We are often asked by our customers, “Why should we really use simulators? Is there a real tangible benefit from replacing our established conventional training tools with simulators?”

We find this question very valid and worthy of being addressed in detail. 

First of all, we never recommend “replacing” the existing conventional training methods with our simulators. In fact, we recommend a ‘Simulator Integrated Training’ to all our customers which includes 80% simulator-based training and 20% real practical skill training, the latter part being an integral component of the whole process. 

So the next question would be “Why 80% training on simulators?”

We have partnered with various training and research institutions (like IIT Madras, FTI Bangalore to name a few) to study the benefits of using simulators for the initial part of training. This is 80% of the exercises, taking about 50% of the training duration – please note that training on real equipment takes longer due to waiting for materials to cool down, material preparation time, etc.

One of the major impact factors that we identified was that the simulators provide unbiased objective evaluation of skills for each trainee.

While this might sound trivial, through our experimental studies, we found that each trainer assesses the quality of job in different ways. While all of their approaches may be correct, it is important and highly valuable for a trainee to get an objective analysis of his/her work where mistakes on the final output are highlighted and also mapped to input hand parameters. For example, while all trainees would know that sagging is a common defect, only few of them understand that sagging occurs not only due to distance but also the speed and angle of spraying. Simulator addresses this gap and provides a platform to make mistakes, understand their implications and then correct them. The ability to practice as much as required to never make mistakes again without worrying about the consumables cost itself proved to be a great cost-saver (80% reduction in consumables costs during training) for the trainers.

It was found that 8 hours of practice on a simulator improved the hand stability of a first-time user by 50%. While Skillveri simulators are 100% eco-friendly with no emission of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) or poisonous gases, we recommend every trainee to wear PPE kits during simulation also for the sake of familiarity.

The next major concern is ‘Is knowledge of computers or technology a prerequisite for getting trained on an XR simulator?’

– The answer varies from brand to brand. At Skillveri, we have identified simplicity as a key requirement for any hard skill training tool and our simulators have been designed keeping the end user – his capabilities, cognitive skills and interests – at the center. We provide multi-language support as well as intuitive icons instead of texts for the majority of the content. So the answer to that question, with regard to Skillveri simulators, is ‘No, you need no knowledge of technology or computer for getting trained on a Skillveri simulator’.

Our XR technology is also specifically designed to eliminate ‘visual vestibular mismatch’. While the word seems to be a jargon by itself, it simply means the mismatch in what your eyes see and your other sense organs perceive (for eg, what you see and what you touch). This could occur either from the software being too heavy causing delays between your hand-actions taking more than 30 ms to get displayed on your headset, or due to lack of accuracy of sensors. This is a big hurdle to overcome for any device using the XR platform. We use 6-dof sensors (click here to know more about 6-dof vs. 3-dof sensors)  in our headsets and hand controllers which provide depth perception with 99.98% accuracy, thereby eliminating the mismatch between what you touch and what you see inside the VR headset. This enables one to be trained for longer hours in the simulator without any VR sickness.

The hardware used by Skillveri for its simulators is truly and fully 3D

– Something that most of our competitors in the welding simulation world do not have – having separate display and views for each eye. This means that the trainee is able to perceive depth properly, and feel the exact distance in the virtual world, as things are in the real physical world. This aspect is very critical for skills like welding and painting, where distance from the job is a very important factor.

The final brownie point for Skillveri simulators originated out of our customers. Many of our existing customers requested for a single platform for training multiple allied skills – like welding, spray painting etc. We took inspiration from these requests to build the first-in-the-world Multi Skill Extendable Platform supporting Welding, Spray painting, Foam spray etc. on the same hardware setup. The bright side of this for our customers is that it enables them to initially purchase a single simulation platform (say welding alone) and after assessing its performance and impact in their ecosystem, they can choose to upgrade to include additional add-on simulation modules (spray painting) as per their requirements, without any additional hardware costs.