Evaluating Gujarat Tourism

Evaluating Gujarat Tourism EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Gujarat has all the ingredients to become one of Indias leading travel destinations natural beauty, rich heritage, ancient archaeological sites and a colourful culture as well. Yet, Gujarat tourism has not met success in comparison to destination branding success stories such as Kerala, Rajasthan, Goa, etc. The primary aim of this study was to study destination Gujarat and probe for the reasons behind this phenomenon. A secondary aim of this study was to explore destination branding as a concept by evaluating Gujarat tourism and in the process understand how domestic and foreign tourists choose destinations for travel. The literature review highlighted issues such as critical success factors behind destination brands, growth of destination brands on the internet and the main points of the current tourism policy of Gujarat. There was a lack of information on Gujarat Tourism and hence a research was conducted which had both qualitative and quantitative components. The results from this research were used to compare destination Gujarat with three other competing states. Finally, on the basis of the research findings and analysis it was recommended that Gujarat has the potential to become a top tourist destination if it manages to create a distinct identity and strong brand associations via effective marketing strategies. INTRODUCTION Since centuries Gujarat has been a vibrant melting pot of cultures, traditions and movements. It has also been blessed with a unique natural landscape and architecture which includes ruins of a long forgotten ancient Harappan civilization at Dholavira and Lothal to the abode of endangered wildlife like the Asiatic Lion and Wild Ass not found anywhere else in the world; from the holy town of Dwarka to the glorious Modhera Sun Temple built by the Solanki rulers. Yet, unlike rival tourist states such as Rajasthan, Kerela, Andhra Pradesh and Goa, Gujarat has still not been able to fulfill its tourist potential. Much of it is due to an inability to carve out a unique identity and develop offerings which attracts more tourists. The objective of the study ‘Understanding and Evaluating Gujarat Tourism is to understand Gujarat as an emerging tourist destination and on the basis of research suggest recommendations for it to be amongst the leading tourist destinations in India. The main reasons for choosing this topic as an area for study are: * Marketing destinations provides an immense challenge to any management student in my opinion. It is an extremely complex product which has a mix of natural beauty, heritage, culture, tradition, folkart, food, etc. The study provides an opportunity to understand and analyze the marketing of such a product * Most of the academic articles that I came across on destination branding were written in a global context. A few case studies have been written on successful tourist states such as Kerela, Uttarkhand, etc. There is no recent research as such done on Gujarat tourism or its marketing and branding initiatives * Around six years ago, research had been done in MICA on â€Å"How to attract foreign tourists to Gujarat†. However, this project was not academic in its outlook and much has changed the way communication flows since then LITERATURE REVIEW Destination Branding To understand, Gujarat as a tourist brand it is imperative to understand the concept of destination branding that has been looked upon by various academicians. Tourist Destinations Tourism destinations are products of history and culture. To some level, a successful tourist destination is one which can connect instantly with the cultural background of its potential tourist. If one looks at the meanings associated with a particular place, some of them are shared by the local community whereas others are shared by global cultural communities. For example, a place like Manali or Rishikesh attracts tourists from all over the world. Hence a tourism destination may generate certain internationally shared meanings which can constitute a standardized platform from which a culturally di ¬Ã¢â€š ¬erentiated market communication can take its point of departure and provide a distinct flavor. An effective portrayal and communication of these meanings is what ultimately helps the tourist decide one place over another. Concept of Destination Brands In todays age of globalization, intense competition between destinations is forcing various states to build a strong distinct destination brand which can help differentiate one state from another and attract tourists as well as investors. To create this unique identity and build the competitive edge , it is important to study the microenvironment, tourist behavior and trends, strategies adopted by other successful tourist destinations, evaluation of its own strengths and weaknesses, etc. as a basis for coming up with effective communication strategies. Hence the marketing of places has received more increased interest and become accordingly more sophisticated over the last three decades. Also from a marketers perspective, many have shied away from the topic- arguing that places are too complex to be included in branding discussions since they have too many stakeholders and too little management control; they have underdeveloped identities and are not perceived as brands by the general public. And yet, destination branding is one of todays hottest topics among place marketers from Switzerland and New Zealand to Hawaii and Costa Rica. (Piggott, 2001) As per the World Tourism Organisation, this century will mark the emergence of tourist destinations as fashion accessories. The choice of holiday destinations will help define the identity of the traveller and in an increasing homogenous world will set him apart from the hordes of other tourists (Lurham, 1998) As style and status indicators destinations can offer the same consumer benefits as other more highly branded lifestyle accoutrements such as cars, perfumes, watches and clothes. All are used to communicate, reflect and reinforce associations, statements and group memberships and in the same way tourists use their trips as expressive devices to communicate messages about themselves to peers and observers. Travel for leisure is often a highly involving experience, extensively planned, excitedly anticipated and fondly remembered. Souvenirs and props trigger and display those experiences photographs, videos and ‘wish you were there postcards are shared with friends and relatives, and logo emblazoned merchandise and luggage labels proclaim ‘ been there, done that to any observers who care to notice. (Clarke, 2000) So, what exactly is a brand ? In marketing terms a brand represents a unique combination of product characteristics and added values, both functional and non-functional, which have taken on a relevant meaning which is inextricably linked to that brand, awareness of which might be conscious or intuitive. (Macrae, Parkinson, Sheerman, 1995) Brand advantage is secured through communication which highlights the specific benefits of a product, culminating in an overall impression of a superior brand. The image the product creates in the consumers mind, how it is positioned, however is of more importance to its ultimate success than its actual characteristics. Brand managers position their brands so that they are perceived by the consumer to occupy a niche in the marketplace occupied by no other brand- thus, for marketers, the value of a successful brand lies in its potential to reduce substitutability. Brand managers differentiate their product by stressing attributes they claim will match their target markets needs more closely than other brands and then they create a product image consistent with the perceived self image of the targeted consumer segment (Schiffman Kanuk, 2000). When consumers make brand choices about the products including destinations- they are making lifestyle statements since they are buying into not only an image but also an emotional relationship. (Sheth, Mittal, Newman, 1999). Consumers have their own brand wardrobes from which they make selections to communicate, reflect and reinforce associations, statements and memberships; in effect, ‘ consumers enrobe themselves with brands, partly for what they do, but more for what they help express about their emotions, personalities and roles. (Chernatony, 1993) When one speaks about destination branding, a few attempts have been made at defining it. Some of these definitions include, ‘Destination branding is a process used to develop a unique identity and personality that is different from all competitive destinations. ‘Destination branding is selecting a consistent brand element mix to identify and distinguish a destination through positive image building. ‘Destination branding is about combining all things associated with the place (i.e., its products and services from various industries agriculture; tourism; sports; arts; investment; technology; education, etc.) that collaborate under one brand. Its aim is to capture the essence of the destination, in a unified manner, and can be consumed simultaneously at a symbolic and experiential level. It is then used to market those unique added values to consumer needs and sustaining its success in the face of competition. From the above we can infer that destinations behave just like products. Thus they also have a life cycle of their own during which they need to constantly stay relevant and salient if they are to remain successful destination brands. Tourism area life cycle shows the stages a destination goes through, from exploration to involvement to development to consolidation to stagnation to rejuvenation or decline (also known as the â€Å"tourism destination life cycle†) Just like product brands, image is all important and how a place is represented can inspire people to visit and revisit it. (Coshall, 2000) Never was the saying ‘accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative more true than in destination branding. Destination marketing requires foresight and planning but it is not an exact science and branding offers destination marketers an opportunity to communicate key place attributes to their intended audience. Branding can help bridge any gaps between a destinations strengths and potential visitors perceptions. Place reputations are not made in a vacuum and neither are tourist choices, so place marketers must establish how their destinations image compares with those of its key competitors. How the destination rates according to ‘wish you were here? appeal and celebrity value is critical. Do tourists regard it as a fashion accessory, a must see place on every aspirational travelers shopping list or as a fashion paux- somewhere with no conversational value and even less C:UsersMIHIRDesktop1.jpgstatus. The represents a celebrity matrix and illustrates a range of destination brands measured on the axes of emotional appeal and celebrity value. Obviously, how people relate to any destination brand depends on their own individual interests, opinions and experiences, and such On any positioning map, however, brand winners emerge as those places which are rich in emotional meaning, have great conversation value and hold high anticipation for potential tourists. By comparison, brand losers are places with little meaning, even less status, virtually no conversation value and zero anticipation for tourists. Problem places are those destinations which are talked about for the wrong reasons and, far from holding an emotional appeal, actively repel potential tourists. Places which currently offer little emotional pull face an uphill task if they are to ever become destination winners. Other destinations which do have emotional pull but currently have limited celebrity value hold huge untapped potential and could be tomorrows winner destination brands. The challenge for their marketers is to craft identities for these destinations which convey and build on their emotional appeal and which turn them into places with high celebrity value. The message here is that rich, strong destination brands seem clearly differentiated and have a sense of being somewhere worth visiting. Thus, today destination brand building is all about developing a rich, relevant brand personality. ‘Developing is the key word here as successful brands never stagnate; instead they reflect and respond to changes in consumers lives while the brands core values remain the same, its personality will continue to evolve. (Morgan, Pritchard, Pride, 2002) Over a period of time, any successful destination brand will have an emotional bond with its stakeholders and more importantly the tourists who have visited the destination as well as potential tourists. An excellent example of this, is Mumbai the commercial capital of India which has over decades has established its image as the ‘City of Dreams or the ‘City that never sleeps which reflects the impact and emotional connect it has built with one and all. To successfully create such an emotional attachment a destination brand has to be: * Credible * Deliverable * Differentiating * Convey powerful ideas * Enthusing for trade partners * Resonating with the consumer A destination which is currently building such a brand proposition around its stunning natural environment is New Zealand. (Harris, 2000) A geographically disadvantaged destination, New Zealand is in the process of building a strong brand to double the countrys foreign exchange receipts to more than 3 million pounds by 2005. Delving further into the concept of brand personality for a destination brand, one can say that a brands personality has both a head and a heart its head refers to the logical brand features, while its heart refers to its emotional benefits and associations. Brand propositions and communications can be based around either a brands head or its heart; head communications convey a brands rational values, while heart communications reveal its emotional values and associations. Brand benefit pyramids sum up consumer relationships with a brand and are frequently established during the consumer research process where consumers are usually asked to describe what features a destination offers and what the place means to them. (Morgan A, 2002) The brand pyramid can be instrumental in helping to distil the essence of a destination brands advertising proposition. This refers to the point at which consumers wants and the destinations benefits and features intersect any communication should then encapsulate the spirit of the brand. The Challenge of a Destination Brand Examples of countries being influenced by external pressures to adapt and change their marketing activities or whose marketing is seriously compromised by events outside their marketers control, highlight the fact that destinations are not a single product but composite products consisting of a bundle of different components, including accommodation and catering establishments; tourist attractions; arts, entertainment and cultural avenues; and the natural environment. (Buhalis, 2000) Destination marketers have relatively little control over these different aspects of their product and a diverse range of agencies and companies are partners in the task of crafting brand identities. These could include local and national government agencies, environmental groups and agencies, chambers of commerce, trade associations and civic groups. While packaged groups normally have an obvious core- so their advertisements can anchor themselves to product performance and attributes with destinations the situation is much less clear. (Morgan Pritchard, 1999) Yet destinations have very strong and pervasive associations for tourists which if skillfully orchestrated, can provide the basis for brand building. (Baloglu Brinberg, 1997)Todays tourists are not asking ‘what can we do on holiday?, but ‘who can we be on holiday?. They are increasingly looking less for escape and more discoveries and that creates an emotional connection