Over the past few months, Phil C, a Microsoft technology expert at QA, and I have embarked on an exploratory journey into the possibilities of delivering training courses using virtual reality. This adventure has taken us through a range of immersive environments powered by headsets and supported by mixed and virtual reality systems, with participants joining remotely through video links. Our goal was to evaluate whether virtual reality could enhance or even transform the experience of delivering live training sessions.
The environments we experimented with were varied and imaginative. We visited virtual recreations of a 23rd-floor office suite in the heart of a bustling city, a tranquil mountain retreat, and our clear favorite—a serene beachfront. That coastal setting was so compelling and vivid, we joked that we could almost hear the seagulls and feel the ocean breeze. Each of these settings brought its atmosphere and flavor to the training experience, and in doing so, invited deeper thinking about the logistical and pedagogical implications of holding entire instructor-led training sessions within virtual spaces.
Asking the Fundamental Questions
This experimentation prompted a more fundamental question—not only whether training could be effectively delivered using virtual reality, but whether it should be. It’s one thing to explore and test a new technology in a limited or playful context, and quite another to consider its broad application across professional education. The difference between “could” and “should” became a central theme in our reflection.
As instructors used to teaching technical content, we immediately recognized a variety of concerns and barriers that would need to be addressed before virtual reality could be deployed at scale for corporate or vendor training. Many of these issues are not unique to VR, but they are certainly amplified in this new mode of delivery. While virtual reality can feel exciting and futuristic, the operational aspects cannot be ignored.
Immediate Logistical Considerations
First and foremost, we were focused on instructor-led sessions delivered in real time. This isn’t about pre-recorded training content or AI-driven lectures. We’re discussing live instruction, where the trainer interacts with learners dynamically, adapting the session as it progresses. Once we began thinking seriously about delivering such sessions within a virtual reality environment, several critical factors became immediately apparent.
Power consumption is one of the first technical constraints. Headsets require sufficient battery life to last through several hours of training. That might not sound like a major issue at first glance, but when you’re teaching multi-hour, multi-day sessions, it becomes a genuine concern. Then there are visual considerations. Users who wear glasses may find VR headsets uncomfortable or even unusable over extended periods. Those with vision impairments may face additional accessibility challenges that traditional delivery formats do not pose to the same degree.
Another key question is whether VR headsets truly offer a fundamentally different experience than 2D video conferencing platforms like Teams or Zoom. It’s not just a matter of novelty—does this technology provide added value? If so, does that value justify the financial and logistical costs involved? The headsets themselves are not inexpensive. For organizations looking to scale training across dozens or hundreds of employees, the investment becomes substantial. Then there’s the question of inclusivity. What happens to participants who don’t have access to a VR headset? Can they join the session using a traditional laptop or mobile device, and if so, is their experience meaningfully diminished?
The Pre-Session Complexity
Even before any content is delivered, a host of setup requirements emerge. Participants need to be familiar with the VR hardware, have the necessary apps installed, and understand how to configure and use the associated controllers and devices. That assumes a level of tech-savviness that not every learner can be expected to possess. Depending on the platform used, they may also need to create user profiles or avatars. This is a surprisingly time-consuming process. If you’ve ever tried creating a virtual likeness that resembles your real-world self, you’ll understand the effort involved—especially if your hairstyle is as complicated as mine or Phil’s.
Beyond technical familiarity, there’s also the matter of physical space. Users must have a sufficiently large and obstacle-free area in their home or office to move safely while immersed in the VR environment. Not everyone has that luxury. Even in relatively modest scenarios, like standing at a virtual whiteboard to draw diagrams or highlight key ideas, there’s a real risk of colliding with real-world furniture. During one session, I found myself standing millimeters away from my bookshelf while drawing at the virtual board. It was a strange and slightly nerve-wracking experience—feeling both immersed and constantly aware of the limitations of my physical surroundings.
Equity and the ‘Them and Us’ Dilemma
One of the more troubling issues we encountered was the potential for a ‘them and us’ scenario to emerge. Those who have access to VR headsets and the knowledge to use them might enjoy a significantly enhanced experience. Those who don’t may feel left out or marginalized. This disparity could easily lead to a bifurcated learning environment, where the immersive potential of VR becomes a divisive factor rather than a unifying one.
