What Is Virtual Reality Training? Best Pros & Cons 2022

What Is Virtual Reality Training

In this post, we’re gonna explain everything you need to know about virtual reality training and how it can enhance your learning program. 

Developing a learning program for your company can seem like a real challenge, but it doesn’t have to be. Check here How Long Does It Take To Develop Virtual Reality Content.

Today, We’ll be talking about what virtual reality training is, the different types, and how it can be used for your business.

What Is Virtual Reality Training?

The best way we can explain VR training is as a simulated experience that could be similar to the actual world or completely different. So, for example, someone may put on the best VR headset and be in their home office, as most people are now, but once they put on the headset, they’re on a manufacturing floor, or even an airport. 

So you have completely emerged into a different world with no impact of the outside world on you. Right now VR is one of the most popular training modalities that companies can use, and we think the big reason driving is that you do have younger workforces nowadays. 

Many of these technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), are already used in people’s personal lives, so incorporating them into corporate training is a natural extension of what they’ve already done. 

What Are The Different Types Of Virtual Reality Training Experiences?

So when you think about virtual reality, there are typically two types that you wanna consider. The first is going to be 360 VR, which is a movement with only your head. As a result, you don’t move your body about in space.

You normally move your head to look left, right, up, and down, as well as rotate, but you do not physically move your body.

When you move over into something that is one in full VR, that’s where we bring in the full physical movement of the body, and also the ability to pick up and manipulate objects. 

So the two ways to think about it, stationary, looking, and using only your head for movement, and full VR is full-body movement as well as to object manipulation. 

What Are Some Virtual Reality Training Examples?

Soft Skills Training

One of the best ways that you can use virtual reality is for soft skills training. And the reason why it’s so powerful, especially using something like 360 videos, is that somebody who has gone through soft skills types training, learning the fundamentals, typically their first time practicing it is in the real world with an employee of theirs or a colleague of theirs. 

And they have no muscle memory to go off of, and to pull from other than that traditional training. But when we incorporate VR as part of a blended program, it gives you a safe place to role play and figures out how actions you take could impact somebody. So, 360’s a great example of using that in VR. 

Onboarding

When you think about virtual reality for Onboarding, there are two ways that you look to deploy it that we’ve seen success with our customers. The first is you have a remote workforce and you wanna give them the experience of what not only the organization does, but maybe what it’s like to sit and have a conversation or listen to a conversation from an executive or a different department located across the world. 

The other side of bringing VR in is teaching somebody how to do their job from an onboarding standpoint. This plays well into full VR. Especially as we think about folks maybe manufacturing, retail, anything where they are creating something, or they’re posed with dangerous situations, we can recreate a day in the life of VR and take them through what that will look like. 

Multi-Step Process Training

It is a great tool as well in multi-step process or task-oriented type experiences because once you’re immersed in that situation, we can present the learner with step-by-step tasks of how to act. 

So we can overlay graphics on the screen if they’re doing something incorrectly or if they need help while they’re in the experience, they can get help in real-time rather than stopping the experience and going to ask for help.

Technical Training

Think about technical training for a moment, and while VR is extremely powerful, you learn by doing, and a lot of training that’s done today in the technical space is typically done through shadowing somebody else doing it, and then you’re off and running. 

So the beauty of VR is you can shadow somebody on what it looks like to do something, but then VR allows you to practice it. So when they’re in the real world, it’s second nature to them. They’ve already done this, they know the right process, they know the tools to use, what order to use them.

Virtual Reality Training Pros & Cons

Now, we’re going over the benefits of virtual reality training. If you’re wondering whether virtual reality would be a good solution for your company’s learning program you should first consider its advantages and disadvantages.

In this article, we will explain the advantages of virtual reality training, as well as the potential problems you may face and their solutions.

What Are The Advantages Of Virtual Reality Training?

1. Safe Learning Environment

One of the big advantages virtual reality has is creating a safe place for a training environment. So if you think about ways that you can increase training, one of the big things is to create a safer working environment but also a safer employee. 

In short of a real scenario happening to an employee and learning from that and the repercussions that happened with that VR can be leveraged to recreate any of those scenarios. You could be in a retail environment and replicate a shelf collapsing and what do you do? 

So virtual reality has proven time and time again that you can take and bottle those safety incidents that are most common for your organization and replicate them so that your employees know what to do in that situation and they know how to react in a safer way than experiencing it for the first time. 

Virtual reality training is extremely exciting. It’s new to the training space while not new as a technology. It’s a new way to think about how training can be deployed to your employees so they’re excited about it first of all.

2. Engaging And Exciting

Many traditional learning modalities that have been deployed you’re clicking through, you’re reading things on the screen you maybe you’re watching a short video but you’re not getting out and trying anything. 

And if you are watching a video, you can be distracted by what your coworkers doing over here. When you use things like the virtual reality you are 100% focused on what’s happening in the headset that you have on.

3. Realistic Technical Skills Practice

Learners can get hands-on experience with technical tasks such as product assembly and complex machinery operations. Learners can physically walkabout in their virtual world and pick up, push, and examine virtual objects using hand-held VR controllers. When it comes to technical instruction, virtual reality provides many advantages, including:

  • Scalability
  • Avoids using real-world machinery
  • Allows students to frequently practice real-world tasks

What Are The Disadvantages Of Virtual Reality Training?

1. Motion Sickness

Something we hear often from prospective clients and even current clients who are evaluating virtual reality is motion sickness related to putting on a headset. The solution for that is in the way that you design the content. 

You never want to move a learner If they’re not physically moving. That creates a disconnect in the brain which can cause motion sickness. Now you’re never gonna avoid it 100%. There are just gonna be folks that aren’t comfortable with it, or for whatever reason, they do get sick. 

So we always offer up an alternative way where they can consume the training without having a headset on as well because you do wanna be inclusive to that audience if they’re just not comfortable with it. 

One of the things we know about virtual reality with how popular it’s becoming is the technology and the development of the technology is accelerating. 

2. Technology Development

You do wanna at least make note that the headsets are probably gonna change but we would invest in the latest and greatest that you can at the moment when you’re looking at the content so you at least get two to three years out of the headset. 

3. High Cost

Another common disadvantage we hear about is the cost to implement VR. More and more we’re seeing development costs go down considerably as are the price of headsets. 

So a couple of things to keep in mind is content is important and what you’re training on and then developing the metrics that you’re going to track. 

It’s important to work with a provider that has a platform that can also support your validation of investing in VR.

4. Physical Side Effects

When using virtual reality, some people may experience physical side effects. Headaches, nausea, and eyestrain are all common complaints. By designing content and preparing alternative formats, you can ensure that your VR training is safe.

The solution to motion sickness is in the design of content. In VR, you should never move a learner if they are not physically moving. This way, you can avoid the brain disconnect that causes motion sickness. 

Although it is impossible to completely eliminate motion sickness, creating alternative formats allows employees to participate in training without wearing a headset.

Thanks for staying with us, be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions. And We will be back soon with another awesome virtual reality content.

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