Mirror's Edge 18 Nov 2008

According to Clive Thompson of Wired, playing Mirror's Edge - the new parkour-based video game from Electronic Arts - "will make you vomit". Why? Well, not because it's bad or gory or in any other way distasteful. But because you can see your body as you move around. That is, you can see your avatar's feet swing out when you jump and your hands thrust forward as you climb. The game environment is also completely interactive - which means that you can climb onto, jump off or slide under every single in-game object!

The effect of all this visual wizardry is to remap your internal body schema so that you feel totally immersed in the virtual world that the game's creators have developed. Such immersion is known as a proprioception illusion, in scientific circles.

Research into proprioception - your sense of where you body is in space - shows that our internal body map is surprisingly fluid. It is possible to misplace your own hand, for example, convincing yourself that it is in front of you when it is actually at your side or behind you. This effect can be seen in the video clip below (from New Scientist), which shows how you can mess with your brain by stroking a fake rubber hand and your real hand at the same time:

The fact that games like Mirror's Edge can now deliver proprioception illusions is a real breakthrough. It seems that we are finally getting the types of immersive experience that the video games industry has been promising us for so long.

See also:

• Fez: A 2D 2 3D user interface
• Crayon Physics Deluxe
• The Unfinished Swan