which marketers can exploit through branding. The challenge beyond that is to make the destination brand live, so that visitors truly experience the brand values and feel the authenticity of a unique place Factors leading to successful tourist destinations At the core of any successful tourist brand, is a clear set of brand values emotional and functional, a robust brand identity, an attractive brand personality and an efficient and targeted communication strategy. Another critical factor that impacts the brand image of tourist places is the flavor and image of the local inhabitants. Studies have proved that a places image is more often than not shaped by the ‘typical local people and their culture. Destination image, similar to the image of products and services can be seen as a multi-item construct, implying that the sum of the attributes, are the elements of  ¬Ã‚ nal composite image. This comes in line with Gensch who argues that product image is evaluated by its attributes. So, basically destination images are the result of individual attributes plus a more holistic image. The following table contains some of the critical success factors identified for destination branding (Baker Cameron, 2008): Strategic orientation 1. Visitation statistics are included and the destinations main markets are quanti ¬Ã‚ ed and segmented 2. The main competition is identi ¬Ã‚ ed 3. Tourism trends are identi ¬Ã‚ ed 4. A long-term orientation is adopted 5. The importance of international competitiveness is recognised 6. The need for infrastructure improvements is highlighted 7. The need for integration with national/regional tourism plans is recognised 8. Residents attitudes to tourism are considered 9. Local cultures, values and lifestyles are considered 10. Wealth and job creation and quality of life for residents are primary aims 11. The issue of overcrowding is addressed 12. The issue of environmental problems is addressed 13. The issue of seasonality is addressed 14. The bene ¬Ã‚ t of tourism to the destination is quanti ¬Ã‚ ed 15. Scenarios are developed Destination identity and image 16. The need to develop brand identity is recognized 17. Brand associations are identified 18. The need for image development is recognised 19. Positioning is discussed 20. The need for coordination of industry promotional material is recognised 21. Recognition to ensuring the promises made in marketing communications are conveyed to visitors 22. New and innovative forms of communication channels are addressed 23. The need to improve branding and brand awareness is recognised 24. The importance of experiences to tourists as opposed to tangible propositions is recognised Stakeholder involvement 25. National government agencies are involved in planning 26. Local government agencies were involved in planning 27. The area tourist board/area tourist office was involved in planning 28. Local residents were involved in planning 29. Local businesses were involved in planning 30. The need to improve communication between stakeholders (public, private and residents) is recognized 31. Leadership is addressed to give greater guidance to stakeholders. Implementation, monitoring and review 32. The timescale for each task is included 33. The need for monitoring and review is established Evaluating destination brands The strategic brand analysis framework comprises three main parts: * Tourist analysis, * Competitor analysis * Self-analysis. First, a destination must conduct a systematic tourist analysis. It should focus on identifying relevant new trends and developing a thorough understanding of tourists motivation for travel. Secondly, a destination should also carry out a competitor analysis. A destination needs insights into the competitors advantages and disadvantages in order to improve its own competitiveness. For example, by capitalizing on perceived niche market opportunities that rival destinations have so far failed to respond to. Last but not the least; a destination should aim to identify its true position in the market through the systematic preparation of a critical self-analysis. Highlights of the Gujarat Tourism Policy 2003-10 Objectives With a view to accelerating the pace of economic activities through tourism, the Government of Gujarat had announced the tourism policy for a period from 2003 to 2010. As per this, the following were some the key objectives * To initiate event based tourism * Chalking out of tourist circuits * Attention to be paid to tourism related infrastructure * Adoption of innovative marketing techniques and promotional tools * Developing manpower in the area of tourism * More private public relationships * Facilitation through Government policies for quick development * District Administration should play a more proactive role in tourism activities Incentives to the private sector The policy envisages privatization and incentivisation of all competitive and commercial activities of the tourism corporation of Gujarat Limited. Under this strategy the following incentives will be made available to the private sector: * Tourism will be given status of industry * Incentive package for new tourism projects * Strengthening of infrastructure facilities * Effective mechanism to build coordination with central government, state government, local self-government and NGOs * Land acquisition various tourism projects * Loan facilities will extended for tourism related projects * Better incentive packages * A special paying guest scheme to compensate for inadequate accommodation facilities * Suitable schemes for marketing tourism products * Reputed consultants will be hired to develop master plans * Decentralizing the process of development of destinations * A single window clearance system for speedy clearance Mechanism for implementation of policy For implementation of the policy, it is essential on the part of the State Government to play a facilitative role by granting necessary permissions/clearances required by investors in a time bound manner. The facilities of Gujarat Industrial Promotion Board (GIPB) set up to grant necessary clearances on fast track basis under the system of Single Window Clearance will now be made applicable to Tourism Sector also. All projects having investment less than Rs 50 crore will be approved at the Government level and the projects having investment exceeding Rs 50 crore will be approved by GIPB. The Commissioner (Tourism) and Managing Director, Tourism Corporation of Gujarat will act as the Secretariat of GIPB, for the purpose of investment in tourism projects. The Vision of the State Government for Tourism development For the growth of overall development of economic sector and social sector, the State is determined to develop tourism as a key growth sector. It has been decided by the State Government to provide condusive climate for this sector to grow and for the purpose, Tourism has been identified as the Engine of Growth. For the purpose, efforts will be made by way of promoting: * Hospitality Industry * Indirect Employment * Cultural Development * Infrastructure Development * Employment Opportunities * Sustenance of rich heritage of arts and crafts Proposed Marketing Strategy to attract tourists The State Government is keen to attract flow of tourists in the State and for the purpose, international fairs like Navratri festival, kite festival; etc will be arranged in the State from time to time. Further, the students of Gujarat shall be encouraged to develop an interest for communication through e-mail with the students and other persons abroad to interact with them about Gujarat and ultimately motivate them to visit Gujarat. Means to attract investment The policy promises for long term investment and business opportunities for national and international corporate bodies and private enterprises. The sectors like hospitality industry, eco-tourism, Viswa Gram Global village, Dinosaur theme park, Cruise trips with whale watch, Deep driving and snorkeling snorkeling of coral island, Golf Courses, Royal orient gauge conversion, Special Entertainment Zones, Wayside amenities, etc are the areas to attract further investment in Tourism Sector, leading ultimately to attract tourists flow. Relationship between Industrial Development and Tourism The massive flow of investment in industrial sector will increase the frequency of visits by executives of different industrial houses. Further, the investment in infrastructure sector in port and road, will also increase the international trade from Gujarat and particularly from the land locked states. All these developments are expected to play an important role to increase the flow of business tourists. Gujarat Tourism at a Glance Today Some of the emerging areas identified by Gujarat Tourism are as follows: Spiritual Tourism / Religious Tourism Many of Gujarats historical monuments represent the great religions of Asia Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Sikkhism. Gujarat has two Jyotirlings ( Somnath and Dwarka ), two shakti peets ( Ambaji and Pavagarh ), Narmada river (one of the seven holiest for the Hindus) and Narayan Sarovar ( One of the five holy lakes in India ). Two of the five important Jain sites ( Palitana and Girnar ) are in Gujarat besides a host of popular Jain temples spread across the state at Shankeshwar, Tarangaji, Mehsana,etc. The Dargahs of Sarkhej and Unjha hold great importance for the Muslims of India. Also, in Gujarat are Sacred Iranshaw Fire Temple at Udavada, Navsari Atashbehram and Surat Atashbehram. All three hold utmost importance for the Parsi community in the country. A number of popular spiritual gurus such as Morari Bapu, Asharam Bapu and Rameshji Oza have ashrams spread across the states. These attract followers from all over the globe. Akshardham is also a very popular temple of the wealthy Swaminarayan sect. Medical / Well Being Tourism Medical tourism is seen having a particularly high growth potential because of the availability of high-quality, low cost surgeries at Gujarats hospitals. The large population of people of Gujarati origin in America, Europe and Africa can be a major growth driver for this segment of tourism. It is home to some of the finest world class hospitals in the world such as Apollo Hospitals, Wockhardt Hospitals, etc. Care has been taken to ensure such places are set throughout the state at places such as Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Karamsad, Nadiad, etc. Gujarat is also home to the ancient healing art of ayurveda and fine ayurvedic treatment has been made available to domestic as well as foreign tourists across the state. Archaeological and Heritage Tourism The archaeological zone of Champaner, Pavagadh has been acclaimed by UNESCO as the World Heritage Site1 because of its great mosques, temples, stepwells and forts. There are more than 400 archaeological sites in the Slate including some of the most substantial excavations of Indus Valley civilisation period at Lothal (near Ahmedabad), Surkotada and Dholavira Cultural Tourism Gujarat is the land of rich handicrafts like Patola weaving, khadi, bandhani, embroidery, block printing, rogan painting, matani pachhedi, namda, woodcrafts,etc. Gujrat also possesses a diverse mix of exotic communities from the camel riders of Kutch to the tribals of the hilly regions of Sabarkanta, Dangs, Chhota Udaipur, etc. Event-Based Tourism The Gujrat tourism department has created a variety of successful event properties such as Rann Mahotsav, Vibrant Gujarat, Modhera Dance Festival, International Kite Flying Festival, etc. With the celebration of festivals like Navaratri Mahotsav, Tarnetar Fair, Sharadotsav, Dangs Darbar and Kvant Fair the state intends to put the rich culture of Gujarat on the world map Business Tourism Today Gujarat has emerged as an immensely popular business destination and 55 SEZs in the state reflect the increase in business tourist, air traffic and road traffic Entertainment and Recreation Tourism Gujarat has a famous hill station in the form of Saputara. Its vast coastline of 1666km means that there are beautiful beaches all along the coast such as the one at Mandvi. Gujarat also has ample of theme parks, water parks and multiplexes too which provide entertainment. Wildlife Tourism For eco-tourists, the state offers opportunities to see a wide range of wildlife including the Asiatic lion and Indian wild ass, endangered antelopes, a variety of deer. etc. It has Indias first marine national park. Gujarat is also one of Indias most important areas for birdwatchers. Some Statistics Total of 33 Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) involving an investment of INR10.793 crore {USD 2.57billion) were signed at 2007 vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit (VGGIS). Tourism sector registered an increase of 47 % over the investments in 2005 VGG IS The domestic air-traffic in Gujarat increased from 1.21 million in 2005-06 to 1.93 million in 2006-07 and the international air-traffic increased from 0.13 million in 2006-07 to 0.33 million in 2006-07. The State witnessed total 12.34 million tourists during 2006 07 out of which 12.1 million were the domestic tourists and 0.20 million foreign tourists. The average contribution of tourism industry to the States GDP is close to 2.5 %, while the comparable for India is 5.3%. The average foreign tourist spend per person per day is close to USD 700 to 1050 in Gujarat. The total flow of tourist during the year 2006 07 was 12.34 million and recorded a growth of 15% over the previous year. Growth of 18.5 % was also observed in the foreign tourist inflow. With a number of more than 2 lakh foreign tourists in 2006-07 and around 1.75 lakhs in 2005-06. Recent tourist flows for the year 2008-09 suggest that the number has gone up 15.80 million tourists which include 12.2 million from with Gujarat, 3.2 million from other states and 2.9 lakh from foreign tourists. Ahmedabad, Ambaji and Dwarka are the major tourist destinations which invited the maximum number of tourists in Gujarat. These three destinations accounted for nearly 33% of tourist inflow. Almost 77.2% of the tourist flow in 2006- 07 was from within Gujarat. The Share of other states was 20.2%. The foreign tourists accounted for 2.68% in the total tourist inflow. During the 2006-07 season, the majority of tourist visit for the business purpose (53%) in the state, subsequently followed by religious visit (35%). 8% of the tourist visit for the leisure purpose, which is showing an increasing trend. Value Chain Analysis The tourism value chain concentrates on meeting and exceeding visitors expectations of the internal quality of a destination. Those aspects of a destination that involve every step from pre-visit image, marketing and after sales care and commitment. Each stage of t

Significance of Realistic Physics in Simulation Games

