Shipboard VR: from damage control to design

Virtual reality efforts in the Information Technology Division of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) span mission planning, rehearsal, and execution; simulation-based design; and medicine. The authors devote much of their work to ship-based applications, presenting two such efforts in the article. One project focuses on experiments in shipboard firefighting to verify the effectiveness of VR as a mission planning tool. The other project involves visualizing a preliminary design of a new Navy ship. Since that work did not extend into the actual design cycle, they can´t quantify the results in terms of hours gained or costs saved. However, the design team and the program managers agreed that the VR visualization was worthwhile and provided a better understanding of the design