2009b) An exploratory evaluation of virtual football player's believability

Our research is conducted within the context of studies of participatory simulations. Within this perspective, we developed virtual environment for simulating play in football, in collaboration with computer scientists. The virtual environment is called CoPeFoot (Collective Perception in Football). In order to evaluate the believability of the virtual agents behaviors, we conducted an in virtuo experiment inspired by the Turing test, carried out on 48 subjects. Results suggest that novice subjects immersed in the virtual environments do not recognize the behavioral differences between autonomous virtual agents and avatars (agents controlled by humans). This study enables us to consider the potential applications of CoPeFoot both as a research tool and as a tool for assisting in training methods