Significance of Realistic Physics in Simulation Games This dissertation is on the significance of realistic physics in simulation games. Physics in games has changed a lot over the years from arcade games having no physics to Need for Speed: Shift having world class physics. As the years have progressed so has the technology giving ways to make the game more realistic to a point which makes them almost as real as in real life. The question here is that do we need such good physics in games cause in the end the players need have a good time playing the game while having a realistic experience, pushing the realism a bit further can cause problems with the game being excessively difficult the daily gamer. Introduction The oldest form of racing games would be arcade games where there was no physics but the games were still fun to play for the casual gamer. They can be called the classic example for physics-less fun games like outrun, Virtua Racing by SEGA. With time games like The need for speed came out with realistic acceleration top sped etc. they built up on car personalities with different cars having different type of grip, speed etc. with more advanced Physics processing units came better physics with destructible models, actual car damage and very realistic handling etc. as seen in Need for Speed: Shift and Need for Speed: Pro-street these games reached the benchmark for physics at their time but were not as popular as the Need for speed: Most Wanted and similar Titles with intermediate use of physics. But the physics in games now days have totally changed the driving experience in games. My thesis is on how this can be improved and what type of physics should be added and what type to be controlled so as not to make the game extremely difficult but also improve the gameplay and give a better feel of realism. C.1 The Statement of Problem The statement of problem in my dissertation is the fun factor in racing games with realistic physics. Racing games are played for fun and are not viewed as some physics prototype so a game with exceptionally good game does not have to be an exceptionally good game and vice versa. There has to be a balance between fun and physics in game. A game with very realistic handling will make an immature player crash a lot which is not very impressive to the player, whereas in a game without friction or skidding, the player will not have the feel of physics or realism in a game making it boring again. How to get this balance in a game is my main objective. In a racing game there should be balanced handling and to make it more realistic new improved effects for drag can be added. Better collision and realistic damage which effects the players driving can help make the game look more realistic. Things like this are very important nowadays as the competition between games is rising and most of the games are coming out with good physics so it becomes a common ground between most games. New type of physics including centre of gravity, collisions effecting the player, g-forces on the player causing loosing handling, blurred vision can be a thing of the future also player fatigue while driving can be added in the games in the future to make them stand out. C.2 Purpose This study is aimed at accomplishing to implement new type of physics in the game, making them more realistic while still being fun to play. The purpose of this study is that when we are adding new type of physics in a game, it should not be so much that it looks more like a physics prototype than a game. Methodology This chapter explains how the research for this dissertation is done. This dissertation is based on experimenting on different type of games arcade and realistic alike and also based on articles related to this subject. D.1 Study of Existing Information Existing information was collected over the internet mainly from www.google.com and www.gamespot.com. Different type of physics used in current games was searched and also about arcade games. The information was used to understand the working of present day physics realistic games. Information and ideas for different type of physics were also gathered from different forums and articles. To better understand how physics actually works in a game different reference articles which explain how physics is implemented in games with code were studied go get a better understanding about the subject. D.2 Experementation Experimentation was done by testing different racing games from arcade games to realistic games to understand the difference in physics and to understand what type of physics is implemented in present day games. Case study in done in Need for Speed: Undercover, Burnout paradise Dirt, Need for Speed: Shift and Virtua racer to understand the physics in those games and to understand weather they were successful or not and why. Different types of physics modules were studied in each game, understanding what game used what and to how much realism and how it affected the outcome of the sales of the game which tell which was more popular. Literature Review This chapter will discuss the articles significant for this research and what use it has in my dissertation. This chapter is in two parts, one discussing the physics aspect behind making a game and the other one discussing about different games, their popularity and what type of physics they used. E.1 Physics Review Reference: [Title Motion along a straight line by author Michael Tanczos  http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article434.asp ] This page is about basic motion along a straight line which is required to make a game about any moving body. This helps with the basic physics that require programming of moving objects. Reference: [Title The physics of racing by author Brian Beckman http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1610.asp ] This is a comprehensive guide about how to make racing games. This helps with understanding of present day physics and how they are actually implemented in a game. This also helps me to formulate my own ideas to how to add new physics to the game. Reference: [http://www.mathworks.com/products/simulink/demos.html?file=/products/demos/shipping/simulink/sldemo_absbrake.html] This page helped me understand about braking systems in cars. Reference: [Title Motor Sports Setup by author Carroll Smith http://needlesslyobscure.wordpress.com/motorsports-setup/] This is a series of tutorials of how to setup a car. I used this to make compute my own vehicle simulations. Reference: [http://auto.howstuffworks.com/four-wheel-drive1.htm] This article gave me a better insight of how slip works on a car. E.2 Game Review Reference: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_video_game#1970s Title Racing Video Game by Wikipedia] This is where I started researching about history of video games and looking into what types of racing are there and how they developed over time. Reference: [http://www.taito.com/arc/] I visited this website which had old arcade racing which I played and also read about them to get a better understanding of how racing games were back then. Reference: [http://forums.atari.com/] This is a forum where i read about Atari arcade games. Case Study In order to understand the exact nature of physics of present day game sand games from the past, I tested out a few games to understand what different types of physics were applied to them and how they are different from one another. This also helped me to understand how the physics evolved from the past to until now. Another aspect of this study was to understand how the popularity of the game was related to the physics it. F.1 Virtua Racing Virtua Racing was released in 1992 by Sega. This game had excellent and clean 3D graphics for its time. It was based on F1 racing and was one of the best arcade racing game of all time. This set the base for racing games that came after this. It had features like minimap track, speedometer etc. basically it had a fully functional HUD for its time. It had 2 views, one third person and the other was first person inside the car. It had time chase and also the player could race against the AI cars in the single player mode. In the multiplayer mode, two players could race against each other. It had also implemented different cars so the player could choose between them. They were not just artistically different but also were also different in the way they handled. This was a change from the old racing games before this which had only artistic differences between different cars. This game had simulated physic s, there was not an actual simulation engine deciding what the car would do. It w as just programmed to skid if the player was taking a turn over a certain speed. It gave a very good feeling of realism. F.2 Need for Speed Need for Speed for first released in 1994 by Electronic Arts. This game went on to be the most famous game series of all times. Need for Speed was based on street racing. It had good load out of cars which performed very differently from each other. The players had to race in the street with oncoming traffic and against AI player; it also had a multiplayer mode which 2 player could play simultaneously. It had a very smooth camera system which allowed the player to play in a third person view or a first person view with the player sitting inside the car. This game had implemented gearing system which the player could manually change or set it to automatic where the computer would take care of it. This game had very good physics simulations which was quite different from its predecessors. Need for speed has impressive graphics getting better than anyone before them. They had open seamless outdoor worlds. These worlds gave an effect of a 3D world unlike the past games. The cars were also very detailed, which ranged from Lamborghini, dodge viper to Mustangs. They were replica of real life cars with all the details in them that could be put at that point of time. The race tracks also had a lot of variance in them which were set in a realistic environment. This game also had weather effects which added more realism to the environment. The sounds implemented were also awesome. They were very accurate and added to the realism of driving a vehicle as a driver depends on sounds a lot when driving a vehicle. For a game to achieve this, the sounds had to be very accurate which EA achieved with NFS. The simulation engine for this game was also very nice, it gave a clean difference felt in power, speed and handling when driving different cars. Different cars had different statistics and performed better on different tracks. F.1 Need for Speed: Shift This game of the NFS series was a circuit based game and had more advanced physics to its predecessors. Physic-wise, Need for Speed Shift starts to sound really promising. If done right, the 3 different physic models can really make the game enjoyable both for the usual Need for Speed crowd as well as simulation enthusiasts. At first, the driving physics in Shift take some getting used to. You cant go into a corner, hit the apex, and then pump 100% throttle on the way out. Without a doubt, youll inevitably end up facing the wrong direction, or planted into a wall. Throttle control is absolutely mandatory in Need for Speed Shift. Theres no way around this and if you havent got a racing wheel handy, the controller does little to favour irresponsible throttle application or violent steering input. A lot of importance is given to the throttle of the car making it one the most tweaked feature which takes some time getting used to. Due to the high end physics in this game it made it quite difficult to play for the casual gamer so the game had features like 10% extra grip for the newcomers etc. The car could be customised in a lot of ways to make it affect the physics of the car, this helped out the professional players a lot, but in this game doing anything wrong to the customizations without knowing what the person is doing would make the car difficult to handle making it again unfriendly to the casual gamer. One glitch that you often encounter later on in the game when dealing with high performance cars or extensively modified tuned cars. Due to the lowering of body work, additional front splitters, under body modifications and different wheel/tyre combinations, cars seem to run far too low, removing ground clearance and effectively making a car bottom out over even the tiniest of bumps. This results in a ridiculous and uncontrollable glitch where a car will continue down a straight path. This game boosted of great physics giving realism to the circuit/professional racing and tried to make the game real but they failed in a way. The professional player didnt like the game so much because of the physics not being to real life like with some glitches here and there. Also the car would sometimes out or under manoeuvre in an awkward manner as not expected by the user. As for the casual gamer this is not the game for them, this game is very intense and requires decent amount of racing knowledge of knowing when and how to turn/corner at high speeds, tune the car properly according to your personal needs. So in all it was not a great hit either ways. F.2 Need For Speed: Undercover This game does not have realistic physics but it has type of physics which helps the player a lot. The game is made in such a way to make the physics work in the way of the driver to give him/her an awesome driving experience this does not have to be entirely as in the real world. This game allows you to pull of the craziest of stuns with easy, this game is built only to give the driver awesome driving experience with computer guidance to accomplish stunts which would not be possible in the real world giving an adrenalin rush to the player. Key to Undercover is what EA is calling the heroic driving experience. In Undercover this physics system has been given an injection of cool. Think of all the best car chase scenes in movies from the last ten years and youll get an idea of what to expect. EA want you to feel like a skilled stunt driver, and it works. By using a combination of the gas pedal, brake, e-break and gear stick youre able to pull off stunning looking manoeuvres like reverse 180 degree turns. Its like you are Jason Statham from the Transporter movies. While we were quite looking forward some potentially funny moments, it seems EA has gone down a more serious route and it works very well indeed. Your goal in the game is to take down the various captains before taking down the whole operation, which is obviously done while driving at insanely high speeds. The game involves high speed chases over the highway, battling enemy cars, the good old cop chases etc. According to EA the traffic in Undercover is modelled realistically and reacts to your actions. While you can simply push a car over into the way of your target, you could choose to spook a driver of a bus, causing him to jack-knife in the middle of a dual carriageway. Racing at high speed, weaving in and out of traffic appears to offer the kind of thrills that were severely lacking in the more down to earth and structured ProStreet. As EA repeatedly pointed out during the publishers Games Convention 2008 demonstration, Undercover is all about heroic driving, and theres no better reason to drive like a stuntman than trying to outrun a swarm of angry police cars. Police chases thankfully return to Need for Speed in Undercover and these guys are aggressive, very aggressive. To begin with theyre not pushovers, but as you progress through the story and increase your level; your notoriety amongst the police also increases. Before too long theyll spot you on the streets and go after you, hunting you as a pack. If they get you which seems like itll be a regular occurrence for less skilful drivers youll have a strike against your car and itll be impounded. Being able to take pictures of the game during gameplay situations is becoming increasingly common, and with the amount of action on display in Undercover its no surprise to find such a feature here. We didnt see it in action but EA says that the snaps taken have been dubbed Movie Poster Action Cinematic sounds good to us. Undercover still has some way to go in development (its not out until late November) but its already looking very impressive. Car models are incredibly detailed and procedurally deform based on collisions. The areas of the city demonstrated to us were bathed in a gorgeous yellow light that gives the game a highly stylised appearance, and the camera often uncouples from the rear of the car in order to give a better, more cinematic view of the action. With months of development left there were obviously a few technical issues, but on the whole we cant wait to see how the final game looks. As in previous Need for Speed titles the audio is often dominated by the sound of police chatter. We only saw one police chase so cant say how itll sound hours into the game, but they said all the right things to convince us they were on our case. To sum it up, the game is made for the player to have a free stunt filled game which could be easily be pulled of which was not like by the old NFS users. The game wasnt such a big success like the old NFS Most Wanted due the reason that it lacked realist9ic