Development of an educational virtual reality training system for marine engineers

In this study, an educational virtual reality training system named DMS-VLCC3D has been developed to help students or marine engineers learn the working principle of the marine engineering system and improve their ability of practical operation in a more efficient and vivid way. During the stage of establishing the geometric model of the virtual marine engine room, optimization methods including instantiation modeling, functional nodes optimization, level of detail, and texture mapping optimization are adopted to improve the fluency of the virtual marine engine room and the loading speed of geometric model resource. Reasonable human-machine interactive mechanism is designed to promote the development efficiency and simulation efficiency. Several auxiliary learning and training tools are designed to make the DMS-VLCC3D become a self-learning and training platform for the trainees. Additionally, to fit different training purposes, the system provides three training mode: standalone and multi-user collaborative training and evaluation. At last, 60 seniors majored in marine engineering from Dalian Maritime University are selected to carry out an assessment experiment to study the learning effectiveness of DMS-VLCC3D, which shows a promising result. This training system is currently used to train thousands of students majored in marine engineering in about 20 maritime universities in China.