Own experiences can enhance the immersive effect

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the way how our own experiences could increase the immersive effect of a computer game.

After a very long break, I finally managed to play Assetto Corsa (AC) [1] again. Of course, I would have liked to play it on a more frequent basis as it is a very realistic and fun racing simulator, but the aspect of being a realistic racing simulator requires more or less a steering wheel in order to fully enjoy the gameplay. In this case, playing AC needs all the time some preparation as I have to set up the steering wheel before I can start playing it. Furthermore, after I have finished driving along virtual race tracks, I need to remove the steering wheel as it would otherwise occupy too much space of my desk. In other words, playing AC is not as easy as playing other games.

Yesterday, I took the time to set up my racing wheel and I finally was able to experience the fun of speeding along a race track, again. This is especially interesting as AC utilizes a very realistic physics engine and graphics engine, hence driving a virtual car in the game feels almost like driving a real car. The only thing that breaks a bit the immersion are the missing forces on the own body. Nevertheless, playing AC results all the time in a very intense immersive experience. However, this time I noticed another interesting component of the immersion of this computer game.

Usually, I used AC to experience a ride on one of the famous Formula One race tracks. This time, however, I decided to explore the hill climb course „Trento – Bondone“ which is based on one of many small mountain roads that can be found in the Alps. The track itself consists of a narrow road that changes between more or less straight parts and serpentine roads featuring several tight hairpin curves.

Assetto Corsa – Trento-Bondone

As I was driving along this track for the very first time, I noticed that the immersive feeling was increased in relation to the immersive effect of driving on a virtual version of a real race track. The reason for this could be the fact that I was driving along such kind of serpentine road during my skiing vacation in the Berchtesgaden Alps. In this case, I was able to connect my real world experience of driving on a serpentine road with the virtual experience of driving along a similar serpentine road.

Connecting our own experiences with the experiences we make during the gameplay potentially adds another dimension to the immersive aspect of computer games as we are able to compare our expectations to the results of our gameplay. It can also explain why driving along the hill climb course had an even stronger immersive effect than driving on one of the race tracks: I never had the chance to drive on a real race track, hence I do not have any experience I can compare to the experiences in the game.

Now, I need to get the chance to drive on one of the real world race tracks that are implemented in AC in order to examine if this will also enhance the immersive effect of driving on this track in AC.