physics but it had player friendly physics which made the game very to finish which much challenge. F.3 Burnout Paradise This game was made for its stunts. It had some realistic physics with a lot of importance given to the car damage. The game was a stunt mania. Though it is not correct to say It had realistic physics but it had good amount of it and put to use in the correct places, the made a game for stunts and it was good for it. The car damage actually affected the car performance. Though it did not have really good physics for driving, it had awesome crash physics. Burnout 5s speedsters will atomise stupendously during crashes, with more than six times as many breakable pieces in each car compared to Burnout Revenge. This will mean you can tear your car in half, rip the roof off or achieve other satisfying shunt stunts. The biggest change introduced in Burnout Paradise is the move to an open world, the streets of Paradise city. The entire city is open at the start of the game, with the idea being that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. Not all of the events are present at the start, mind you, and youll have to put in a lot of time to unlock the games roughly 75 cars, but youre never limited in the options before you. The main downtown area of Paradise City is very reminiscent of the downtown tracks in the last couple games, while the western section of the city harkens back to the long, winding, countryside courses of past games as well. A couple of highways will put you dead in the middle of traffic and give you plenty of roads to get up to speed on. In all the game was a success and was loved by crash maniacs but was hated by the driving fanatics. It stood to what it was designed for and achieved excellence in stunts and crash driving. F.4 Dirt Dirt 2 as Dirt is an off-road racing game. I chose this for my case study because this game is somewhat like my project. The game had a lot of focus on suspension and grip, any wrong move by the player could make the car skid off the road, in general the game physics were not player friendly but realistic to give the feel of an off-road racing game with the difficulties involved in an off-road racing game. The physics in Dirt 2 are impeccable. When a truck tumbles after taking a hard landing off a jump, it looks and behaves exactly as it should, which is critical if youre behind the truck anticipating its motion across your driving line. The physics are so realistic that the vibration from my idling engine would shake the skirt on my dash-mounted hula doll. Physics also come into play in the water hazards that now dot many of the courses. Driving through water will slow you down (though this can be advantageous if used strategically), and if youre driving from the cockpit view, my preferred perspective, it will obscure your vision for a few crucial seconds. Dirt 2 also features night-time races, confined to Rally Cross events, which add a whole new dimension to the game. You will have to avoid smashing your headlights on those tight corners if you want to see, and decide if you want to overtake the leader and risk underestimating a dark turn or let him show you the best line through th e corners. Dirt 2 takes the series in a new, quite risky, direction, by taking a more Arcady, fun feel. Although this may have upset some of the hard-core fans of the series, it still kept enough difficulty to please all, even the most casual gamers. It blends the realism of off road racing with the enjoyment of a street racing game and it works perfectly, making one of the best racing games To summarise the game is on the best off-road racing game, like burnout paradise they concentrated on the particular type of physics needed for an off-road racing game. History of Racing Game The old 2D racing games like Speed Race 1974 where generally black and white and were simple arcade games rather than proper simulations. In this era some basic concepts for racing game were developed like collision detection, HUD displays like Tachometer, speedometer etc. were developed. They were all vertical scrolling games and the player had to race with other AI cars or setting a high score. This was the base in the 70s for racing games and racing games evolved from this slowly over the course of years. In 1974 Atari released Gran Trak 10 which was the first racing game to implement ROM (Read Only Memory). This was a black and white game with an overhead view where the player raced against the clock which made the game non-competitive. The next concept came up was a sort of multiplayer where the player played against each other turn wise by competing against each others scores. This slowly evolved to a proper two player multiplayer where the players were able to play with each other simultaneously in a split screen view. In 1976 Crashing race was released which was a multiplayer capable arcade game where the players had to crash into other players to gain score. In this game the collision in racing game was reworked but this was still not a simulation game. The same year Moto-Cross was released which introduced Third-person perspective view into racing games. It achieved this by scrolling the track forward as the player moved and the scene closer to the player kept scaling so that it gave an illusion of perspective. Another game released this year called Fonz introduced feedback in controllers. The next game called Night Driver introduced the first person perspective in racing games. By this time the games were in colour rather than black and white. From 1970 to 1980 the games generally improved in graphics a little bit. In 1980 Namco released Rally-X which was the first racing game to have background music. The game also had a feature to Scroll the screen to either direction giving actual control over the players view. Then in 1982 Namco released Pole position which was the first game to have a track based on an actual circuit. The game had high resolution colour graphics for its time. The game was designed in such a way so that the player had to brake and use controls to manage turns; this is where some kind of simulation started in racing games. The player had to race against AI drivers and also had to race against time which made the game interesting. The game also featured collisions with boundaries and other cars which caused crashes which were first time implemented in a racing game. The game was the first of its kind to implement simulation at the most basic level which is where racing game simulation started from. The games after this adapted this concept and the racing game simulation start ed increasing giving a more sense of realism. The players had to manually shift gears and use brakes on turns to get turns correctly. Pole position 2 in particular had 3 screen display of the game giving a sense of 3D. In 1980s the this was the general trend in racing games and the simple car simulation were upgraded slowly as new hardware came, with this the graphics of the games also improved In 1984 Geoff Crammond developed a racing game simulator RVES for its time on BBC Micro Computer platform. This was the first step in game to really simulating driving. Though this is primitive from present standards but for that time this was huge step in racing simulations. In 1985 HangOn was released which was the first game to use 16 bit graphics and also had an improved simulation and AI system compared to the other games out there at that time. In this time more concern was given on improving graphics rather that the simulations. In 1986, Red Racer was the first stereoscopic 3D game. In 1989 Atari released Hard Drivin; this was the first game to use 3D polygons in a game. In 1990 Papyrus Design Group made the first actual 3D racing game simulator and they actually concentrated more on the simulations rather than the graphics. This simulator simulated realistic physics and telemeter. In 1992 Formula one Grand Prix became a hit racing simulation game which had all the drivers from the actual Grand Prix. From 1993 onwards polygons were highly used to make games and each and every game that was coming out had better graphics than the last one. In 1992 the other game which made big news was virtua racing which was not the first 3D racing game but it had the cleanest 3D graphics for the time. It did not have a pixelated look, rather all the textures were very neat and clean for the time. In 1993 Sega came up with Daytona USA which was the first racing game to feature filtered texture-mapped polygons. In 1994 Electronic Arts came up with Need for Speed which became the most popular racing game series of all time. This game had the most realistic audio for its time, detailing sounds of engines, gearshifts and tyre squeals to perfection. It also featured vehicle traffic in races. This game had both multiplayer and single player capability. In 1997 Gran Turismo was released for play station and was the best game at that time for its simulation and graphics. This was considered to be the most realistic game of its time. In 1999 Midtown Madness changed the face of racing game with free roam in games. After this racing games improved generally on the course of time with better and better graphics and simulations. The latest racing game that is supposed to come out in 2011 called Need for Speed: Shift 2 uses data from actual cars by attaching computers to it and computing every minute detail of the car and driver and have gone so far that they start to bridge the game between real life physics and simulated physics. Racing physics H.1 Basics The very basic idea behind moving a car or any object is F=ma, where F is the force applied, m is the mass of the object and a is the acceleration generated. For a car, the force comes from the engine and the mass of the car is a constant, therefore rewriting it we would get a=F/m. This would give us the acceleration. This is the base idea which would be used over all in the game. For example, even when the car takes a turn, would be a force applied in a direction from the centre of mass of the car. H.2 forces applied in Linear Motion Torque: To keep it simple at starting lets consider the car to be going just in a straight line and see what all we would require for the car to run. Now the car engine generates a force which is from spinning motion of the engine shaft through the gearbox, to the axle and finally to the wheels which would drive the car. This gives an understanding that there is a torque applied as a form of force. F=ma: This tells us that the acceleration on the car depends on the mass of the car directly considering the force is constant. Equations of linear motion: V=U+at v=Final velocity of the car u=Initial velocity of the car a= acceleration The force generated will give us acceleration of the car and thus the speed of the car can be calculated from this. t=time taken S=ut+1/2(a*t^2) This equation will be useful to get the position of the car in X, Y, Z direction in 3D space based on the velocity and direction of the car. S= Distance travelled V^2=u^2 +2aS This equation calculates values independent of time. For all the above equation the time will be considered as Άt, which is a small change in time. All our calculations will be based on these getting small points on a graph thus getting the whole motion. Friction: Considering the car stops Appling force on the tyres, by newtons second law it would still be in motion as no negative force is applied to it. But in the real world this is not true; the car decelerates if there is no force from the engine. This is due to the frictional forces present which act in the opposite direction of the car thus acting as negative forces. This can be categorised in 3 parts in general for a car in order of how strong they are. Internal Friction à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" This friction comes from the moving parts of the vehicle and is very minimal compared to the other two. Ground Friction à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" This friction comes from the friction between the tyres of the car and the ground. It depends on a few things, the larger the tyre of the car the more friction it will have. Also this is also related to the smoothness of the ground and tyres, the smoother tyres give less friction but it to be kept in mind that higher friction tyres have higher grip. Air Friction à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" This is the strongest frictional force of the 3 and exponentially the in depth calculations based on this would come later, for now it is this is just to get an understanding of what all basic forces are applied on a car. h.3 Drag This is the air friction experienced by the car when its driving. The drag is a force value acting opposite the direction the car is travelling. This is the force required by the car to overcome to be in motion. =Drag Force =Density of Fluid =Drag Coefficient A=Surface Area After going through a lot of Drag Coefficients, that value for our car fit to be 0.50 Value 0.60 Truck 0.57 Hummer 0.46 Ford Mustang 1976 0.45 Dodge Viper *List from Wikipedia.org Air density which is fluid density here is 1.29kg/m^3 at sea level, which will be our density. The frontal area of cross section for our car came out to be 2.5m^2 which is our area of reference. Putting the values in the equation of drag This equals All the calculation is are done in metric system. Table for Drag force for our car in Newtons Speed M/s Speed Km/Hr 81.25 10 36 325 20 72 731.25 30 108 1300 40 144 2031 50 180 This shows that as the velocity increases drag force exponentially which increases the force required to overcome it. H.4 Centre of Mass The centre of mass (COM) of an object is the mean location of all the masses in the body. Significance of Realistic Physics in Simulation Games Significance of Realistic Physics in Simulation Games This dissertation is on the significance of realistic physics in simulation games. Physics in games has changed a lot over the years from arcade games having no physics to Need for Speed: Shift having world class physics. As the years have progressed so has the technology giving ways to make the game more realistic to a point which makes them almost as real as in real life. The question here is that do we need such good physics in games cause in the end the players need have a good time playing the game while having a realistic experience, pushing the realism a bit further can cause problems with the game being excessively difficult the daily gamer. Introduction The oldest form of racing games would be arcade games where there was no physics but the games were still fun to play for the casual gamer. They can be called the classic example for physics-less fun games like outrun, Virtua Racing by SEGA. With time games like The need for speed came out with realistic acceleration top sped etc. they built up on car personalities with different cars having different type of grip, speed etc. with more advanced Physics processing units came better physics with destructible models, actual car damage and very realistic handling etc. as seen in Need for Speed: Shift and Need for Speed: Pro-street these games reached the benchmark for physics at their time but were not as popular as the Need for speed: Most Wanted and similar Titles with intermediate use of physics. But the physics in games now days have totally changed the driving experience in games. My thesis is on how this can be improved and what type of physics should be added and what type to be controlled so as not to make the game extremely difficult but also improve the gameplay and give a better feel of realism. C.1 The Statement of Problem The statement of problem in my dissertation is the fun factor in racing games with realistic physics. Racing games are played for fun and are not viewed as some physics prototype so a game with exceptionally good game does not have to be an exceptionally good game and vice versa. There has to be a balance between fun and physics in game. A game with very realistic handling will make an