British Army tests VR technology for training

The British Army has awarded a £1 million contract to Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim) to demonstrate the use of virtual reality (VR) for soldier training exercises, the UK Ministry of Defence announced on 4 February.

BiSim has created the Virtual Reality in Land Training (VRLT) pilot programme, which aims to enhance future army training by exploring the benefits of VR technology.

The pilot will test specific VR applications including high resolution VR headsets to improve environmental immersion; mixed reality which will allow soldiers to see and interact with physical objects; avatar customisation replicating realistic facial features and body shapes allowing users to recognise their fellow soldiers; and after-action review enhancement which provides data capture and analysis so that soldiers can better understand their own performance.

VRLT will allow soldiers to train in a wide-range of complex and hostile simulated scenarios. The system will be able to 'place' troops in the middle of an urban firefight, intense crowd control situation or within a building filled with enemy soldiers.

VR allows training situations to be quickly set-up, re-run and analysed to demonstrate the most effective approaches to real-life challenges on the battlefield. At the end of the pilot, recommendations will be put forward on how to best exploit this new technology for soldier training.