Police to be trained on videogames

A new game designed by a team of researchers at Abertay University has been created to offer armed police officers a chance to train with weapons in a realistic, simulated environment.

The simulation, titled Shoot/NoShoot is played using a light gun and recreates a few realistic conflict situations, including a man looking in a car boot. Players approach the man and must decide whether to shoot, fire a warning shot or to hold their fire based on how much of a threat they think he is.

One of the designers of the game, PhD student Paul Robertson, thinks that the game won't actually be very appealing to game fans as the situation is far more realistic than other supposedly realistic games.

"A lot of games become very 'arcadey', it's all big and when you shoot at people it takes eight shots to take them down, and everything explodes," he said to the BBC. "This is more realistic, a single shot will take someone down."

The game supposedly uses realism throughout the entire game and has complex AI and the ability to respond to voice commands.

"The animation is very important, that we get as realistic as possible movements associated with the individual turning round because that's where the signals are going to be as to whether to shoot or not," said lecturer Dr. James Brown.

It's not clear when the technology will be rolled out as the system first has to be tested by the Home Office Scientific Development Branch. Still, sounds cool doesn't it? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.