Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 4/28/08 Section: News

Driving fast cars. Avoiding explosions. Thanks to a university-developed program, Xbox-addicted teens might not be the only ones playing hero in video games. Some real firemen and police officers have joined the ranks as well.

A group of university researchers is developing a video game to teach emergency responders how to act at the scenes of accidents, using 3-D graphics to simulate scenarios real-life training cannot.

The game, which features colorful graphics, bold explosions and even the ability to fly helicopters, could be one of the first video games ever used for emergency response training purposes, said Michael Pack, a university researcher and principal investigator of the project.

Pack presented the program at the Federal Virtual Worlds Expo in Washington last Thursday, an event where government employees and contractors discussed how to use virtual reality technologies.

Although it's still in its early stages, many rescue officials have already tried the game out themselves.

"I was fairly impressed," said Steve Kerber, Deputy Chief of the College Park Volunteer Fire Department. "It has the potential to be a good tool."

In the game, emergency responders go online and log in as a viritual characters, called avatars, that represent their real-life jobs.

Once the firemen, EMTs and the rest of the team are logged in, they talk via headsets as they redirect traffic, transport injured civilians and perform other tasks to resolve virtual accidents.

Although the game can simulate emergency situations pretty accurately, Kerber said it cannot provide everything that reality has to offer.

"The graphics were certainly realistic," Kerber said. "[But] you certainly can't replicate the pressure of life."

The game is funded by the I-95 Corridor Coalition, an alliance of East Coast transportation agencies that has contributed about $1.4 million to the program's development. George Schoener, the coalition's executive director, said he is also impressed by the game's capabilities.

"I thought it was extremely effective because it allowed real-time role play," Schoener said. "It was like they are right there on the scene."

But Schoener said he originally had his doubts, a sentiment many others shared.

"A lot of people, at first, they were skeptical as to using this because they hadn't played video games, and so that was actually a very big inhibitor for them being able to learn the core competencies that this will teach them," said Phillip Weisberg, a university alum and 3-D development manager of the project. "But after they actually realized how powerful the tool was ... they were very intrigued by that."

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