In the United States, the most common fire safety advice comes in the form of commercials and posters as a part of the Smokey the Bear campaign. Presenting this information through a virtual reality game provides a controlled and engaging environment to practice and learn how to safely control a campfire. This immersive experience guides the user through every step of creating and extinguishing a campfire based on information from the Smokey the Bear campaign. VR Wildfire Prevention aims to engage and educate people in campfire safety by providing a controlled environment to practice the relevant techniques while incentivizing proper behavior through gamification. Players of the game report that the game is an enjoyable experience.

Publications:

1. Jessica Vega, Sophia Rose, Christian Eckhardt, Liudmila Tahai, Irene Humer, and Krzysztof Pietroszek. 2017. VR wildfire prevention: teaching campfire safety in a gamified immersive environment. In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST ’17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 80, 2 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3139131.3141218