The Role of Ontologies through the Lifecycle of Virtual Reality based Training (VRT) Development Process: A Review Study

Abstract

The size of learning content continually challenges education and training providers. A recent advanced technology called Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising choice to facilitate knowledge acquisition and skill transfer in a variety of sectors. The main challenge in this technology is the increasing costs, time, effort, and resources needed for designing Virtual Reality based Training (VRT) applications as educational content.To fill such gaps, ontology approach was introduced to support VR development. Therefore, this review has the objective of investigating on how ontologies have been applied throughout the life cycle of a VR development process. Accordingly, articles from the year 2015 onwards have been explored. Findings show that VR developers do not incorporate ontology in all phases of the lifecycle of VR methodology, but only cover some phases like creation and implementation. Creating novel solutions without a complete methodology results in a long development process and an ineffective product. This could consequently raise high dangers in real life, especially when VRT is for fields containing trivial details that are vital for saving lives such as healthcare. This research thus presents a proposal of methodological guidance on designing VR applications with the use of an ontology approach throughout all the life cycles of VR construction.