immature player crash a lot which is not very impressive to the player, whereas in a game without friction or skidding, the player will not have the feel of physics or realism in a game making it boring again. How to get this balance in a game is my main objective. In a racing game there should be balanced handling and to make it more realistic new improved effects for drag can be added. Better collision and realistic damage which effects the players driving can help make the game look more realistic. Things like this are very important nowadays as the competition between games is rising and most of the games are coming out with good physics so it becomes a common ground between most games. New type of physics including centre of gravity, collisions effecting the player, g-forces on the player causing loosing handling, blurred vision can be a thing of the future also player fatigue while driving can be added in the games in the future to make them stand out. C.2 Purpose This study is aimed at accomplishing to implement new type of physics in the game, making them more realistic while still being fun to play. The purpose of this study is that when we are adding new type of physics in a game, it should not be so much that it looks more like a physics prototype than a game. Methodology This chapter explains how the research for this dissertation is done. This dissertation is based on experimenting on different type of games arcade and realistic alike and also based on articles related to this subject. D.1 Study of Existing Information Existing information was collected over the internet mainly from www.google.com and www.gamespot.com. Different type of physics used in current games was searched and also about arcade games. The information was used to understand the working of present day physics realistic games. Information and ideas for different type of physics were also gathered from different forums and articles. To better understand how physics actually works in a game different reference articles which explain how physics is implemented in games with code were studied go get a better understanding about the subject. D.2 Experementation Experimentation was done by testing different racing games from arcade games to realistic games to understand the difference in physics and to understand what type of physics is implemented in present day games. Case study in done in Need for Speed: Undercover, Burnout paradise Dirt, Need for Speed: Shift and Virtua racer to understand the physics in those games and to understand weather they were successful or not and why. Different types of physics modules were studied in each game, understanding what game used what and to how much realism and how it affected the outcome of the sales of the game which tell which was more popular. Literature Review This chapter will discuss the articles significant for this research and what use it has in my dissertation. This chapter is in two parts, one discussing the physics aspect behind making a game and the other one discussing about different games, their popularity and what type of physics they used. E.1 Physics Review Reference: [Title Motion along a straight line by author Michael Tanczos  http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article434.asp ] This page is about basic motion along a straight line which is required to make a game about any moving body. This helps with the basic physics that require programming of moving objects. Reference: [Title The physics of racing by author Brian Beckman http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1610.asp ] This is a comprehensive guide about how to make racing games. This helps with understanding of present day physics and how they are actually implemented in a game. This also helps me to formulate my own ideas to how to add new physics to the game. Reference: [http://www.mathworks.com/products/simulink/demos.html?file=/products/demos/shipping/simulink/sldemo_absbrake.html] This page helped me understand about braking systems in cars. Reference: [Title Motor Sports Setup by author Carroll Smith http://needlesslyobscure.wordpress.com/motorsports-setup/] This is a series of tutorials of how to setup a car. I used this to make compute my own vehicle simulations. Reference: [http://auto.howstuffworks.com/four-wheel-drive1.htm] This article gave me a better insight of how slip works on a car. E.2 Game Review Reference: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_video_game#1970s Title Racing Video Game by Wikipedia] This is where I started researching about history of video games and looking into what types of racing are there and how they developed over time. Reference: [http://www.taito.com/arc/] I visited this website which had old arcade racing which I played and also read about them to get a better understanding of how racing games were back then. Reference: [http://forums.atari.com/] This is a forum where i read about Atari arcade games. Case Study In order to understand the exact nature of physics of present day game sand games from the past, I tested out a few games to understand what different types of physics were applied to them and how they are different from one another. This also helped me to understand how the physics evolved from the past to until now. Another aspect of this study was to understand how the popularity of the game was related to the physics it. F.1 Virtua Racing Virtua Racing was released in 1992 by Sega. This game had excellent and clean 3D graphics for its time. It was based on F1 racing and was one of the best arcade racing game of all time. This set the base for racing games that came after this. It had features like minimap track, speedometer etc. basically it had a fully functional HUD for its time. It had 2 views, one third person and the other was first person inside the car. It had time chase and also the player could race against the AI cars in the single player mode. In the multiplayer mode, two players could race against each other. It had also implemented different cars so the player could choose between them. They were not just artistically different but also were also different in the way they handled. This was a change from the old racing games before this which had only artistic differences between different cars. This game had simulated physic s, there was not an actual simulation engine deciding what the car would do. It w as just programmed to skid if the player was taking a turn over a certain speed. It gave a very good feeling of realism. F.2 Need for Speed Need for Speed for first released in 1994 by Electronic Arts. This game went on to be the most famous game series of all times. Need for Speed was based on street racing. It had good load out of cars which performed very differently from each other. The players had to race in the street with oncoming traffic and against AI player; it also had a multiplayer mode which 2 player could play simultaneously. It had a very smooth camera system which allowed the player to play in a third person view or a first person view with the player sitting inside the car. This game had implemented gearing system which the player could manually change or set it to automatic where the computer would take care of it. This game had very good physics simulations which was quite different from its predecessors. Need for speed has impressive graphics getting better than anyone before them. They had open seamless outdoor worlds. These worlds gave an effect of a 3D world unlike the past games. The cars were also very detailed, which ranged from Lamborghini, dodge viper to Mustangs. They were replica of real life cars with all the details in them that could be put at that point of time. The race tracks also had a lot of variance in them which were set in a realistic environment. This game also had weather effects which added more realism to the environment. The sounds implemented were also awesome. They were very accurate and added to the realism of driving a vehicle as a driver depends on sounds a lot when driving a vehicle. For a game to achieve this, the sounds had to be very accurate which EA achieved with NFS. The simulation engine for this game was also very nice, it gave a clean difference felt in power, speed and handling when driving different cars. Different cars had different statistics and performed better on different tracks. F.1 Need for Speed: Shift This game of the NFS series was a circuit based game and had more advanced physics to its predecessors. Physic-wise, Need for Speed Shift starts to sound really promising. If done right, the 3 different physic models can really make the game enjoyable both for the usual Need for Speed crowd as well as simulation enthusiasts. At first, the driving physics in Shift take some getting used to. You cant go into a corner, hit the apex, and then pump 100% throttle on the way out. Without a doubt, youll inevitably end up facing the wrong direction, or planted into a wall. Throttle control is absolutely mandatory in Need for Speed Shift. Theres no way around this and if you havent got a racing wheel handy, the controller does little to favour irresponsible throttle application or violent steering input. A lot of importance is given to the throttle of the car making it one the most tweaked feature which takes some time getting used to. Due to the high end physics in this game it made it quite difficult to play for the casual gamer so the game had features like 10% extra grip for the newcomers etc. The car could be customised in a lot of ways to make it affect the physics of the car, this helped out the professional players a lot, but in this game doing anything wrong to the customizations without knowing what the person is doing would make the car difficult to handle making it again unfriendly to the casual gamer. One glitch that you often encounter later on in the game when dealing with high performance cars or extensively modified tuned cars. Due to the lowering of body work, additional front splitters, under body modifications and different wheel/tyre combinations, cars seem to run far too low, removing ground clearance and effectively making a car bottom out over even the tiniest of bumps. This results in a ridiculous and uncontrollable glitch where a car will continue down a straight path. This game boosted of great physics giving realism to the circuit/professional racing and tried to make the game real but they failed in a way. The professional player didnt like the game so much because of the physics not being to real life like with some glitches here and there. Also the car would sometimes out or under manoeuvre in an awkward manner as not expected by the user. As for the casual gamer this is not the game for them, this game is very intense and requires decent amount of racing knowledge of knowing when and how to turn/corner at high speeds, tune the car properly according to your personal needs. So in all it was not a great hit either ways. F.2 Need For Speed: Undercover This game does not have realistic physics but it has type of physics which helps the player a lot. The game is made in such a way to make the physics work in the way of the driver to give him/her an awesome driving experience this does not have to be entirely as in the real world. This game allows you to pull of the craziest of stuns with easy, this game is built only to give the driver awesome driving experience with computer guidance to accomplish stunts which would not be possible in the real world giving an adrenalin rush to the player. Key to Undercover is what EA is calling the heroic driving experience. In Undercover this physics system has been given an injection of cool. Think of all the best car chase scenes in movies from the last ten years and youll get an idea of what to expect. EA want you to feel like a skilled stunt driver, and it works. By using a combination of the gas pedal, brake, e-break and gear stick youre able to pull off stunning looking manoeuvres like reverse 180 degree turns. Its like you are Jason Statham from the Transporter movies. While we were quite looking forward some potentially funny moments, it seems EA has gone down a more serious route and it works very well indeed. Your goal in the game is to take down the various captains before taking down the whole operation, which is obviously done while driving at insanely high speeds. The game involves high speed chases over the highway, battling enemy cars, the good old cop chases etc. According to EA the traffic in Undercover is modelled realistically and reacts to your actions. While you can simply push a car over into the way of your target, you could choose to spook a driver of a bus, causing him to jack-knife in the middle of a dual carriageway. Racing at high speed, weaving in and out of traffic appears to offer the kind of thrills that were severely lacking in the more down to earth and structured ProStreet. As EA repeatedly pointed out during the publishers Games Convention 2008 demonstration, Undercover is all about heroic driving, and theres no better reason to drive like a stuntman than trying to outrun a swarm of angry police cars. Police chases thankfully return to Need for Speed in Undercover and these guys are aggressive, very aggressive. To begin with theyre not pushovers, but as you progress through the story and increase your level; your notoriety amongst the police also increases. Before too long theyll spot you on the streets and go after you, hunting you as a pack. If they get you which seems like itll be a regular occurrence for less skilful drivers youll have a strike against your car and itll be impounded. Being able to take pictures of the game during gameplay situations is becoming increasingly common, and with the amount of action on display in Undercover its no surprise to find such a feature here. We didnt see it in action but EA says that the snaps taken have been dubbed Movie Poster Action Cinematic sounds good to us. Undercover still has some way to go in development (its not out until late November) but its already looking very impressive. Car models are incredibly detailed and procedurally deform based on collisions. The areas of the city demonstrated to us were bathed in a gorgeous yellow light that gives the game a highly stylised appearance, and the camera often uncouples from the rear of the car in order to give a better, more cinematic view of the action. With months of development left there were obviously a few technical issues, but on the whole we cant wait to see how the final game looks. As in previous Need for Speed titles the audio is often dominated by the sound of police chatter. We only saw one police chase so cant say how itll sound hours into the game, but they said all the right things to convince us they were on our case. To sum it up, the game is made for the player to have a free stunt filled game which could be easily be pulled of which was not like by the old NFS users. The game wasnt such a big success like the old NFS Most Wanted due the reason that it lacked realist9ic physics but it had player friendly physics which made the game very to finish which much challenge. F.3 Burnout Paradise This game was made for its stunts. It had some realistic physics with a lot of importance given to the car damage. The game was a stunt mania. Though it is not correct to say It had realistic physics but it had good amount of it and put to use in the correct places, the made a game for stunts and it was good for it. The car damage actually affected the car performance. Though it did not have really good physics for driving, it had awesome crash physics. Burnout 5s speedsters will atomise stupendously during crashes, with more than six times as many breakable pieces in each car compared to Burnout Revenge. This will mean you can tear your car in half, rip the roof off or achieve other satisfying shunt stunts. The biggest change introduced in Burnout Paradise is the move to an open world, the streets of Paradise city. The entire city is open at the start of the game, with the idea being