Fire fighting and related simulations in a CAVE using off-the-shelf hardware and software

The growing interest in using Serious Games in education has also reached the field of fire brigade training. By the use of simulations, firefighters can train in virtual worlds on the computer and learn about processes and prepare real fire drills. It is for example possible to extinguish a virtual fire or to set up a water supply in such simulations. Played on a common computer and with input devices like mouse and keyboard, the games normally do not offer a very realistic impression on the user. For an immersive experience, those virtual training games must be used in Virtual Reality environments like a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE), which is usually associated with high costs. In this paper the setup of a CAVE used for simulations in the field of fire brigade training will be presented as well as the use of input devices and their coupling with real firefighting equipment. Since almost exclusively low-cost and commercially available elements such as common projectors, the Microsoft Kinect and the Nintendo Wii controllers were used, at the same time an approach for bringing simulations like these into VR environments without large costs is demonstrated. As the presented simulations are developed with a free but powerful Game Engine, a wide range of possibilities for the development of training games for a CAVE environment is given.