06 Sep Berlin Firefighters @ Immersive Deck
Last Friday, we welcomed the Berlin fire brigade and several instructors from the larger German cities to a workshop around the topic „Virtual Reality for Emergency Services“. First, we presented the participants with a basic introduction into the available VR technologies and their respective differences. Of course, the topic of strong immersion of “large scale VR” played a part. Afterwards, all participants had the chance to experience this very impression at first hand. Especially for the workshop, we extended our firefighter experience (with special thanks to Bernd Schaumburg at Twinbits) and presented an emergency scenario on 150 square meters. The instructors were able to virtually follow the deployment scenario from a rescue cage above and later on, experience the impact of a fume outlet during a flashover. Subsequently, there was an exchange in a large discussion round about the technologies which could be useful for emergency services’ training and how impossible or very laborious drills could possibly be supported by VR. We would like to thank the Berlin fire brigade as well as the other participants for the fruitful exchange. The next meeting which will focus on “airport security” has already been scheduled for the end of November.