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________________________________________________________________________The advanced computational capabilities in modern personal computers have made it possible for consumers to experience simulations with a high degree of verisimilitude through simulation games (a.k.a. Sims). In recent years, the cross-boundary technology exchange between game and simulation technology, along with other factors, has contributed to the confusion as to what makes a simulation game and what makes a simulator. This article provides a user's and designer's perspective on a definitive comparison of the similarities and differences between games in general, simulation games, and simulators. It also introduces a method that can be easily used to distinguish games and simulation games from simulators by using observable design characteristics. On the other hand, the convergence of functionality and technology in simulation games and simulators has created new applications of simulation. One such application is in serious games. Serious games and simulation games are confusingly similar in many ways. However, they greatly differ in functionality. This article also provides a method to distinguish serious games from simulation games, to clarify the strict categorization between these two applications of simulation. ________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTIONIn the past, the technology used in simulators was only available to high-end expensive industrial and military systems (i.e., "manned" training simulators [Hughes 1990]), since they made use of the extensive computational capabilities of high-performance computers (HPCs). Simulation technology was also used in non-real-time systems for running computationally intensive models of real-world systems (for example, analytic simulators [Hughes 1990] and weather simulation [Johnson et al. 1996]). Simulators and simulation applications were not available on commonly used personal computers (PCs), as the applications would normally require a number of days to run. The modern personal computer has made it possible to run simulators as well as other simulation applications on commodity personal computer hardware [Garrity 2005] because it is empowered with advanced computational capabilities, and at the same time is available at very low cost [Manojlovich et al. 2003]. This is evident in the hardware of the current generation of video game consoles (i.e., Sony's Playstation 2 [Sony 2005]; Microsoft's X-box

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Engagement with upper limb rehabilitation post-stroke can improve rehabilitation outcomes. Virtual Reality can be used to make rehabilitation more engaging. In this paper, we propose a multiple case study to determine: (1) whether game design principles (identified in an earlier study as being likely to engage) actually do engage, in practice, a sample of stroke survivors with a Desktop Virtual Realitybased Serious Game designed for upper limb rehabilitation; and (2) what game design factors support the existence of these principles in the game. In this study, we considered 15 principles: awareness, feedback, interactivity, flow, challenge, attention, interest, involvement, psychological absorption, motivation, effort, clear instructions, usability, purpose, and a first-person view. Four stroke survivors used, for a period of 12 weeks, a Virtual Reality-based upper limb rehabilitation system called the Neuromender Rehabilitation System. The stroke survivors were then asked how well each of the 15 principles was supported by the Neuromender Rehabilitation System and how much they felt each principle supported their engagement with the system. All the 15 tested principles had good or reasonable support from the participants as being engaging. Use of feedback was emphasised as an important design factor for supporting the design principles, but there was otherwise little agreement in important design factors among the participants. This indicates that more personalised experiences may be necessary for optimised engagement. The insight gained can be used to inform the design of a larger scale statistical study into what engages stroke survivors with Desktop Virtual Reality-based upper limb rehabilitation.

Many studies have shown that no matter what is done to try to get drivers to improve their driving behaviour there will always be some who would not see the benefit of modifying their behaviour. This paper reports on work in progress using a specially built simulator to convince drivers of the benefit of having good driving behaviour. The system uses Interactive Simulations in a Virtual Reality environment to immerse drivers in various road situations.

Collaborative filtering (CF) technique in recommender systems (RS) is a well-known and popular technique that exploits relationships between users or items to make product recommendations to an active user. The effectiveness of existing memory based algorithms depend on the similarity measure that is used to identify nearest neighbours. However, similarity measures utilize only the ratings of co-rated items while computing the similarity between a pair of users or items. In most of the ecommerce applications, the rating matrix is too sparse since even active users of an online system tend to rate only a few items of the entire set of items. Therefore, co-rated items among users are even sparser. Moreover, the ratings a user gives an individual item tells us nothing about his comprehensive interest without which the generated recommendations may not be satisfactory to a user. In order to be able to address these issues, a comprehensive study is made of the various existing measures of similarity in a collaborative filtering recommender system (CFRS) and a hierarchical categorization of products has been proposed to understand the interest of a user in a wider scope so as to provide better recommendations as well as to alleviate data sparsity. CCS ConceptsHuman-centered computing~Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing • Applied computing~Online shopping