Wide area disaster simulation for mobile VR devices

Simulation of disasters on real training grounds can be costly and dangerous, nevertheless it is important that first responder are prepared and trained for disastrous events accordingly. Virtual Reality training is one possible approach to help with preparedness.Thanks to mobile stand-alone Virtual Reality Headsets, VR devices are more affordable than ever, but mobility and affordability come at the price of lower computational power.The aim of this thesis was to implement disaster training scenario, specifically a forest fire, with extending fires and adequate visual quality for first responder training integrated in the existing Unity 3D training application VROnSite while being runnable on a mobile stand-alone VR device with acceptable performance. Specifically, a workflow to create wide roaming terrains was defined and implemented with the example of a 3 km2 area ofStammersdorf, Vienna as part of this thesis. Additionally, an interactive smoke and fire visualization, with spreading fire, where both smoke and fire can be perceived from a distance were implemented. Both these features were added to the existing VR training application VROnSite. A training scenario was prepared to evaluate the implemented functionalities with an expert user study with eight participants from different volunteer fire departments from Lower Austria regarding acceptance and usability. The training was overall well received, with a SUS score of 88.125 and all eight participants thinking that the VR forest fire scenario would help them prepare for operations involving forest fires. As part of this thesis, I also compared some performance optimization settings showing that performance optimization is critical for rendering in acceptable 72 frames per second for VR applications, while also showing that optimization techniques should be used cautiously and targeted, otherwise image quality can be affected negatively with no real benefit in performance.