LabTrainingVR: Biosafety Cabinet Edition vs Luminous XR

LabTrainingVR: Biosafety Cabinet Edition is a free virtual reality course for practicing safe work in a biological safety cabinet (BSC). Its 1.5 hours of training cover identifying Class II BSC parts, maintaining positive airflow, preparing for work, applying safe practices, decontaminating and shutting down, and emergency shutdown procedures. The course is designed for laboratory professionals, including public health and clinical laboratory staff, safety professionals, and others interested in safe BSC use. It supplements CDC’s existing eLearning course on working safely in a BSC. Learners practice in a virtual laboratory without exposure to pathogens or risk of accidental infection or release. The course is headset-only, with versions for HTC Vive and Oculus Quest 2; the equipment guide also identifies Meta Quest 2 and above and OpenXR-compatible headsets. It requires 360° tracking and a play area of at least 3 by 3 feet, with 20 by 20 feet listed as ideal. HTC Vive and tethered-headset setups require Windows 8.1 or later, at least 8 GB RAM, and 20 GB available storage, among other hardware requirements. Quest setup requires Wi-Fi and a mobile device for initial installation.

Luminous XR combines survey-grade 3D scanning, digital twins, and immersive training for industrial operations. Its training covers safety and hazard recognition, procedures, technical skills, and asset familiarisation, with assessment and competency tracking. Teams can commission recreated real-world environments and equipment for project-specific content, or create and edit scenarios in FLOW using a visual graph of predefined nodes. FLOW modules include assisted learning, practice, and assessment; sessions support up to 20 participants in one virtual environment. Content runs on Meta Quest and HTC Vive through OpenXR and on Windows desktop, with desktop mode available on a laptop or tablet. PORTAL supports SSO, LMS integration, MDM, and device management, and provides training step logs and class and individual performance reports. Deployment options include on-premise, single-tenant regional cloud, and secure private hosting. Luminous describes integrations with Unity and NVIDIA Omniverse and displays ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification. The company was founded in 2004 and is based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Pricing is available on request; listed offerings include a £1,450 creator package and a $6000 workshop.