that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. Not all of the events are present at the start, mind you, and youll have to put in a lot of time to unlock the games roughly 75 cars, but youre never limited in the options before you. The main downtown area of Paradise City is very reminiscent of the downtown tracks in the last couple games, while the western section of the city harkens back to the long, winding, countryside courses of past games as well. A couple of highways will put you dead in the middle of traffic and give you plenty of roads to get up to speed on. In all the game was a success and was loved by crash maniacs but was hated by the driving fanatics. It stood to what it was designed for and achieved excellence in stunts and crash driving. F.4 Dirt Dirt 2 as Dirt is an off-road racing game. I chose this for my case study because this game is somewhat like my project. The game had a lot of focus on suspension and grip, any wrong move by the player could make the car skid off the road, in general the game physics were not player friendly but realistic to give the feel of an off-road racing game with the difficulties involved in an off-road racing game. The physics in Dirt 2 are impeccable. When a truck tumbles after taking a hard landing off a jump, it looks and behaves exactly as it should, which is critical if youre behind the truck anticipating its motion across your driving line. The physics are so realistic that the vibration from my idling engine would shake the skirt on my dash-mounted hula doll. Physics also come into play in the water hazards that now dot many of the courses. Driving through water will slow you down (though this can be advantageous if used strategically), and if youre driving from the cockpit view, my preferred perspective, it will obscure your vision for a few crucial seconds. Dirt 2 also features night-time races, confined to Rally Cross events, which add a whole new dimension to the game. You will have to avoid smashing your headlights on those tight corners if you want to see, and decide if you want to overtake the leader and risk underestimating a dark turn or let him show you the best line through th e corners. Dirt 2 takes the series in a new, quite risky, direction, by taking a more Arcady, fun feel. Although this may have upset some of the hard-core fans of the series, it still kept enough difficulty to please all, even the most casual gamers. It blends the realism of off road racing with the enjoyment of a street racing game and it works perfectly, making one of the best racing games To summarise the game is on the best off-road racing game, like burnout paradise they concentrated on the particular type of physics needed for an off-road racing game. History of Racing Game The old 2D racing games like Speed Race 1974 where generally black and white and were simple arcade games rather than proper simulations. In this era some basic concepts for racing game were developed like collision detection, HUD displays like Tachometer, speedometer etc. were developed. They were all vertical scrolling games and the player had to race with other AI cars or setting a high score. This was the base in the 70s for racing games and racing games evolved from this slowly over the course of years. In 1974 Atari released Gran Trak 10 which was the first racing game to implement ROM (Read Only Memory). This was a black and white game with an overhead view where the player raced against the clock which made the game non-competitive. The next concept came up was a sort of multiplayer where the player played against each other turn wise by competing against each others scores. This slowly evolved to a proper two player multiplayer where the players were able to play with each other simultaneously in a split screen view. In 1976 Crashing race was released which was a multiplayer capable arcade game where the players had to crash into other players to gain score. In this game the collision in racing game was reworked but this was still not a simulation game. The same year Moto-Cross was released which introduced Third-person perspective view into racing games. It achieved this by scrolling the track forward as the player moved and the scene closer to the player kept scaling so that it gave an illusion of perspective. Another game released this year called Fonz introduced feedback in controllers. The next game called Night Driver introduced the first person perspective in racing games. By this time the games were in colour rather than black and white. From 1970 to 1980 the games generally improved in graphics a little bit. In 1980 Namco released Rally-X which was the first racing game to have background music. The game also had a feature to Scroll the screen to either direction giving actual control over the players view. Then in 1982 Namco released Pole position which was the first game to have a track based on an actual circuit. The game had high resolution colour graphics for its time. The game was designed in such a way so that the player had to brake and use controls to manage turns; this is where some kind of simulation started in racing games. The player had to race against AI drivers and also had to race against time which made the game interesting. The game also featured collisions with boundaries and other cars which caused crashes which were first time implemented in a racing game. The game was the first of its kind to implement simulation at the most basic level which is where racing game simulation started from. The games after this adapted this concept and the racing game simulation start ed increasing giving a more sense of realism. The players had to manually shift gears and use brakes on turns to get turns correctly. Pole position 2 in particular had 3 screen display of the game giving a sense of 3D. In 1980s the this was the general trend in racing games and the simple car simulation were upgraded slowly as new hardware came, with this the graphics of the games also improved In 1984 Geoff Crammond developed a racing game simulator RVES for its time on BBC Micro Computer platform. This was the first step in game to really simulating driving. Though this is primitive from present standards but for that time this was huge step in racing simulations. In 1985 HangOn was released which was the first game to use 16 bit graphics and also had an improved simulation and AI system compared to the other games out there at that time. In this time more concern was given on improving graphics rather that the simulations. In 1986, Red Racer was the first stereoscopic 3D game. In 1989 Atari released Hard Drivin; this was the first game to use 3D polygons in a game. In 1990 Papyrus Design Group made the first actual 3D racing game simulator and they actually concentrated more on the simulations rather than the graphics. This simulator simulated realistic physics and telemeter. In 1992 Formula one Grand Prix became a hit racing simulation game which had all the drivers from the actual Grand Prix. From 1993 onwards polygons were highly used to make games and each and every game that was coming out had better graphics than the last one. In 1992 the other game which made big news was virtua racing which was not the first 3D racing game but it had the cleanest 3D graphics for the time. It did not have a pixelated look, rather all the textures were very neat and clean for the time. In 1993 Sega came up with Daytona USA which was the first racing game to feature filtered texture-mapped polygons. In 1994 Electronic Arts came up with Need for Speed which became the most popular racing game series of all time. This game had the most realistic audio for its time, detailing sounds of engines, gearshifts and tyre squeals to perfection. It also featured vehicle traffic in races. This game had both multiplayer and single player capability. In 1997 Gran Turismo was released for play station and was the best game at that time for its simulation and graphics. This was considered to be the most realistic game of its time. In 1999 Midtown Madness changed the face of racing game with free roam in games. After this racing games improved generally on the course of time with better and better graphics and simulations. The latest racing game that is supposed to come out in 2011 called Need for Speed: Shift 2 uses data from actual cars by attaching computers to it and computing every minute detail of the car and driver and have gone so far that they start to bridge the game between real life physics and simulated physics. Racing physics H.1 Basics The very basic idea behind moving a car or any object is F=ma, where F is the force applied, m is the mass of the object and a is the acceleration generated. For a car, the force comes from the engine and the mass of the car is a constant, therefore rewriting it we would get a=F/m. This would give us the acceleration. This is the base idea which would be used over all in the game. For example, even when the car takes a turn, would be a force applied in a direction from the centre of mass of the car. H.2 forces applied in Linear Motion Torque: To keep it simple at starting lets consider the car to be going just in a straight line and see what all we would require for the car to run. Now the car engine generates a force which is from spinning motion of the engine shaft through the gearbox, to the axle and finally to the wheels which would drive the car. This gives an understanding that there is a torque applied as a form of force. F=ma: This tells us that the acceleration on the car depends on the mass of the car directly considering the force is constant. Equations of linear motion: V=U+at v=Final velocity of the car u=Initial velocity of the car a= acceleration The force generated will give us acceleration of the car and thus the speed of the car can be calculated from this. t=time taken S=ut+1/2(a*t^2) This equation will be useful to get the position of the car in X, Y, Z direction in 3D space based on the velocity and direction of the car. S= Distance travelled V^2=u^2 +2aS This equation calculates values independent of time. For all the above equation the time will be considered as Άt, which is a small change in time. All our calculations will be based on these getting small points on a graph thus getting the whole motion. Friction: Considering the car stops Appling force on the tyres, by newtons second law it would still be in motion as no negative force is applied to it. But in the real world this is not true; the car decelerates if there is no force from the engine. This is due to the frictional forces present which act in the opposite direction of the car thus acting as negative forces. This can be categorised in 3 parts in general for a car in order of how strong they are. Internal Friction à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" This friction comes from the moving parts of the vehicle and is very minimal compared to the other two. Ground Friction à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" This friction comes from the friction between the tyres of the car and the ground. It depends on a few things, the larger the tyre of the car the more friction it will have. Also this is also related to the smoothness of the ground and tyres, the smoother tyres give less friction but it to be kept in mind that higher friction tyres have higher grip. Air Friction à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" This is the strongest frictional force of the 3 and exponentially the in depth calculations based on this would come later, for now it is this is just to get an understanding of what all basic forces are applied on a car. h.3 Drag This is the air friction experienced by the car when its driving. The drag is a force value acting opposite the direction the car is travelling. This is the force required by the car to overcome to be in motion. =Drag Force =Density of Fluid =Drag Coefficient A=Surface Area After going through a lot of Drag Coefficients, that value for our car fit to be 0.50 Value 0.60 Truck 0.57 Hummer 0.46 Ford Mustang 1976 0.45 Dodge Viper *List from Wikipedia.org Air density which is fluid density here is 1.29kg/m^3 at sea level, which will be our density. The frontal area of cross section for our car came out to be 2.5m^2 which is our area of reference. Putting the values in the equation of drag This equals All the calculation is are done in metric system. Table for Drag force for our car in Newtons Speed M/s Speed Km/Hr 81.25 10 36 325 20 72 731.25 30 108 1300 40 144 2031 50 180 This shows that as the velocity increases drag force exponentially which increases the force required to overcome it. H.4 Centre of Mass The centre of mass (COM) of an object is the mean location of all the masses in the body.

The Cathedral :: essays papers

The Cathedral I have had many experiences that changed my outlook towards life. One of them was when I went to London, England. It was called St. Paul’s Cathedral. I had never been to a â€Å"cathedral† before, and I didn’t especially care to go and look at one. But my coach made me, and when we got there I heard a voice in my head yelling, â€Å"You’re going to hate this!† Regardless I was there and without chance to leave, so I figured I might as well try to appreciate it. Boy, am I glad I did because as I stood at the bottom of the enormous concrete steps towards the doors of St. Paul’s Cathedral, I looked up and noticed the resemblance to the capitol building. The dome on top the building looked as if it just kept going all the way to the heavens. Sitting almost on top of the dome were four statues, each pointing true North, South, East, and West. The statues of the Virgin Mary, made of gold, immediately caught my eye. I couldn’t help noticing their beauty, as I looked upward. The doorway to the cathedral resembled an enormous Indian arrowhead. There were sculptures lining the inner arches of the doorways. Each sculpture was done so intricately it looked as if it was the sculptor’s crowning achievement. On the outer edge were carvings of angels all the way to the top. Each one stacked above the other and all in different poses. Just to the left was the next row of sculptures, this one of people standing one above the other playing instruments. The third row was much like the first, of angels, except every sculpture was different and each looked frozen in time as if it was waiting for the perfect moment to come back to life. Directly above the doorway was a three level carving. The first, on the bottom, was of common people, all facing towards the center and looking as if they were begging for forgiveness from God. The second level, done on a much larger scale, was of the Disciples of Christ. Dressed in robes and all sitting down in chairs with their scruffy beards looking outward as if they were a council ready to judge me. The third level was of Christ himself. Angels, all praising him and tending to his every need surrounded him.

Relationships and Love in Frosts, Wind and Window Flower Essay

Relationships and Love in Frost's, Wind and Window Flower In "Wind and Window Flower" Frost explores a love too fragile for the lovers to pursue. The lovers in this poem are enticed by one another but remain worlds apart. This tale of love is one of temptation, excitement, and disappointment. The window flower is an image of beauty and warmth. The flower is protected from the outside world and is safe inside the warm, firelit house, as is the woman. In contrast, the image of the winter breeze is cold, fierce, and impersonal. The man knows little of the things of love. The unknown is the attraction between the lovers, it is strong, and in the end will prove superficial. The wind took notice of the flower as she becomes unveiled through the frosty window. The woman's beauty is the attraction which leads the man to her. At this point little is known of her. He is unsure of how to respond to her so he passes by, only to return later. This represents his fear of the unknown, and possibly that of commitment. The man is a stranger to the ways of love. This is see...

