Red Cross’ VR trainings – made in Serbia!
The first VR Meetup in Serbia will be held on April 12 at Dorćol Platz. Among the lecturers is Vanja Knežević, a representative of the Virtual Reality Unit in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which was established in Belgrade in 2020, a few years after Bangkok.
The Belgrade team is a deeply specialized core team, which has recently expanded to six people. They are tasked with starting, managing and delivering projects from various clients both internal and external to the ICRC. The currently six-strong team handles VR serious games, traditional 3D game development and 3D animated video production. In this, the Bangkok team assists through production of audio-visual assets.
The Belgrade unit has its own pipeline for producing motion-capture as well as key-framed animation, photogrammetry, sound production and design, and has the hardware necessary to both develop, test and present its products and services, which they do worldwide on a regular basis. Notably, none of the team members have had explicit VR production training before joining the ICRC Belgrade VR Unit, but all of them have a degree of experience in the 3D and gaming industry.
The team works with numerous contractors from all around the world, delegating and overseeing production. Tasks included are mostly of technical nature, engineering and Unreal Engine work, but core product development is done in-house.
And one fun fact: considering that the team works remotely, this VR meetup is the first opportunity for them to gather in one place face to face!
The Red Cross has tied the knot with the gaming industry in 2014 through a partnership with Bohemia Interactive, and together they worked on a DLC for Arma 3 – The Laws of War – which explains the Geneva convention through the medium of video games.
However, there was no representation of women and children in Arma 3, so the Red Cross turned to the Unreal Engine, becoming one of Epic MegaGrants recipients. For long, their main focus was to make educational videos, but soon they realized the great potential of immersive VR.
With the emergence of Covid, an interest in online multiplayer training tools arose and the Red Cross developed very effective VR training programs. That is the reason why many now have at their disposal virtual environments to help prepare their emotional response to warzone experiences, show them what overcrowded prisons and a world with no water look like, and teach them how to act in an earthquake. Check out a recently published video about reducing the number of civilian casualties in warzones, too.
SGA has had the pleasure of asking Christian Rouffaer, head of ICRC’s VR Unit, and Vanja Knežević a few questions.
SGA: What kind of role do you think VR will play in the future of humanitarian work?
Christian Rouffaer: I’m confident VR will have a very positive impact on the training of humanitarian workers in the future. That could be technical training, which would cost a lot of money to organize; security or safety training, as VR could create realistic environments, mimicking dangerous situations humanitarian workers are facing everyday in war zones; and resilience training, as working in war zones is not only affecting bodies but minds as well. Preventing psychological traumas for humanitarian workers is a challenge, as we are often transitioning very quickly from a safe and familiar environment, such as our home country or a regular working environment, to places where the worst of what humanity can produce is in full display. VR can prepare people to better manage such situations, be more effective and attenuate potential psychological traumas.
SGA: What needs to happen in the Serbian VR ecosystem for our VR developers to be recognized as one of the leaders in the field in Europe (and wider)?
Vanja Knežević: The main factors of proliferation of any technology are education and infrastructure. Serbia, as the media powerhouse in the Balkans, attracts great artists. The main hurdle for a larger use of VR is the lack of college and informal courses on the topic, as well as of communities, meetups, hackathons or conferences. There are many ways to use VR – like Christian mentioned, some are humanitarian, some are for profit. The future likely lies in the types of projects which are fairly low-hanging fruit, though, such as virtualization of Serbia’s beautiful monuments and architecture, nature or museums. It’s likely going to take a very strong and successful core VR project with a strong group of people pushing it forward to make Serbia competent at VR and to position it as a leader.