Immersive Virtual Reality for Mountain Emergency Training: A Pilot Study

Mountain emergencies often require companions or other non-expert people to perform initial safety and first-aid actions before professional rescuers arrive. However, traditional training offers limited opportunities to practice these procedures in realistic, safe, and repeatable outdoor emergency scenarios. This paper presents an immersive Virtual Reality application developed in Unity for mountain emergency training, aimed at non-expert users, that simulates a scenario in which the user assists an unconscious companion during a mountain excursion. The experience includes a guided training phase, and an unguided test phase with more challenging environmental conditions. A pilot study with 25 participants was conducted to assess the feasibility of the workflow and collect preliminary data on procedural performance, perceived workload, and emotional engagement. Results showed that participants generally completed the procedure after training, while the main difficulties concerned decision-making and time efficiency. Self-report measures indicated that the test phase was perceived as more demanding, less controllable, and more stressful than the guided training phase. Although exploratory, the study suggests that immersive VR can support safe and repeatable training of mountain emergency procedures for non-expert users.