This is especially important when considering the scalability of training programs. Not all learners will have identical setups. Some may be working from underpowered systems, some may have unreliable internet connections, and others may simply be less comfortable with new technologies. The risk of excluding certain learners—either directly or indirectly—cannot be overlooked.
The Enthusiasm and the Reality
Despite the challenges, we were both genuinely excited by the possibilities VR seemed to open up. In our internal pilot session, the experience felt fresh, collaborative, and unusually engaging. There’s no question that the sense of presence—the feeling of being in a shared space with others, despite being physically remote—was markedly stronger than in any video call we’ve experienced.
In a world that increasingly feels fragmented and remote, the idea of recapturing the social connectedness of a physical classroom is genuinely appealing. Yet we must temper that excitement with a healthy dose of practicality. VR technology, while promising, is still developing rapidly. The question isn’t just whether it can be done today—it’s whether it should be implemented widely right now, particularly outside of domains like medicine and engineering, where immersive training environments already offer obvious benefits.
Finding the Right Use Cases
In our current teaching domains—specifically cloud infrastructure, virtualization, and networking—the benefits of delivering content in VR are not immediately obvious. Much of this material can be effectively conveyed using existing tools and platforms. Traditional delivery methods are already capable of providing rich, interactive experiences through screen sharing, collaborative whiteboards, and real-time chat.
This doesn’t mean VR is without value. Far from it. There may be opportunities to incorporate it in specific modules or as part of team-building exercises. For example, using a virtual environment for a breakout session or an informal networking break might be more engaging than the typical approach. But we must be mindful of the total screen time learners are exposed to. Downtime, or time away from digital devices, is increasingly recognized as essential for cognitive well-being. Replacing breaks with VR may unintentionally undermine that need.
The Beginning of a Broader Conversation
Ultimately, our exploration of VR training is still in its early stages. What we’ve discovered so far is that virtual reality introduces a host of intriguing possibilities alongside a new set of challenges. The potential is certainly there, but the practicalities cannot be dismissed. As much as we were charmed by the idea of holding training sessions on a digital beach, complete with virtual sandcastles and ocean views, we also recognize the limits of that vision in the current moment.
For now, our answer to whether VR training should be widely adopted in technical fields remains a cautious maybe. We can see its promise, and we’re eager to continue testing and experimenting. But until the hardware becomes more accessible, the software more intuitive, and the use cases more compelling, we’re not yet ready to recommend full-scale deployment.
Yet it’s not hard to imagine a future where these obstacles are resolved, and VR training becomes a standard part of the learning toolkit. Perhaps someday soon, I’ll be teaching IAM policies on a digital beach—right before letting the class take a virtual swim.
Stepping Into the Classroom: Hosting Training in Virtual Reality
From Pilot to Practice
After our early experiments and discussions, we wanted to take things a step further—to not just experience training in VR as participants, but to host and run a session ourselves. This was a critical next step. While it’s one thing to observe or attend a VR session, it’s something quite different to lead one, to manage a group, to share content, and to adapt your teaching style to a completely new environment.
We selected Horizon Workrooms by Meta as our primary platform for this phase. It’s one of the more mature virtual collaboration environments currently available, with features designed specifically for meetings and training. The software allows users to appear either as avatars within a shared 3D environment or as video participants, joining from a standard screen. This hybrid model offered a degree of flexibility that we hoped would bridge the gap between traditional video conferencing and fully immersive sessions.
First Impressions as Hosts
Entering Horizon Workrooms as hosts, we quickly noticed how much more demanding it is to manage a session in VR compared to a standard Teams or Zoom meeting. The interface is intuitive, but the layers of interaction are different. There’s a virtual desk where you can pin documents, share screens, or sketch ideas on a digital whiteboard. Participants are arranged in a simulated room, which creates a more realistic sense of spatial presence than a flat grid of faces on a screen.
However, this also introduces complexity. For instance, where you place your documents or how you position your virtual laptop matters—both for your visibility and for others. There’s no automatic camera framing to ensure everyone’s focused on the same thing. As the host, you have to constantly be aware of how information is being presented in 3D space and whether participants are seeing what you intend.
The Avatar Dynamic: A New Kind of Presence
One of the most surprising aspects was the use of avatars. Horizon Workrooms generates stylized versions of each participant, which animate in real time using headset sensors. The effect is strange at first—these aren’t realistic human faces, but they do blink, nod, and gesture with enough accuracy to convey intent and emotion.
