A Real-time Distance Learning System for Alpine Skiing Using Virtual Reality

A surge in interest in distance learning has been prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the acceptance of distance learning systems in skill acquisition has been limited because of the potential gap between students’ ability to acquire skills remotely and their application of those skills in an actual environment. Although various e-learning systems for skill acquisition have been introduced in education, most have focused on interactions between the users and the technologies rather than real-time interaction. Furthermore, taking skiing as an example, the constraints imposed by the environment have made it particularly challenging to achieve real-time interaction in ski training. Although several studies introduced various skiing training systems, most of them did not focus on the interactions between users and instructors. To address these gaps, this study proposes a prototype training system for alpine skiing and presents the results of two experiments conducted on distanced ski simulators. In the first experiment, we compared connection delays between TCP and UDP connections to establish a real-time interaction. The second study compared the effectiveness of the training between the conventional training system with a video and the proposed remote training system with a 3D model displayed in the virtual environment using the Wizard of Oz methodology. The results suggest that the proposed distance learning system significantly improves users’ line-tracing skills in parallel alpine skiing.