George Orwell Stories Review

In the story â€Å"On the Rainy River† a 20-year old named Tim O’Brien is about to be given the freedom to go anywhere in life until he receives a draft notice requiring him to join the army in the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien is tested both physically and mentally. He has the option to flee to Canada or go to the war. Each option would result in abandoning family, friends, and fond memories. In his essay â€Å"Shooting an Elephant,† reminisces about a bad decision he made earlier in life, just like Tim. Reflecting on his experience, Orwell has also identified the reasons why he did it: â€Å"I could get nothing into perspective.I was young and ill-educated and I had to think out my problems in utter silence,† Tim O’Brien also dealt with his problems alone, â€Å" I felt isolated; I spent a lot of time alone. † Both Tim and George are struggling to deal with their problems and it’s eating away at them. In â€Å"On the Rainy River,à ¢â‚¬  having a good education doesn’t have much on an impact on Tim’s life, because if your nation calls on you to defend your country, you’re going to have to make a difficult decision on whether you’re going to flee or going to war.Being educated makes Tim more open-minded, and prevents him from indulging in the nationalism that was sweeping the nation during that time. Although Tim may have good reasons we shouldn’t be in the war, the nation was depending on men like him. In â€Å"Shooting an Elephant,† George Orwell says â€Å" †¦I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.† George Orwell is trying to say that when you’re young and inexperienced you’re bound to make a lot of mistakes. When you’re young your family, peers, and own country have influenced your opinions. Many indivi duals are afraid and unwilling to deviate from the norm. George is an anti-imperialist at heart, but puts on an officer uniform and represents imperialism because that is how the European nation is viewed to the rest of the world. Based off of Orwell’s ideas, you should think individually so you won’t regretthings later on in life as George and Tim do. Your conscious would show you wrong from right. George Orwell’s ideas can also be applied to â€Å"On the Rainy River†. Although Tim is educated on the war in Vietnam, he does have to deal with his problems in utter silence because he’s afraid that the people he can talk to will tell him to go to the war and he doesn’t want to be called a coward, which takes a toll on his body. â€Å"How at work one morning†¦I felt something break open in my chest†¦it was a physique rupture.† So not only is Tim losing sleep and becoming paranoid, but now the stress is affecting Tim’s ph ysical health as well. If Tim had talked to Elroy Berdahl he would have been much better off. The guilt and stress has been eating away at Tim all summer, and will continue to get at him until he can speak to someone about what he’s going through. If Tim had vented to Elroy, his physical and mental health might have returned to normal, which would have helped him to make his decision. George faces being ill educated along with dealing with his problems.George is an outcast in the native village. He is supposed to be striking fear into these people, however he is against the brutality and injustice that imperialism instills on its subjects. If only George had had the courage to tell the natives who he really was, he might have had an easier time being accepted by them. If George had been better educated, he might have known how to think straight when surrounded by two thousand people; he might have also known where to shoot the elephant so it wouldn’t have to suffer the way it did.To conclude, both Tim and George tried to run away from the inevitable. You can’t escape who you are, and that is what Tim and George tried to do. Tim was an American citizen who was caught up in the draft for the Vietnam War, and George was a citizen of an imperial nation. Tim couldn’t face leaving his friends and family behind so he ended up damaging himself both physically and mentally without even trying to talk this out with his family and friends.While George an anti-imperialist at hear must enforce it upon this Asian country. Both decisions were forced by others whether it is Tim deciding to go to the war due to the devastating fact that if he were to go to Canada, he would never see his family again and if George didn’t shoot that elephant, the tribal people would be more disrespectful than ever. George Orwell wants us to be individuals and think for ourselves. We shouldn’t be influenced by others to make decisions we wouldn’t n ormally do.

School wide positive behavior support

For the past 28 old ages, LAKE Academy ( once known as LifeStream Academy ) has served kids and striplings with emotional upsets and behavioural challenges as referred by the School Board of Lake County ( LCSB ) . LAKE Academy is housed at two sites within Lake County and serves a sum of 110 Emotional/Behavioral Disabled and Emotionally Handicapped ( EBD/EH ) pupils, 45 Alternate Education ( AE ) pupils, and 80 Alternate Disciplinary Program ( ADP ) pupils. LAKE Academy was formed as a charter between LifeStream Behavioral Center, a Mental Health Hospital and Lake County School Board. LAKE Academy is under contract to keep a teacher/student ratio of 1:11 in the Emotional/Behavioral Disabled and Emotionally Handicapped ( EBD/EH ) plan ; a teacher/student ratio of 1:15 will be maintained in the Alternate Education plan. The instructor to student ratio in the Alternative Disciplinary Program schoolroom will average one instructor to twenty pupils. Recently, the Lake County School Board charter contract with Lake Academy added the No Child Left Behind Act enfranchisement demand. All instructors are required to demo annually advancement towards capable country and/or Exceptional Education Certification. However, LifeStream Behavioral Center, the employer, pays on the norm of 10 dollars less per hr with no planning period or responsibility free tiffin. In add-on, this school requires frequent and sometimes drawn-out restraint of pupils which frequently risks hurt to staff.Purpose of StudyTraditionally, schools have used reactive, punitory schemes in an effort to discour age pupils from unwanted behaviours. These effect based behavior systems have been proven uneffective. The Families and Advocates Partnership for Education provinces that â€Å" harmonizing to over 500 research surveies, penalty is one of the least effectual responses to job behaviours. School-wide policies that punish pupils for negative behaviours but that do n't honor positive behaviours really increased aggression, hooliganism, hooky, tardiness, and dropping out of school † ( FAPE Research Brief, p. 1 ) . We need to believe more about our pupils and learn them how to act and larn, within a system that is positive and collaborative. â€Å" What is needed is a systemic, proactive attack that seeks to forestall disputing behaviours from developing while comprehensively turn toing the demands of all kids on the continuum of hazard for disputing behaviours † ( Dunlap, Lewis, & A ; McCart, p. 1 ) . Over the last 10 old ages, research workers have been looking at the effects of positive behaviour intercessions. These constructs were foremost used in particular instruction scenes. â€Å" PBS was developed ab initio as an option to aversive intercessions that were used with pupils with terrible disablements who engaged in utmost signifiers of self-injury and aggression † ( OSEP, ND, p. 1 ) . More late, this attack has been successful in regular instruction scenes every bit good. Researchers George Sugai and Rob Horner from Oregon, funded by the U. S. Office of Special Education Programs ( OSEP ) have formed a collaborative including universities and educational bureaus with the end to â€Å" help provinces in large-scale execution of School-wide Positive Behavior Support to accomplish both decrease in job behaviour and enhanced larning environment † ( OSEP Brochure, p. 1 ) . One survey, by Bradshaw, Leaf and Debnam ( 2007 ) paperss a randomised control test conducted in Maryland in which execution of school-wide positive behaviour support ( SWPBS ) was demonstrated to happen with fidelity, and to be linked to improved organisational wellness, improved academic results, and decreases in office subject referrals. ( Horner & A ; Sugai, 2007, p. 8 ) A reappraisal of the incident information for both campuses last twelvemonth showed that the Leesburg campus had 299 incidents that were caused by 70 pupils. Sixteen pupils had 5 or more incidents for a sum of 203 or 68 % . 55 % of all incidents were Acting Out ( 51 % AO & A ; 4 % AO, with hurt ) 31 % of all incidents were assaults. The Eustis campus saw 120 incidents that were caused by 47 pupils. 9 pupils had 5 or more incidents for a sum of 64 or 53 % 56 % of all incidents were Acting Out ( 44 % AO & A ; 12 % AO, with hurt ) 21 % of all incidents were assaults. Lake Academy keeps making the same thing and expects different consequences. The school must switch from a reactive and aversive attack to pull offing job behaviours to one that is preventative and positive. Lake County Schools introduced Positive Behavior Support in several schools last twelvemonth. One school saw a about 50 % decrease in subject referrals. The Academy already has A? of the PBS work done with the Leveled Behavior Modification Program.Literature ReviewDefinitions/ Background of PBSSchool-wide positive behaviour support ( SWPBS ) can be defined as â€Å" a systems attack for set uping the societal civilization and behavioural supports needed for a school to be an effectual acquisition environment for all pupils † ( Sugai, 2008, presentation slide 9 ) . SWPBS is a more proactive option to reactive, punitory behaviour direction processs. Administrators, instructors, and staff work collaboratively to better the school clime by learning behavioural outlooks and societal accomplishments for all scenes within the larning community. Positive support is used to admit pupils who are exhibiting the expected behaviours. For pupils who are non reacting to the given outlooks, t here is a continuum of intercessions designed to suit the demands of the person.Cardinal Elementss of PBSThe chief elements of the PBS theoretical account include â€Å" a prevention-focused continuum of support, proactive instructional attacks to learning and bettering societal behaviours, conceptually sound and through empirical observation validated patterns, systems change to back up effectual patterns, and experimental determination devising † ( Sugai & A ; Horner, 2002, p. 2 ) .Prevention.There are three degrees of bar used in SWPBS. â€Å" Primary bar focal points on diminishing the figure of new instances of a job behaviour or state of affairss by guaranting and keeping the usage of the most effectual patterns for all pupils † ( p. 2 ) . This degree of bar is used with all pupils, school-wide in all scenes. Students are taught the behavioural outlooks and societal accomplishments for usage in all countries of the school. Positive support is used by instructors and staff to admit those pupils who are acting harmonizing to these outlooks. The end of secondary bar is to cut down the figure of bing job behaviour instances or state of affairss by supplying extra instructional and behavioural supports for the comparatively smaller figure of pupils who are at hazard of important school failure and who need more specialised supports than those provided by primary bar attempts. ( Sugai & A ; Horner, 2002, p. 2 ) In these instances, intercessions are used to back up these persons in following the behavioural outlooks established in the school. The concluding type of bar, â€Å" third bar focal points on cut downing the figure of bing instances of complex, intractable, and long-standing job behaviours displayed by pupils who are at high hazard for important emotional, behavioural and societal failure † ( Sugai & A ; Horner, 2002, p. 2 ) These pupils require more individualised and intensive intercessions, including the usage of functional behavioural analysis and other informations aggregation to find the best manner to back up them.Proactive Approach.The 2nd cardinal component of PBS is that the attack taken by the instructors and staff is proactive instead than reactive. At the beginning of the twelvemonth or at the start of a new activity, behaviour guidelines are taught explicitly and reinforced so that all pupils know what is expected of them. This attack is characterized by a careful consideration of instructional patterns, constructions and procedures for ( a ) maximising academic results ; ( B ) selecting and learning school-wide and classroom-wide outlooks, regulations and modus operandis ; and ( degree Celsius ) practicing and promoting the usage of academic accomplishments and behavioural outlooks across multiple relevant scenes and contexts ( Sugai & A ; Horner, 2002, pp. 2-3 ) . Students are taught societal accomplishments and given schemes for covering with other pupils, such as struggle declaration and how to react to being harassed or bullied. It is besides made clear to pupils when they should seek aid from an grownup in a given state of affairs.Sound Practices.Many of the constituents of PBS come from the pattern of Applied Behavior Analysis ( ABA ) , which has been â€Å" refined, tested, and replicated to organize an of import disciplinary attack for turn toing socially of import concerns in instruction, particularly bettering behavioural results for single pupils † ( Sugai & A ; Horner, 2002, p. 3 ) . PBS focuses on two specific methods used in ABA: functional behavioural appraisal and behaviour intercession programs. Functional behavioural appraisals are used to roll up informations about the variables associated with job behaviours, such as â€Å" scene, ancestor, and effects. † This information is used to make behavior intercession programs, which