasking, and teamwork2
• Are uniquely flexible to support varied training needs
6
1 Corti, 2006; Squire & Jenkins, 20032 Michael & Chen, 2006
‘Good’ Serious Games
Six Ingredients to a ‘good’ game1
1. Mechanics2. Rules3. Immersive Graphics4. Interactivity5. Challenge6. Risks7. What about communication?
7
1 Derryberry, 2007
Fundamentals of Teamwork
The Big Five Core Components of Teamwork1
1. Team Leadership2. Performance Monitoring3. Backup Behavior4. Adaptability5. Team/Collective Orientation
Hypothesis: Communication key element?
8
1 Salas, Sims, & Burke, 2004
Communication and Performance
• America’s Army experiments– Researchers measured team communication
• Communication network level• Number of report-ins• Number of normal communications
• Teams with regular organized reports had:– Higher performance– Higher estimated situational awareness
9
Schneider & Carley, 2005
DARWARS Ambush!: Authoring Lessons Learned in a Training Game1
• Communication skills are critical for success– Requires effective communications training
• Communications capabilities differ widely across varying military units
• Training system should be similar to real-world communication system
10
1 Diller, Orberts, Blankenship, Nielsen, 2004
DARWARS Lessons Cont’d
• Primary functions of a convoy commander– Establish and maintain communications within the
convoy– Maintain communication with superordinate and
subordinate element commanders
11
Diller, Orberts, Blankenship, Nielsen, 2004
A Training Transfer Study of Serious Games
“Our work in this project demonstrated consistently through all five experiments that communications is fundamental to the training experience and one of the most important aspects of the exercise.”
Major Ben Brown
MOVES Institute
Naval Postgraduate School
Brown, 2010
12
Game Communication Options
• Nothing• Text-chat• Game integrated voice communication• Third-party voice communication
None simulate real-world communication!
13
Our Customer Feedback• Some were content with what they had• Some engineered custom solutions• Many were frustrated
– Current game communication systems…• are not robust• are difficult to manage in large installations• do not simulate real-world radio communication• do not integrate well with other training systems• lack live technical support and expertise
14
Brief History Lesson
• Full Spectrum Warrior – 2000-2003• America’s Army – 2002• DARWARS Ambush – 2005-2009• ‘Game After Ambush’ (VBS2) – 2009-2012/13• ‘Games For Training’ Recompete – Q4-2012
15
Communication Specifications
• Game After Ambush (2009)– 8,118 words in technical specification– 128 words for describing communication
• Games for Training (Draft – October 2011)– 5,113 words in technical specification– 128 words for describing communication
• Games for Training (Draft – April 2012)– Finally requires high-fidelity voice communication
16
Part 2
17
Communications Modeling
Modes of Voice Communication
• Intercoms
• Radios
• Earshot
18
Intercoms
• Full-duplex• One channel per
‘wire’• 1-to-1 or n-to-n
participants• Phone/Conference
call
19
Photo by K!T
Radios
• Half-duplex (usually)• 1-to-n participants• Many configurations
possible (AM, FM, PT/CT, freq, encoding, etc.)
• Variable communication link quality
• Complex and hard to simulate in real-time
• Noisy!
20
Photo courtesy of U.S. Military
• Simulated voice communication– Full duplex– Volume and quality degrades over distance
Earshot
21
Simulating Real-world Communication
• Simulated radios behave like real-world radios– AM, FM, Frequency Hopping– Half-duplex radios– Full-duplex intercoms– Real-time dynamic radio noise– Realistic propagation effects due to ranging,
occulting, radio power level, and terrain– Crypto system sound effects
22
• Simulate voice communication (Earshot)– Volume and quality degrades over distance– Separate from radio simulation
• Trainees limited to channels they would have in real-world
23
Simulating Real-world Communication
Part 3
Fidelity
24
Acceptable Fidelity
• What is the training goal?• What is the real-world communication?• Combined arms, convoy, and small unit
communications “must be correct and effective”
• “One can debate the level of fidelity needed for useful training, but fidelity must certainly be high when it relates to the specific task being trained”
1Brown, 2010
25
Basic Intercom
26
Intercom and Individual Radios
27
Geolocated Individual Radios
28
Geolocated Vehicle & Individual Radios
29
Highest Fidelity
30
Part 4
Game Integration
31
“Quite simply, communications should be as seamless as all other aspects of [the serious game]. Communications should be internal to
[the game] with seams between vendor production transparent to the user.”1
1Brown, 2010
32
Administrative Interface
• In addition to personnel and weapons, game scenarios should include communication
• Radio/intercom configuration and allocation
• DIS/HLA configuration
• Re-usable communication configuration
33
User Interface
• Two possible views– Heads Up Display (HUD)– In-game objects
• HUD– Simple and intuitive– Not realistic – does it break flow?
• In-game objects– Higher realism – does it impede training?
34
User Interface Capabilities
• Regardless of view mode:– Support for multiple radios and intercoms– View radio channel and Tx/Rx status– Support changing radio channels– Dynamic vehicle communication systems– Earshot voice communication
35
Required Simulation Information
• Radio location from game entities for realistic radio effects like ranging and occulting
• Player location for Earshot voice communication
• Assign radios and intercoms to vehicles for mounted training– Players acquire vehicle-based radios when
mounted, lose access when dismounted
36
After Action Review
• “Both simulation groups commented extensively on the AAR tool. Both groups believed the AAR tool was critical in providing a big picture view of what happened during the exercise.” 1
• Communication playback synced with visuals• Seek, Pause, FF, RW, Bookmarks• Export audio/visual for later analysis and study
1Brown, 2010
37
Part 5
Network Interoperability
38
39
Live-Virtual-Constructive Example
DIS & HLA
• Distributed Interactive Simulation– Wire-level specification– UDP– Simple!– But standard slow to evolve
• High-Level Architecture– Run Time Infrastructure– Set of API functionality– Federation Object Model– Very complex
40
Networked Voice
• Audio encoding and sample rate
• Dynamic packet sizes
• Latency– Maximum 150ms one-way latency– Latency <100 ideal
• Unreliable networks (jitter, lost packets)
41
Part 6
Final Thoughts
42
Summary
• Communication is critical for teamwork
• Real-time communication simulation is computationally complex
• Serious games require high-fidelity communication for effective training
• Requirement to network disparate training systems into a common network
43
Resources• Brown, B., (2010) A Training Transfer Study of Simulation Games• Carpenter, R., White, C., (2005) Commercial Computer Games in the Australian
Department of Defense• Corti, K. (2006) Games-based Learning; a serious business application. • Derryberry, A. (2007) Serious Games: online games for learning• Diller, D., Roberts, B., Blankenship, S., Nielsen, D. (2004) DARWARS Ambush!
Authoring Lessons Learned in a Training Game• Hussain, T., etal (2010) Development of game-based training systems: Lessons
learned in an inter-disciplinary field in the making• Hussain T. & Ferguson, W. (2005) Efficient Development of Large-Scale Military
Training Environments using a Multi-Player Game• McGowan, C., Pecheux, B. (2007) Serious Games that Improve Performance• Michael, D., & Chen, S. (2006) Serious games: Games that educate, train and inform• Sims E., Salas E., Burke S. (2004) Is There a ‘Big Five’ in Teamwork• Snider, M., Carley K., Moon, I. (2005) Detailed Comparison of America’s Army and
Unit of Action Experiments• Squire, K. & Jenkins, H. (2003) Harnessing the power of games in education
44
Useful Links:
www.seriousplayconference.comwww.seriousgamesdirectory.comwww.seriousgamesassociation.com
Contact:
