Desktop-based safety training using 360-degree panorama and static virtual reality techniques: A comparative experimental study

Virtual reality (VR)-based approaches have been used to facilitate safety knowledge transfer and increase hazard awareness by providing safe and controlled experiences of unsafe scenarios in construction safety training applications. However, the long development times and high computational costs associated with existing VR methods have posed significant challenges to using such VR-based safety training platforms. Unlike VR settings that deliver computer-generated reproductions of the environment, 360-degree panorama can create true-to-reality simulations of construction jobsites. This research developed and compared two hazard-identification training platforms based on VR and 360-degree panorama. Construction students and professionals participated in an experiment to determine their perception of realism and evaluate their hazard-identification skills. It was found that students perceived the 360-degree panorama conditions as more realistic than the VR conditions, but professionals perceived no difference between them. Moreover, differences were found in the average hazard identification index (HII) scores for all participants, with higher scores for the VR conditions than for the 360-degree panorama conditions. Finally, it was found that there was an inverse correlation between the presence scores and the average HII scores for the participants in the study.