Making Fighting Fires in Virtual Reality More Like Real Reality

It all started with a conversation at the dinner table with my Uncle Dale. Dale had worked at Boca Raton Fire Rescue for 36 years before retiring as a captain, and I’d been telling him about our recent project using virtual reality to test and develop new user interfaces such as visual aids and audio cues for first responders. I was pretty proud of the virtual environment we had built last year for a prize challenge, which tasked developers to create their ideal user interface—in this case, a heads-up display—that would help firefighters navigate through a burning building. I showed him some images of our fire scene, including the pleasantly bright office space, small plumes of smoke, and little contained fires scattered about the building. To this, he politely responded: “That’s great, but to really understand what a firefighter goes through, you need to strap on some gear and experience a fire firsthand.”

Thus began a search that led me to Dean Wahl, director of West Metro Fire Training Center in Lakewood, Colorado.