Firefighter command training virtual environment

The Firefighter Command Training Virtual Environment is being developed at Georgia Tech in collaboration with the Atlanta Fire Department. The VE allows the user to: navigate around the environment, viewing a house on fire from any angle; command firefighters and watch them execute those commands; and see realistic fire and smoke behavior reacting to changes in the environment. The VE user is a commanding officer trainee who instructs teams of virtual firefighters to perform different actions to help put out virtual fires. The correct sequence of commands will successfully extinguish the flame with the least amount of danger to the firefighters and the least amount of damage to the home. This simulation was developed using the Simple Virtual Environment (SVE) library, an extensible framework for building VE applications. This is the first example of a firefighter training environment that combines representations of animated firefighters with a reasonable simulation and animation of smoke and fire.