7/21/16 New NIMO Virtual Reality Project!

One of the NIMO workgroups is Learning and Innovation and we are involved in some very exciting projects that we continue to work on this summer due to the calm fire season.  Our focus is not only helping to spread the word about new and innovative ideas in the wildland fire community, but to champion innovative ideas and projects that embrace NIMO’s overall mission.

VR Goggles

We had the opportunity to experience the use of Virtual Reality headsets during our May all-hands meeting in Missoula and were immediately struck by how the power and impact of such completely immersive learning could be beneficial for firefighters.  Of particular importance to NIMO, due to 3 years of Risk Management workshops, is finding ways to encourage and support better risk-based decisions.

In pursuing our interest in how we could create such “risk decision” virtual reality training, we discovered that the NWCG training group was already working on such a project – in fact they had completed a very cool 360 video showing the inside of a smokejumper plane. After meeting with them in Boise in June, we have joined forces to create a short, full-immersion, 360 video (in app form) that we hope will be useful in fire refreshers, 130/190, future risk or safety engagements, etc. 

The goal is to create an experience in which many elements of fire are present, to allow the user to be completely “in” the scene, see the situation, and after removing the goggles, be able to engage with others in discussions about risk – what they saw, what they felt, what decisions they would make.

The goggles use cellphones to operate so the final ‘app” of the video would be available in both Android and iPhone formats.  And, of course, we still have to work out how to supply the goggles to groups but luckily, they are relatively in expensive.

We are in the very early stages, so no details to share yet and many to work out.  But we are interested in your feedback?  Have you used these yourself?  What kind of situation do you think should be presented to make it a true risk-decision experience?  We’ll keep you updated as we move along.