Specialized Firefighter Training In VR With Evan Sitler-Bates

XpertVR CEO Evan Sitler-Bates joined the Good VR Podcast to discuss work offering firefighters extra training in VR.

We spoke for just over 30 minutes and I cut it down to under 24 minutes using the podcasting platform Riverside.

“This isn’t about…physical training and we’re not replacing live burns. We’re giving you the sets and reps that you can do on a daily or weekly basis between live burns and other live training,” Sitler-Bates said. “It very quickly changes people’s perception. I would say that going to fire departments and training with thousands or tens of thousands of firefighters at this point, by the time people get into headsets, it’s like a point zero zero one percent of people that are still pushing back on it. The vast, vast majority of people get into a headset and they’re like, okay, I see how realistic the visuals are, I see how the communication and tactics need to work, and I can see how this fits into training between our live training.”

VR could affect firefighting in a number of ways in the coming years as the same type of sensors that map your environment in a headset like Quest 3 or Vision Pro could potentially help emergency response personnel essentially see through smoke and flame in video passthrough. We discuss that possibility a little bit during the end of the podcast.

“When a firefighter’s putting on their gear, normally it’s about eighty pounds of gear with their turnout, jackets, pants, overalls, with their helmet, their SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus) tank, etc. So to add even more weight on top of that, and especially onto somebody’s head, is going to wear people down when they’re trying to fight a fire and run throughout a building and move with the hose,” he said. “It just obviously needs the hardware to get slimmer and [that] price come down.”

You can find more information about XpertVR on their website.

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