Enhancement of Telepresence and Collaboration in a 3D Virtual Marine Engine Room as a Complement to the Traditional Semi Physical Marine Engine Room Simulator

The semi physical marine engine room simulator is an important equipment widely used in the training of marine engineers worldwide. However, it only simulates a part of the control consoles in the engine room, which is not conducive to the trainees’ cognition of the actual engine room environment. Considering this problem, we develop an immersive virtual engine room based on the virtual reality technology as a complement to the traditional semi physical marine engine room simulator. The 3D virtual marine engine room is built according to the mother ship, so it can match the semi physical marine engine room simulator perfectly. The combination of them is beneficial for the trainees to understand the real environment of the engine room while learning the principle. More importantly, a collaborative training module is integrated into the system, through which the trainees can conduct multi-person collaborative training similar to the actual working.