Visualizations Techniques for Forensic Training Applications

The Swedish National Forensic Centre, NFC, has been developing methods for 3D modeling of crime scenes since and methods for Virtual Reality (VR) visualizations since 2016. Documentation in 3D opens up new possibilities for visualization, documentation and forensic analysis and VR as well as Augmented Reality (AR) may within the near future become common practice in several forensic training situations. NFC has developed a proof of concept system for VR Crime scene reconstruction which has been tested by over two hundred individuals, both from law enforcement and from other fields, and the most common comment is that it is incredibly realistic reconstruction and that it is easy to understand how this can be of value within a crime scene investigation. The main limitations have been seen to lie within the 3D-modelling itself, creating close to perfect and realistic models takes a lot of time and effort, time that usually is not reasonable to add to an criminal investigation. However, for training purposes the payback of increased efficiency might be high enough to motivate the cost. For example being able to train in situations that are usually hard to recreate due to for example risk of injury or public safety reasons or being able to quickly switch between completely different environments without having to travel or make preparations. There is also a fundamental difference with learning from experience rather than from theory, and this is a main motivator behind trying to create an as immersive and realistic training experience as possible.