From a teaching standpoint, this subtle expressiveness matters. The head nods, the tilts, even the virtual hand-raises helped us regain some of the nonverbal feedback that’s often lost in video conferencing. It wasn’t quite like being in a physical room, but it was noticeably more engaging than teaching to a screen full of muted icons. Still, there’s a trade-off. Because avatars are limited in expression, some nuance gets lost. You might miss confusion on a learner’s face that would otherwise prompt you to pause or clarify.
Content Delivery: Same Material, New Medium
Delivering technical content in VR brings its learning curve. While screen sharing works reasonably well, flipping between slides, whiteboards, and virtual desktops isn’t seamless. For example, drawing on the virtual whiteboard with VR controllers is functional, but far less precise than using a stylus or touchscreen. In our test run, even something as simple as sketching out a network topology diagram became an exercise in patience and spatial awareness.
The novelty of the environment sometimes distracted from the content. It’s hard to ignore the fact that your instructor is a hovering avatar with no legs, standing next to a palm tree in a digital meeting room. While this can be charming and even fun, it occasionally competes with the seriousness or focus of the material—especially when delivering highly technical or compliance-driven training.
New Etiquette, Same Challenges
There’s a surprising lack of established etiquette in VR training spaces. When should participants mute themselves? Is it appropriate to move around during a session? What happens when someone’s avatar glitches or drifts awkwardly into another participant’s space? These are questions we didn’t have to consider before, but they now impact the flow of the session.
And then there are the typical technical issues, now with VR-specific twists. Battery life remains a concern—especially for longer sessions. Headset overheating or Wi-Fi disruptions can abruptly remove participants from the session. One user dropped out mid-sentence due to a headset restart, which broke the rhythm of the conversation in a way we hadn’t anticipated. Recovery is slower in VR than in video calls, where rejoining a meeting is usually seamless.
Hidden Benefits and Surprising Engagement
Despite the friction points, we noticed a few subtle benefits. The immersive nature of the environment seemed to foster deeper focus. Once participants settled into the session, there were fewer distractions—no second screens, no checking email in the background. VR demands presence in a literal sense, which in turn seems to boost cognitive attention.
The social dynamic also shifted. Small talk felt more natural in the 3D space—people turned to each other, gestured, and reacted in ways that resembled real-world interactions more than the stilted sidebar chats of a video call. This opens up new possibilities for community-building in online training, especially for teams that rarely meet in person.
What’s Missing—and What’s Next
Still, for all its potential, hosting training in VR today doesn’t feel like a clear replacement for existing methods. It’s closer to an alternative experience—an experimental lab rather than a production-ready classroom. Features like breakout rooms, session recording, real-time polling, and multi-screen workflows are either limited or missing entirely. Many tools we take for granted on platforms like Teams are still catching up in the VR space.
That said, the pace of improvement is rapid. New versions of Horizon Workrooms and other platforms are being released regularly, and hardware continues to improve—lighter headsets, better battery life, and more accurate tracking are all on the horizon. We can easily imagine a near future where many of these current limitations are resolved.
A Reality Check—and a Glimpse Forward
So, is VR ready for prime time in training delivery? Our answer remains cautious. The technology is maturing quickly, but for most corporate learning environments—particularly those dealing with technical subjects—the overhead currently outweighs the benefits. That said, there are clear and exciting opportunities. For creative sessions, informal meetups, or collaboration-heavy workshops, VR can provide a sense of energy and presence that video calls often lack.
What excites us most is the direction this is heading. A year or two from now, the VR tools we tested may be dramatically more powerful and user-friendly. Instructors may have AI-driven co-facilitators. Participants may switch fluidly between VR and AR experiences. And training may feel less like a presentation and more like a shared mission in a digital space.
For now, we’re content to keep experimenting, keep learning—and occasionally, keep teaching from a beach under virtual palm trees.
Beyond the Pilot: What Comes Next for VR in Learning?
Seeing the Bigger Picture
After experimenting with VR as both participants and hosts, it became clear that we were no longer just evaluating a new delivery platform. We were stepping into a broader conversation about how learning and development (L&D) may evolve over the next decade. Virtual reality isn’t just a flashy new interface; it challenges long-held assumptions about what a “classroom” is, what it means to “attend” training, and how presence, interaction, and even memory function in digital learning environments.
