Technologies: Unreal Engine 4, 3D Studio Max, Maya
Team: Project Manager, Tech Artist, 3D Generalist, Animator
Time of development: 350 hours
VR Training: Warehouse Leakage Accident
Virtual reality application simulator for dealing with the leakage of hazardous materials in the warehouse
Task
To train how to deal with the consequences of leakage of hazardous materials in warehouses is very important. The complexity of the training is connected with the fact that carrying out such practical exercises as close as possible to reality is almost impossible or very expensive.
Our team was asked to minimize training costs as close as possible to the real situation of the leakage of hazardous materials in the warehouse.
To solve this issue, a virtual reality application was created to train employees in the correct sequence of actions in a case of emergency - the leakage of hazardous materials in the warehouse.
Quick facts
Design
For a deeper immersion of the participant and increase the level of realism, unlike other virtual reality simulators, our designers have presented an introductory part where the participant sees with his own eyes a situation in which fluid flows.
An unmanaged loader touches a rack from which falls a barrel with an aggressive substance.
After this, the active stage of training begins.
The participant should be guided by prompts to take specific steps to eliminate the leakage of hazardous fluids.
Having created a safe corridor across the road, the participant has the opportunity to cross the road safely in any direction.
First of all, the participant must wear personal protective clothing and take the necessary equipment to eliminate the leakage.
Then, when the participant picks up a barrel of chemicals, he must detect the leakage using special bags. After that, the participant eliminates the leakage with a special absorbent towel and then throws it into the bag for hazardous materials.
In the end, the participant should get rid of all the means used to eliminate chemical leakage by placing them in a special disposal container for hazardous materials.
Development
To increase the participant’s immersion, it was decided to pay attention to the maximum visual appeal of the application.
For this reason, Unreal Engine 4 was chosen as the main development environment for creating the simulator.
In this application, there was no sense to recreate completely huge storage areas, since the actions of the participant were localized in a relatively small space.
At the same time, the participant needed to fully feel as he was in the territory of a large warehouse. The use of technology – rendering in texture, helped to create the illusion of a large-scale warehouse with a small core for training. This solution has significantly saved the client’s money by lowering the cost of the application.
Considering the fact that the future users of the simulator are not experts or even confident users of virtual reality, some of the actions, which are not critical for training, were performed in the form of animation.
For example, after wiping a hazardous liquid, an absorbent towel had to be placed in a disposal bag for hazardous materials and then closed.
There was no need to force the participant to tie this bag or to carry out any additional actions with it except to throw the bag into the container, but at the same time, it was necessary to show that in reality, these actions should be performed.
Thus, for user convenience, micro-interactions that do not play a key role in the learning process have been replaced by animations.
Result
As a result of the simulator implementation, the client achieved the following indicators:
- the participation of staff in training increased by 30%,
- the percentage of training completion reached 95%.
- the participation of staff in training increased by 30%,
- the percentage of training completion reached 95%.