Mission visualization for planning and training

The question often arises whether virtual reality serves any purpose other than for games and entertainment. We believe VR can provide unique benefits to one problem domain: training for operations where classroom instruction is insufficient but "hands-on" practice is dangerous, expensive, logistically complex, or limited in the possible range of experience. Examples of such applications include law enforcement, emergency response, and rapid deployment military operations. Our research focuses specifically on the use of VR to train people for small-team, close-quarters operations. Our interest is in training a person to handle a specific situation or set of scenarios, rather than to perform a given task. >