Conference Agenda

Virtual Reality (VR) offers new opportunities for safety training by enabling workers to practice hazardous tasks in controlled and interactive environments. However, the deployment of VR solutions within real industrial training programs raises practical challenges related to usability, acceptance, integration, and user diversity. This paper presents the real-world deployment of a VR-based safety training application for forklift inspection and hazard identification. The application was integrated into regularly scheduled workplace safety training activities in two industrial companies and tested with 36 participants from heterogeneous professional backgrounds, including operators, safety personnel, supervisors, and managerial staff. The study combined usability assessment, performance measures, movement tracking, eye-tracking data, interaction logs, and qualitative feedback. Results show that the application achieved good levels of perceived usability and that participants rapidly developed more structured exploration strategies between consecutive exercises. Movement and gaze data further highlighted the potential of VR not only as a training tool, but also as a means to analyze user behavior and support targeted feedback. At the same time, qualitative feedback revealed challenges related to initial familiarization, physical comfort, interaction realism, and organizational adoption. The paper discusses practical implications for the design and deployment of VR safety training in industrial contexts.