Desktop 3D or VR headset training for process plant operators?

What is the difference between desktop 3D and VR headset training?

The difference is how the trainee sees and moves, not the 3D model itself. Desktop 3D shows the equipment on an ordinary screen and is driven with a mouse, keyboard or touchpad; a VR headset places the trainee inside the model, with head tracking and usually hand controllers.

The same model of a pump or a turbine package can often be shown either way. What changes is the hardware, how many people can use it at once, how long they can comfortably use it and how it fits a site’s IT estate. Some researchers call desktop 3D ‘desktop VR’, which is worth knowing when you read the studies.

How do desktop 3D and VR headsets compare for equipment training?

They differ most on hardware, IT effort and comfort, and least on the underlying content. The table describes typical practice rather than any one product.

What does the research say about desktop and headset learning?

One controlled study found that desktop users matched or beat headset users on a spatial-learning task and reported less motion sickness, but it did not test equipment training. The study, published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI in 2019 (PMC7805926), gave 40 participants either a desktop or a headset, had them explore a virtual environment and then asked them to draw a sketch map of it.

In the headset, participants looked around by turning their heads but moved with a hand controller rather than by walking, a set-up the authors call non-ambulatory. Desktop users did better on two of four sketch-map measures, junctions and cyclic order, and performed equally well on street segments and object associations. They also reported less motion sickness and less task effort.

Three limits matter:

• It was a navigation task in a large virtual environment of routes, junctions and buildings, not equipment training.
• The headset users could not walk. The authors point to an earlier study that found better spatial learning in a headset, and explain the difference by the missing feedback from physical walking.
• It measured spatial recall, not whether anyone could isolate a pump or find a fault.

The fair reading is that a headset does not automatically teach layout better than a screen and, in this study, cost more in comfort. It does not show that either medium trains people better in general.

When is VR the better tool?

VR is the better tool when the body is part of the lesson. If trainees must practise physical movements at full scale, or need to judge size, height and distance as if they were standing there, a headset gives a sense of presence that a screen cannot.

• Practising a sequence of physical actions where reach, posture and body position matter, such as operating valves in order from a platform.
• Rehearsing movement through a space, such as escape routes and muster, where the aim is a physical memory of the way out.
• Getting a feel for scale and access before first entry to a large or congested module.
• Tasks where hand movement is the skill, if the system tracks hands accurately enough.

Where trainees can walk physically in a tracked space, the case for a headset may be stronger still: the authors of the study above suggest that physical walking is what their headset condition lacked.

When is desktop 3D the better fit?

Desktop 3D is the better fit when the lesson is about knowing the equipment and its documents rather than moving through space. Much field and maintenance training is of that kind:

• finding tags and tracing the route to them, with drawings and the equipment register alongside;
• planning an isolation and checking which sections are live, trapped or isolated;
• working through alarms, start checks and fault finding step by step, reading as you go;
• classroom sessions, where a trainer projects one view and the group discusses it;
• longer sessions, and wide rollout on computers the site already manages.

Reading is often the deciding factor. Procedures, data sheets and tag plates are usually easier to read on a monitor than in a headset, and much equipment training is reading, checking and deciding.

What about offline use, own hardware and data residency in the GCC?

In the GCC, settle offline use, hardware and data residency before choosing a medium, because where the training runs can matter as much as what it teaches. Training built from a site’s own drawings, registers and procedures holds controlled documents, and operators in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their neighbours often want those kept on their own systems. Ask three questions of either medium:

• Offline use: can it run with no internet connection, on a site laptop or an isolated network?
• Own hardware: does it run on computers your IT team already manages, or does it need new devices, accounts or cloud services?
• Data residency: where are your documents stored and processed during the build and after handover, and does anything leave site?

Desktop 3D usually has the simpler answers, because it can run as ordinary software on managed computers. Headsets can run offline too, but each device, its account and its update route need the same scrutiny.

How should you choose between desktop 3D and VR?

Choose by task, then check the practicalities. A simple sequence:

1. List the tasks you need to train, not the technology you want.
2. Mark each one: does it depend on body movement at full scale, or on knowing the equipment and its documents?
3. Check hardware, IT approval and data rules before any pilot.
4. Agree how you will judge the result before starting, and let your own people judge it.
5. Keep competence sign-off with a qualified assessor; neither medium certifies anyone or authorises work.

Using both is often sensible: desktop 3D for equipment knowledge across the workforce, and headsets for the few drills where movement is the point.

Where does the Upskill Energy Equipment Explorer fit?

The Upskill Energy Equipment Explorer is a desktop 3D training application; it does not use a headset. The public demonstration runs in the browser, best on a laptop or desktop in Chrome or Edge, with nothing to install. In the demonstration build the gas turbine package and the centrifugal pump carry the full training layer, and eight more machines show how they work; the models are generic and illustrative.

The Explorer’s tasks are of the desktop kind listed above: finding a tag and the walking route to it, isolation with every section coloured live, trapped or isolated, alarm response, start checks with an inhibit to find and guided fault finding, then a course and an assessment on unseen situations and a walkdown with tags hidden. A client build is made from the site’s own manuals, drawings, equipment register extract and operating and isolation procedures. It runs offline on the client’s own systems and sends nothing off site once handed over. It is a training aid: it does not authorise any task, isolation, reset or entry. Upskill Energy does not certify anyone; a qualified assessor at the client signs competence.

Try the Upskill Energy Equipment Explorer in your browser, or read what a first, fixed-scope machine build involves.