The possibilities are exciting—but excitement without strategy is just novelty. As L&D professionals, technologists, and instructors, we have to ask hard questions about why we would use VR, where it makes sense, and how we measure its impact.
Thinking Beyond Technology
One of the easiest mistakes to make with emerging tech is to lead with the tool rather than the problem. Just because VR exists—and is becoming more accessible—doesn’t mean it belongs in every course. The goal of any learning intervention must remain clear: help learners develop meaningful skills and apply them in the real world.
If VR can help learners grasp abstract concepts faster, practice physical tasks more safely, or collaborate more deeply across distance, then it’s worth serious attention. But if it merely adds friction, increases cost, or introduces unnecessary complexity, it may be better reserved for specific, high-impact scenarios.
We’ve already seen this with tools like gamification, microlearning, and mobile apps—each had promise, each found its niche, and each required thoughtful integration. VR will be no different. Its role in the learning ecosystem will depend not on hype, but on thoughtful design and clear outcomes.
Use Cases That Make Sense Today
Based on what we’ve seen, here are a few scenarios where VR could provide real, immediate value:
- Soft skills development: Practicing public speaking, conflict resolution, or leadership scenarios in realistic environments can help reduce learner anxiety and improve retention.
- Team-building and collaboration: Virtual environments enable informal, high-presence interactions that traditional platforms struggle to replicate. Great for cross-functional teams or remote organizations.
- Situational awareness: Fields like safety training, field engineering, or disaster response can use VR to simulate high-stakes environments where mistakes are costly in the real world.
- Onboarding and cultural immersion: New hires can explore a company’s history, meet teams virtually, or even take guided virtual tours of physical locations.
In these examples, VR offers more than a novelty—it provides something that traditional formats simply can’t replicate. That’s the threshold we need to keep in mind.
Preparing for a VR-Ready Workforce
If organizations decide to explore VR seriously, the next question is: are we ready? On a practical level, that means building infrastructure, budgeting for equipment, ensuring support, and selecting platforms that integrate with existing systems. But it also means preparing people—instructors, learners, and administrators—for a different kind of experience.
Trainers may need to develop new skills: understanding spatial facilitation, using 3D tools, reading avatar body language, and managing hybrid (VR and non-VR) audiences. Learners may need orientation sessions to feel comfortable and confident. And L&D leaders will need to update policies, rethink metrics, and create new models for accessibility and inclusion.
We’re still early in this journey. Standards are emerging, but there’s no universal playbook yet. That means experimentation, documentation, and reflection are more important than ever.
Key Questions to Ask Before You Commit
If your organization is starting to explore VR for training, here are a few questions worth asking:
- What specific learning outcomes are we trying to achieve—and can VR help us get there more effectively than existing tools?
- Who are our learners, and what is their level of comfort and access to this technology?
- What logistical barriers (hardware, software, support) do we need to resolve before we can scale?
- How will we maintain inclusion for those who can’t or don’t want to use VR?
- What types of content are best suited to immersive environments—and how will we adapt or create those materials?
- How will we measure impact? What does success look like beyond “it felt cool”?
Answering these questions early can help avoid wasted effort and guide pilot programs toward real insights, not just surface-level impressions.
Looking Ahead: VR as One Part of a Bigger Shift
Whether or not VR becomes a dominant training tool, it’s part of a larger evolution toward experiential, interactive, and learner-centered education. We’re moving from linear courses to modular experiences. From passive consumption to active exploration. From information delivery to performance support.
In this future, VR might be one tool among many—a powerful one for the right use case, but not a one-size-fits-all solution. And that’s a good thing. The best learning experiences are often those that blend modalities, respect learner choice, and respond to real-world needs.
We remain cautiously optimistic. The spark is there—VR really can transform how people connect, explore, and learn. But the flame needs nurturing. That means testing, failing, iterating, and sharing findings openly. It means listening to learners, not just vendors. And it means approaching this with the same rigor we bring to any other learning design challenge.
So, is training in virtual reality the future? Perhaps part of it. But only if we shape it with intention—and not just because the headset is cool.
