Extinguishing Fires Using VR, Better Than Reality

Highlights from the insightful article originally written by Isabelle Hed at Telekom Idag, published on 17 August 2023, has been translated into English to reach a wider audience. The original article is in Swedish and can be found in it’s full length here.

At Vobling, you can practice extinguishing fires without actual fires – all through a pair of VR glasses. We speak with VR expert Amanda Bengtsson about VR as an educational tool.

There's a fire disaster in the kitchen. What do you do? What you learned from an e-learning course a few years ago is now just a memory. Vobling, a leading provider of VR and AR solutions, believes it has the solution.

"We've become more focused on fire-related training over time, and for me, this is the first time we're using VR in a way that's better than reality," says Amanda Bengtsson, Head of Products and Operations. She continues:

According to Amanda, VR is an alternative educational method that's easily accessible, effective, environmentally friendly, and safer.

"The most important aspect of creating VR content is adding value. You put on the goggles and find yourself in realistic scenarios. It's easier to absorb than clicking through an e-learning module.”

Are there any risks associated with using VR as an educational tool?

"The biggest risk is creating content that goes unused or doesn't add any value. That costs money and is unnecessary."

Tell us more about your VR fire trainer!

"It's a fire training with an actual fire extinguisher. We have various types including water, foam, and powder extinguishers. Then, we make the fire extinguisher interactive so that you can interact with it in VR. Within the application, there are various training scenarios – you can put out a kitchen fire, a truck fire, a garage fire, and more."

Amanda rejects scare tactics and doesn't believe it's the way to go.

"In standard fire training, you don't always get to practice using a real fire extinguisher. Usually, they just show a video depicting how terrible things can get."

Vobling aims to replicate fires in a realistic manner.

"The only compromise we make is in terms of heat. You can feel the smoke coming down in front of your eyes, the fire spreads just as it would in real life, and the extinguishers have the same effect on different types of fires as if they were real.

Fire training is the most attractive VR training at Vobling. "But also on the market. This is training that is necessary worldwide – for individuals, schools, and companies."

What other training programs do you have? "We also have repetition training applications, such as practising and repeating routines for 'Hot Work' and ‘Working at Heights’. We offer practical electrical learning in VR as well, where the user learns how to handle electricity safely and environmentally consciously."

How do you see the future of VR in education? "All new technologies are advancing rapidly in the VR industry. Right now, I'm in contact with the headset manufacturer HTC. They're producing glasses that allow you to blend the virtual world with the real world. Imagine putting out virtual fires in your own reality."

What kind of response have you received? "It's been fantastic. Our VR Fire Trainer is our flagship product. I spoke with a customer from the UK yesterday. She conducts several fire training sessions a week at their company, and I got to see their customer evaluation feedback. Many said that learning by doing with VR glasses provides a completely different level of understanding. You can extinguish various types of fires, and use different types of extinguishers in various environments, all within just a few minutes. It's better than the same training in reality."