â€Å" focal point on the strengths and of import societal contexts of the pupil and household and do job behaviour ineffective, inefficient, and irrelevant so that more desirable or adaptable behaviours can be encouraged † ( Sugai & A ; Horner, 2002, p. 3 ) .Systems Perspective.A big portion of the PBS attack is the fact that it is used school-wide. Having the systems set up throughout the school scenes is important to the successful execution of these patterns. This involves ongoing preparation and coaching of instructors and staff to guarantee that there is consistence throughout the school. â€Å" Systems supports m ust be in topographic point to back up the accurate, efficient, and sustained usage of evidence-based patterns and informations direction systems † ( Sugai & A ; Horner, 2002, p. 4 ) .Stairss for Implementation.The execution of PBS in a school involves several stairss. First, the leading squad is established. â€Å" With input from all staff, squads determine which features they will aim foremost, how advancement will be monitored, and what the behavioural outlooks will be, when and how to learn the behavior outlooks, and the type of informations that will be used to inform determinations † ( Dunlap, Lewis, & A ; McCart, p. 2 ) . Next, the squad defines the behavioural outlooks for the pupils. For school-aged kids, there are normally about five guidelines used throughout the school. These are posted throughout the assorted educational scenes, utilizing linguistic communication pupils can easy understand and associate to or utilizing images or icons. ( Dunlap, Lewis, & A ; McCart, p. 2 ) Once the school-wide behaviour outlooks have been determined, they must be taught to the pupils. â€Å" Expectations can be taught with a scope of schemes that include mold, pattern, function playing, and feedback in context, and a assortment of stuffs can be used to assist the instruction procedure ( e.g. books, games, marionettes, societal narratives ) † ( Dunlap, Lewis, & A ; McCart, p. 2 ) . Children are taught societal accomplishments every bit good as schemes for struggle declaration. There is besides treatment about appropriate behaviours for different scenes within the acquisition community, such as the schoolroom, the hallways, the tiffin room, and the resort area. It is of import that the instruction of these outlooks is clear and consistent and that the pupils are cognizant of the effects for non following with the guidelines. After pupils have been taught the behavior outlooks, the following measure is to utilize changeless positive support to admit those pupils who exhibit the coveted behaviours. Giving the kids this feedback lets them cognize when they are on the right path and besides shows other pupils that they will be noticed if they make the right picks. â€Å" Acknowledgement of coveted behaviours is such a critical characteristic of PBS that frequently the leading squad needs to set up particular monitoring schemes to assist motivate staff to ‘catch the kids being good ‘ with a high adequate frequence † ( Dunlap, Lewis, & A ; McCart, p. 3 ) . Data is used to assist the PBS squad to work out jobs and do determinations sing the actions taken to implement the plan successfully throughout the school. The squad meets to make up one's mind what types of information they will roll up to supervise the effectivity of the systems at different degrees: school-wide, within each schoolroom, and with single pupils. One normally used step to measure the school-wide plan is to look at the figure of office subject referrals ( ODRs ) . Many schools besides use behavior incident signifiers which â€Å" papers happenings of targeted disputing behaviours, and note the type of job behaviour, the scene in which it occurred, the type of activity and any other possible triggers to the behaviour, the people involved in the activity and the effects ( if any ) that were provided following the behavioural incident † ( Dunlap, Lewis, & A ; McCart, p. 3 ) . This information is collected and analyzed on a regular basis by members of the squad in their determination devising. Students who do non react to the behavioural outlooks set Forth are provided with extra intercessions, as decided by the PBS squad. â€Å" Data from behavior incident signifiers can assist squads find which kids and schoolrooms need support and what supports are appropriate † ( Dunlap, Lewis & A ; McCart, p. 3 ) .Effectiveness of PBS.A survey of PBS in urban high schools analyzing PBS and its effectivity at the secondary degree was conducted over the class of 4 old ages. Overall, school-wide PBS has been associated with decreases in ODRs at this school. Although the deficiency of experimental control in the survey prohibits the ability to presume causality, during the months and old ages where school-wide PBS intercessions were implemented, ODRs declinedaˆÂ ¦ Besides, comparing baseline informations to the first twelvemonth of execution revealed that a significantly smaller figure of pupils received multiple ODRs during the execution twelvemonth in comparing with the baseline twelvemonth. ( Morrissay, 2010, pp. 30-31 ) Many other surveies have shown similar consequences, including decreases in behavior incidents, office subject referrals ( ODRs ) and suspension rates. â€Å" Recent research indicates that school-wide positive behaviour is associated with reduced exclusionary, reactive and punitory subject patterns, increased pupil satisfaction, and improved perceptual experiences of school safety † ( Putnam, Horner, & A ; Algazzine, 2006, p. 1 ) . Teachers report holding more clip for direction in the schoolroom because there are less behavioural distractions. There are more positive interactions between pupils and staff, which create a better environment for everyone.Legislation.The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ( IDEA ) was originally passed as our state ‘s particular instruction jurisprudence in 1975. Its intent is to guarantee that pupils with disablements have an equal opportunity to hold â€Å" a free appropriate public instruction, merely like other kids † ( hypertext transfer protocol: //www.nichcy.org/idea.htm para 2 ) . The act has been revised and amended many times, and was most late reauthorized by Congress in 2004, with consequences published in 2006. The new act, IDEIA ( Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act ) , states that â€Å" school decision makers continue to hold legislative support for their usage of functional behavioural appraisal and positive behavioural intercessions and schemes for back uping kids with disablements who exhibit job behaviours † ( IDEIA, 2004, p. 2 ) . The IDEIA provides more flexibleness in support, leting schools to utilize a per centum of their financess toward implementing PBS. It is besides proposed that these intercessions be used school-wide, to make an inclusive acquisition community for all pupils. Congress is presently fixing to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known as â€Å" No Child Left Behind. † It appears that â€Å" policymakers have begun to admit that there are many non-academic factors that affect pupils ‘ school success † ( Mandlawitz, 2007, p. 1 ) . In her recent publication, Myrna Mandlawitz describes two measures that have been introduced, the Reducing Barriers to Learning Act of 2007 and the Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act. Both of these involve the usage of school-wide positive behaviour support. On May 21, 2009, theA Positive Behavior for Safe and Effective Schools ActA ( HR 2597 ) was introduced by Representative Phil Hare ( D-IL ) .A If signed into jurisprudence, HR 2597 will better school clime and promote pupils ‘ academic success by promoting the usage of schoolwide positive behavioural supports ( PBIS ) . Research has documented that PBIS leads to better instructional clip, reduced disciplinary jobs and increased trial tonss. Harmonizing toA Rep. Hare, HR 2597 â€Å" provides schools with the flexibleness and proficient aid needed to implement, spread out, and prolong the usage of the Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports system. † The end of this measure is to see more execution of positive behaviour supports â€Å" in order to consistently make a school clime that is extremely contributing to larning, cut down subject referrals, and better academic result. They besides propose more flexibleness in the usage of Title I financess for School-wide Po sitive Behavior Supports to do it more accessible to all schools.SWPBS and Academics.â€Å" Several surveies have found relationships between academic public presentation and job behaviour across class degrees † ( Putnam, Horner & A ; Algazzine, 2006, p. 1 ) . â€Å" Other research has demonstrated that pupils with terrible job behaviour experienced big academic shortages as compared to typical equals. In most countries these shortages remained stable over clip † ( p. 2 ) . In many instances, behavior jobs arise because a pupil is seeking to avoid an academic undertaking. If a kid is weak in a certain country or is fighting with a undertaking, he or she may move out as an flight. For illustration, if a â€Å" pupil ‘s literacy accomplishments do non maintain gait with those of equals, academic undertakings become more aversive, and job behaviours that lead to get away from these undertakings become more likely † ( Putnam, Horner & A ; Algazzine, 2006, p. 1 ) . It is of import as instructors that we learn what is reenforcing our pupils for their behaviours and expression at what the map of the behaviour is. Research workers have late begun to analyze the relationship between SWPBS and academic accomplishment. With less clip and energy traveling to pull offing job behaviours, instructors have more clip available for direction in the schoolroom. â€Å" Research has systematically shown that the sum of clip that direction is provided is extremely correlated with pupil accomplishment † ( Putnam, Horner, & A ; Algazzine, 2006, p. 2 ) . Some surveies have besides shown increased clip on undertaking and academic battle in schools and schoolrooms utilizing PBS. â€Å" Student academic battle has been found to be correlated with improved academic achievementaˆÂ ¦In a survey of six schoolrooms that implemented behavior support programs, on-task behaviour increased by 24 % over baseline degrees † ( Putnam, Horner, & A ; Algazzine, 2006, p. 2 ) . Research is besides get downing to demo that execution of SWPBS is associated with improved trial tonss. â€Å" There is increasing grounds that school-wide positive behaviour support intercessions improve standardized trial consequences † ( p. 3 ) .MethodologyThe Academy already has a leading squad in topographic point and a Behavior Modification plan. This undertaking will concentrate in the positive facet. The leading squad defined the cosmopolitan behavioural outlooks as Respect, Responsibility, and Safety. The undermentioned chart shows what each of these behaviours ‘ expression like:RespectDutySafetyUse appropriate and positive linguistic communication Follow staff waies Keep custodies, pess, and objects to yourself Listen when others are talking Care for your properties and clean up after yourself Walk at a safe gait Raise your manus and speak when it is your bend Give your best attempt Enter and issue in orderly lines Respect others, staff, and belongings Be prepared The leading squad so developed a usher to how the plan will work. The bell will peal indiscriminately throughout the twenty-four hours. Techs will give PBS points for pupils that are exhibiting the Expected Universal Behaviors when the bell rings ( Respect, Responsibility, and Safety ) . An excess column has been added to Daily Point Log for this trailing. Points can be turned in at the terminal of the hebdomad for school shop points. The minute the bell ringsaˆÂ ¦ the really 2nd the bell ringsaˆÂ ¦ is when the PBS point is earned. It does non count what behavior the pupil displayed two seconds ago, two proceedingss ago, or two hours ago. It does non count if the kid has non â€Å" made his twenty-four hours. † All that affairs is if he was exposing cosmopolitan behavior outlooks at the minute the bell rang. If he was, he earns the PBS point. The squad so established the regulations for the school shop. School shop will be on Friday from 1:30pm-2:30pm. Students must be escorted and supervised by their schoolroom staff. Appropriate behaviour must be demonstrated at the school shop. Students will be asked to go forth if their behaviour is unacceptable. Rules of school shop will be posted at the shop site and a transcript will be given to each schoolroom for staff to reexamine with pupils. Students must be gaining 80 points, must be dress codification compliant, and have no major moving out behaviours to go to shop. School shop will be announced on the talker and a agenda will be implemented of schoolroom times. Merely appointive staff will be allowed to run and hold entree to school shop and shall keep shop stock list. It is the duty of the schoolroom staff to track pupil ‘s points in order for them to purchase points from shop. Any staff/student that is suspected of larceny, pull stringsing points, non tracking pupil ‘s points, non leting pupils to use shop will be reported instantly to an Administrator and have a effect for their actions. There will be a suggestion box for any petitions for stock list, alterations that may be needed, or comments/concerns at the shop that will be reviewed by the PBS squad. PBS squad will supervise point/inventory relation and do necessary accommodations. The incident informations each month will be compared to the information from last twelvemonth and disaggregated by types of incident. This comparing informations will be used to measure the effectivity of the plan and to find the mark country for the 2nd grade. It is projected that the figure of incidents per month will diminish by 50 % like that of other schools in the county.