Separating Simulation and Reality

Late in the chapter Illusion, Narrative, and Interactivity, Manovich says:

Games modeled after simulators - first of all, first-person shooters such as Doom, Quake, and Tomb Raider, but also flight and racing simulators - have been quite successful. In contrast to interactive narratives, such as Wing Commander, [... ] first-person shooters are based on the coexistence of the two states - which are also two states of the subject (perception and action) and two states of a screen (transparent and opaque). As you run through the corridors shooting at enemies or controlling the car on the racetrack, you also keep your eyes on the readouts, which tell you about the "health" of your character, the damage level of your vehicle, the availability of ammunition, and so on. (Manovich 210)

This mention is brought out in reference to systems which blur the line between the illusion and the periodic breaks out of it. I find the case of the racing simulator particularly interesting. Many racing simulation games offer an in-car view of the race, and have options to disable readouts such as relative track positions.

In this case, the simulation presents the same point of view, and the same sort of split action cycling between simply driving and checking gauges like the speedometer required in real driving. The user actions in the simulation and in the real life action being simulated are the same. With a pedal/wheel accessory for the system on which the simulator is run, even the physical actions are the same. But Manovich touches on this interesting point but drops it (or misses its value), even though it bolsters his point. It supports him in his argument that the oscillation between the system and action is not necessarily a limit of current technology; in the case of a driving simulator, this arrangement is an ideal goal for the game designer.

It also complements his notion that "the user invests in the illusion precisely because she is given control over it" (209) because this argument is a rationalization for why users surrender to illusions which break themselves periodically, while since there is virtually no break in this case there appears to be less need to rationalize the user's acceptance of the illusion. The readings we've gone through of late all seem to agree generally with, for example, one of Bogost's definitions of simulation, that it is "a representation of a source system via a less complex system that informs the user's understanding of the source system in a subjective way" (Bogost 107). But when the simulation is simplified in only obscure ways - such as the inability to open your door and evacuate a vehicle at 80 miles per hour - both Manovich's and Bogost's discussions seem as if they might lose relevance. Both are predicated on significant differences between simulation and source system. How closely can the simulation approach its source model before the distinction is too small for the discussions of submitting to illusion to be relevant? How close can they become before the more relevant factors become which exact points the user relies on to distinguish the two?