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A systematic review on the use of immersive virtual reality to train professionals

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Abstract

The main goal of this systematic review is to synthesize existing evidence on the use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) to train professionals as well as to identify the main gaps and challenges that still remain and need to be addressed by future research. Following a comprehensive search, 66 documents were identified, assessed for relevance, and analysed. The main areas of application of IVR-based training were identified. Moreover, we identified the stimuli provided, the hardware used and information regarding training evaluation. The results showed that the areas in which a greater number of works were published were those related to healthcare and elementary occupations. In hardware, the most commonly used equipment was head mounted displays (HMDs), headphones included in the HMDs and handheld controllers. Moreover, the results indicated that IVR training systems are often evaluated manually, the most common metric being questionnaires applied before and after the experiment, and that IVR training systems have a positive effect in training professionals. We conclude that the literature is insufficient for determining the effect of IVR in the training of professionals. Although some works indicated promising results, there are still relevant themes that must be explored and limitations to overcome before virtual training replaces real-world training.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially financed by the ERDF–European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization–COMPETE 2020 Program and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028618 entitled PERFECT–Perceptual Equivalence in virtual Reality For authEntiC Training. This work was also partially financed by the National funding by FCT, Foundation for Science and Technology, through the PhD Research Scholarship SFRH/BD/147334/2019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal

    David Narciso, José Vasconcelos-Raposo & Maximino Bessa

  2. INESC TEC|, Porto, Portugal

    David Narciso, Miguel Melo, Susana Rodrigues, João Paulo Cunha, José Vasconcelos-Raposo & Maximino Bessa

  3. Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    João Paulo Cunha

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  1. David Narciso
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  2. Miguel Melo
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Correspondence to David Narciso.

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Narciso, D., Melo, M., Rodrigues, S. et al. A systematic review on the use of immersive virtual reality to train professionals. Multimed Tools Appl 80, 13195–13214 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-10454-y

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