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The preliminary phase of the project identified the following design requirements:
• The virtual environment must enable the interaction of multiple and remote participants in the same scene to test the collaborative response of different teams;
• The virtual environment must guarantee a high photo-realism of the simulated scenarios to increase the involvement of participants;
• Participants must be placed in different virtual environments according to their playing role (coordination or operational teams);
• Participants must be able to visualize and assess the evolution of the hazard over time, based on decisions taken.
The VR framework architecture consists of both hardware (head-mounted displays - HMDs, joysticks and computer stations) and software (physics and render-ing engine, network capabilities) solutions, creating a collaborative and immersive experience for remote users involved in the hazard assessment and mitigation interventions.
The exploited rendering engine is Unreal Engine, developed by Epic Games, which can manage complex scenes enriched with high-resolution 3D assets ad provide various plugins and services (water/flood simulation, avatar movement, weather changes, player authentication, matchmaking and voice chat, etc.)
The TRACENET application employes high-quality georeferenced 3D assets, including Digital Surface Models (DSMs) or mesh 3D models of the urban environment used in the virtual simulation. The host directs the game by displaying 2D or 3D assets and simulate the hazardous event.
Users can collaboratively and remotely discuss intervention planning and see how the virtual scene is affected by their decisions.
See a short video of the TRACENET VR framework and its showcasing at recent events
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