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In any skilled activity, whether it's in the real world or in simulation, whatever we perceive can only be an interpretation (i.e., a construction) of that world -- a product of our perceptual mechanisms (primarily our brain, which contains most of the necessary neural connections to do the interpreting/constructing). So our experiences are strongly personal (or subjective), with a significant historical aspect (stuff we bring to the experience). Perception isn't like taking still pictures. What we experience depends on what we're looking for, what we've learned, and what tools and capabilities we bring to the situation. This is to say that real objects and events or the objects and events of games are affected in their appearance to us by the quality and development of our many sensors and neural configurations.

In different situations (in real life or in simulation) we might interact with a variety of different entities. For instance, we might encounter traffic on a street we're trying to cross, or the events of a school party, or the discussion at a company business meeting, or simply the motion of the ball and players in a tennis game at the court. In our interaction with such perceived elements we are continually estimating characteristics as they relate to and bear on our various needs and intentions. It's the same on games. In large part the estimates are visual.

On crossing a busy street, for instance, we would likely be estimating the distance and speed of approaching cars that could possibly cause serious personal damage. We might use visual depth perception to estimate the distances, or possibly engage other visual sub-systems to get motion estimates. In tennis we would be interested in assessing the speed and direction of the ball hit by an opponent, expecting to intercept it for a return shot. At the party or business meeting we might choose to observe persons of special interest to hear what they have to say. How well we do in the respective circumstances depends on our perceptual accuracy, or perceptual competence. We would certainly like to be correct in our readings, but we could otherwise be terribly wrong. Considering we've survived as a species so far, though, we can't be doing everything wrong. In either event, whether right or wrong, effective or ineffective, the estimates reflect the subjective nature of our perceptions, our personal constructions.

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We process information through a complex chain of physiological events that may only be loosely organized and that are subject to continual change through ordinary usage in daily experience and notably as a result of learning. Or perhaps I should say that the learning is attendant on certain changes in the brain that involve at least the addition of new synapses connecting neurons.

Even so, despite the almost magical powers of the brain, its inputs from presumed real or game objects are defined almost entirely by the context in which the person perceives them (inputs that are eminently cultural). So the output (or the resulting perception) is ultimately determined by that context. In tennis, for example, it would be the tennis culture, primarily. (You wouldn't expect to perceive yourself to be in a concert hall or at a dinner party, say, when playing tennis, unless perhaps you were suffering from a severe psychophysiological disorder.)

Unarguably, the brain does the information processing -- of that there no longer can be any doubt. But the information to be processed can only be drawn from the context. (The brain is like the supermarket cash register that adds up what comes through the aisle but doesn't determine which items are purchased, or like the meat grinder that grinds away but doesn't feed itself.) It's difficult to imagine that the brain, by itself, could conjure up all the images attributable to the many different contexts that we encounter, not without external objects sustaining it (the brain doesn't generate its own inputs, though segments of it may influence other segments). The brain is there to serve the human organism, not the other way around.

What we experience certainly depends on our makeup and the way we've learned to use our various neural subsystems. The experience must also vary from one person to the next because our histories are different and our sensors are qualitatively different one to another. And as individuals differ, so too do their cells differ, one person to the other. (In the extreme, for example, a case of visual blindness leaves one only with a void for the visual component of our subjective view. Otherwise, differences in optical acuity, color interpretation, astigmatism, emotional biases, corneal and retinal maladies, amblyopia, depth perception disorders, dyslexia, or other personal conditions (not to mention levels of learning) must yield a wide range of visual constructions, some of them more controlling than others, over a wide range of contexts).

Because of the many detailed structural differences between us, there can be significant differences between what we experience individually, how we develop and learn our skills, and how we behave generally. And because of possibly faulty sensors, what we experience could be quite different from what actually (objectively) occurs in that world. In other words we can at times be seriously mistaken in perceiving what has happened.

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