Sport, virtual reality and design of participative simulations. Illustration in the field of football with the CoPeFoot simulator

New perspectives for research and training in sport could be offered thanks to participative simulation and virtual reality. This paper aims at reflecting about design processing in order to enhance simulation credibility. The literature is examined to present actual simulators’ interests, properties and limits for sport research and training. An original experiment of participative simulation design in team sport is proposed: an ergonomic approach was used to study experts’ decision making in soccer natural setting; the decision-making model constituted a guide for choosing and implementing computer science models for the development of the virtual environment CoPeFoot (Cooperative Perception in football). The process and the results obtained are discussed thanks to the enaction paradigm. Credibility of simulation for the user should need both of regularity and surprises in the emergence of agents’ (players’) behaviours.