In recent years, advances in both computer hardware and software have set the stage for designing Virtual Environments (VE) of ever-increasing fidelity. These improvements in VE technology have revived interest in using virtual worlds to provide training. There are many advantages to using VE-based training. For example, VE provides a cost-effective, flexible training environment that can be quickly and easily reconfigured to provide mission-specific training. Also, VE affords instructors the opportunity to expose students to situations that would otherwise be impossible (i.e. life threatening) to recreate in real-life training scenarios. As well, VE provides a unique opportunity for trainers to evaluate their students either in real time, by freezing training at critical points, or by replaying the entire training scenario upon completion.

One of the key assumptions in using VE-based training is that the training received in the VE world will transfer to the real world. However, it has often proven difficult to establish this transfer of training. One reason for this difficulty is that a consensus is lacking in how to establish that training-transfer has occurred. We present here a system of guidelines for establishing training transfer from a VE to a real-world task. In formulating our guidelines we draw upon a wide range of sources, including the flight simulator literature, academic and human factors research as well as findings from our own research.

Issues to be addressed include: defining a specific training task in terms of a series of readily observable variables that are critical to successfully learning the task; providing subjects with training in a VE that emphasizes this variable set; transitioning these trained subjects to the real-world task, while recording these same variables; observing a control group exposed only to the real-world task; finally, using a cross-validation process (Subject Matter Expert feedback), to supplement our evaluation of the degree to which training transfer has occurred. We choose as our model case a shiphandling task. Establishing a set of guidelines should provide future trainers/VE developers with a set of tools for determining how best to design their VE worlds and training protocols.