For now, we’ll continue teaching, testing, and yes—returning to that digital beach now and then. Because even in the future, a great view still helps the ideas flow.
Culture, Curiosity, and the Human Side of Virtual Learning
It’s Not About the Headsets
As we concluded our pilot sessions in virtual reality, we began to realize something unexpected: the real barriers and breakthroughs had less to do with the hardware or software, and far more to do with human behavior. VR might promise technical innovation, but its success in learning environments depends almost entirely on the people who use it, and the cultures they bring with them.
The question of whether VR works in training isn’t about pixels or resolution—it’s about mindsets, trust, and openness to change.
Culture Eats Technology for Breakfast
There’s a quiet myth in the world of learning technology: that better tools naturally lead to better outcomes. But as anyone in L&D knows, culture always comes first. If the organizational culture is rigid, compliance-driven, and intolerant of experimentation, then even the best VR platform will feel like a burden. Learners will hesitate. Instructors will avoid risk. And managers will judge success purely on efficiency, not impact.
By contrast, in teams where psychological safety is high and innovation is valued, VR becomes something different. It’s not a burden—it’s a sandbox. People are willing to try, to stumble, to laugh, and to recover together. These cultural factors—curiosity, trust, resilience—aren’t always visible in metrics, but they’re essential to any successful immersive learning initiative.
The Messy Middle of Adoption
The introduction of VR into training isn’t clean or linear. It’s messy. There are technical hiccups, avatar misfires, and awkward silences. There are sessions where the technology works flawlessly but the learning feels flat. And there are moments when the tech breaks down, but something deeper happens: a spark of presence, a surprising insight, a shared laugh.
In this “messy middle,” progress isn’t always measured in productivity. Sometimes, it’s measured in engagement, in attention, or even in how often people ask to come back. But for this to matter, organizations need to be willing to tolerate a little chaos—and trust that exploration can lead to insight.
Presence Changes the Equation
Something quietly radical happens when you learn in VR: your body comes with you. Unlike video calls, where your attention can drift while your face remains visible, VR demands presence. You’re in the room—virtually, but fully. You look at people when they speak. You turn your head to track a conversation. You gesture, lean forward, sit back.
This spatial presence reshapes the learning dynamic. Even though the avatars are cartoonish, the social experience is strangely human. Learners respond differently. Instructors adapt their pacing and positioning. And the learning feels less like watching and more like inhabiting—which can deepen focus and retention.
Measuring What Matters
Still, the temptation to return to old KPIs is strong. Did learners complete the module? Did they pass the quiz? Did they enjoy it? These are important—but in VR, they might not be enough. We need new ways to evaluate success: not just by completion rates, but by confidence, collaboration, and creative problem-solving.
VR isn’t always efficient. It doesn’t always scale easily. But it can create moments that matter—moments of clarity, connection, or insight—that are hard to replicate in other formats. If we dismiss these moments because they’re harder to quantify, we risk missing the point.
Inclusion in Immersive Spaces
A critical challenge—and opportunity—lies in making VR learning inclusive. Not everyone has the same access to hardware, comfort with technology, or tolerance for sensory overload. Some learners may be unable or unwilling to use headsets. Others may have neurodivergent needs that require careful adaptation.
This is where empathy becomes a design principle, not an afterthought. We must ask: Who is this experience for? Who might be excluded? And how do we create meaningful alternatives without relegating some learners to a “lesser” version of the training?
Accessibility in VR isn’t just about accommodations—it’s about intentional, learner-centered design.
Building Human-Centered Learning Futures
As we look ahead, one truth becomes clear: VR is not the destination. It’s a tool—one of many—that can help us move toward more human, immersive, and meaningful learning experiences. It invites us to rethink what it means to attend, to engage, and to grow—especially in digital spaces.
But to harness that potential, we must lead with questions, not answers. We must treat learners as co-designers, not just users. And we must build cultures where innovation is tied to purpose, not just novelty.
Final thoughts
So—will VR transform learning? In some places, yes. In others, maybe not. But perhaps that’s the wrong question. The better question is: What kind of learning experiences do we want to create? And how can tools like VR help us get there?
If we stay grounded in values, focused on learners, and open to experimentation, then VR can be more than a tech trend. It can be a gateway to deeper connection, richer storytelling, and more courageous learning.
And if once in a while that happens on a sunny virtual beach, all the better.