Half Life 2 used for Learning how to flee your office, apartment block or university dorm if fire breaks out could be as simple as playing Half Life 2 or Doom 3, researchers from the University of Durham have found. Durham_fire_videogame_011 Durham Uni boffins used Half Life 2 to recreate a fire in its computer science department Scientists …
If you try this at home and the authorities find out you will be accused of plotting a terrorist attack or planning a shooting rampage, especially if it is for a school.
In a real fire I wouldn't fancy tripping over a geek who spent all his spare time playing video games but couldn't interact with the real world.
"However, those with videogames experience performed better than those without."
Not according to the version of this story that other sites are running. Apparently, the gamers would rush through fire-engulfed doorways without a second thought for their safety, while the less video-game savvy had the crazy idea to find another way out.
Presumably the gamers thought they'd only lose 5 or 10 health for a bit of heat damage, rather than setting their clothes on fire and suffering third degree burns over a large percentage of their body.
"However, those with videogames experience performed better than those without."
Really? I heard the gamers tried running through the flames because they just treated it as a game and didn't want to do it "properly". But then that was a while ago, once again the story has changed in the time between making the news and making the Register...
That's great. Except for the fact that a company called VectorCommand have been making software such as this for years, primarily for use by the fire service, but easily customisable for use by companies.
Of course for information like that, you can't get paid for several years to sit around playing Half-Life 2 and no doubt various other computer games under the guise of "research". Good work if you can get it.
Seriously, is this what we're paying "boffins" for?
"In a real fire I wouldn't fancy tripping over a geek who spent all his spare time playing video games but couldn't interact with the real world."
I think in a real fire you might be more concerned in getting out of the building though. You might find that, as a result of his having actually played the game, the geek is already out of danger and quite happy downing a few cold ones at the student's union, having known exactly the way to escape the building.
The IT geeks in the Army have to do some physical training and occasionaly a mock firefight.
The attemps are similar, run into an enemy fortified position and spray and pray before running off again, dodging enemy "bullets" and making it back to safety.
Rinse and repeat using one man each time until the enemy are taken out, or rush in all at once and lose 90% of the team but keep some alive to claim victory. Statistically they have a good chance of missing you, whereas the IT geek has multiple targets and only minutes to live.
“Although virtual environment toolkits are available, they usually only provide a subset of the tools needed to build complete virtual worlds,” he said.
Although my guess would be that price is more of a differentiating factor. Grad student time is cheap, commercial VR sims are not - and you don't get a publication credit for using a tool for the purpose for which it was written...
Did they find some people escaped faster by running while strafing?
Playing games such games isn't going to teach you the skills needed to stay alive in a burning building. Before you get to the stage of closing the door behind you, you need to know if it is safe to open, by feeling the surface and then the handle. If it's hot, don't open it, or you'll get a face full of back draft, and it's game over.
Stop worrying about not closing the doors! You can hear them closing automatically in the background, which is what you would expect a decent fire door to do. I would be more concerned by the lack of suitable fire exit signage. Each sign ought to be pointing to where the next one is located so you can follow them out.
If so, those interlacing artefacts might have cost them marks. Remember to deinterlace your video before you post it, guys.
In an opposite example to the story, the lighting automation in one of our windowless stairwells went on the blink once - it kept turning on and off at random. I did a sign saying "Warning: dimensional rift ahead. Beware of the cacodaemon."
It was either that or "Warning: Turner Prize-winning installation ahead. Watch out for pretentious artistic hissy fits."
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