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Virtual reality (VR) is most useful in business when people need to practice, inspect, or experience something that would be risky, costly, disruptive, or difficult to reproduce in the real world. That makes workforce training and simulation the clearest established fit, with additional uses in manufacturing design and operations, healthcare education, and customer experiences. VR is not the same as augmented reality (AR), which overlays digital content on the physical world; both sit under the broader XR umbrella.
Where VR makes the strongest business case
VR earns its place when immersion changes what a person can learn or do. A 3D scenario can let someone rehearse a procedure, navigate a space, or interact with a virtual object rather than merely watch a video or read instructions. The business case is strongest when that practice can be repeated safely and its results can be measured.
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- Practice is hazardous, expensive, or disruptive in the real environment.
- The situation is rare or hard to stage, but workers must be ready for it.
- Spatial understanding matters, such as evaluating a production layout or product prototype.
- Performance can be assessed against a clear outcome such as task time, competency, or safety.
If a lesson is mainly about information transfer and does not benefit from embodied practice, a conventional course or desktop simulation may be simpler. PwC UK likewise advises using XR where circumstances call for it, rather than replacing every existing process.
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Workforce training and simulation
Safety, emergency response, and equipment operation
VR lets employees rehearse procedures and responses without exposing themselves or equipment to the consequences of a mistake. Repeatable scenarios can support safety instruction, equipment familiarization, onboarding, and emergency-response practice. The OECD’s Digital Economy Outlook 2024 describes Walmart’s Pickup Tower training module: training for that task fell from a full day in special stores to 15 minutes, while avoiding associated travel. This is a specific example reported by the OECD, not a general estimate of time savings for VR training.
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The OECD also reproduces Walmart CEO Doug McMillon’s description of associates who had practiced an active-shooter response scenario in VR: “lives were saved and seconds were gained”. That statement describes the company’s account of the exercise; it is not a separately verified causal estimate.
Onboarding and task skills
VR can combine instruction with hands-on rehearsal for tasks where learners need to recognize steps, make decisions, or use equipment. A July 2025 Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Meta modeled a composite organization from interviews with six decision-makers across four organizations. For that composite, it estimated onboarding time acceleration of 25% and task-worker training-time reductions of up to 75%, or 24 hours per user annually. The study’s executive summary also reported a modeled 219% ROI and $4.2 million net present value over three years, risk-adjusted. These are model outputs based on the study’s composite organization, not independently guaranteed outcomes for other employers. See the Forrester study for its methodology and assumptions.
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Medical, flight, and specialist practice
The OECD review covers VR training in fields including surgery, flight, corporate work, and emergency response. Its summary of surgical-training evidence, including meta-analyses, says findings generally support an advantage or equivalence to face-to-face training, economic savings, and reduced training time. That synthesis does not mean VR universally outperforms conventional instruction; the right comparison depends on the skill, learner, and training design.
Manufacturing, design, and operations
Layouts, prototyping, and process simulation
Teams can use VR to examine a proposed factory layout, inspect a 3D product prototype, or rehearse a process before making physical changes. This can help identify spatial or workflow issues earlier. Microsoft Learn’s archived enterprise-use-case guide lists prototyping and manufacturing scenarios, including examining production lines for hazards; the guide is useful for understanding scenario categories, not for confirming current product availability. The OECD also describes digital twins—virtual models of physical systems—as a way to model complex operations and train without interrupting continuous factory work. A digital twin may be used with VR, but the term does not mean every digital-twin project is a VR deployment.
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What adoption surveys do—and do not—show
Several reported figures point to interest in industrial immersive technologies, but they measure different things and should not be read as VR adoption rates:
| Source and scope | Reported finding | How to interpret it |
| Deloitte, manufacturing executives | 92% said their company was experimenting with or implementing at least one metaverse-related use case, averaging more than six. | The survey concerns industrial-metaverse technologies, not VR alone. Production was the most common ecosystem; process simulation and real-time monitoring/digital twins led the use cases, with immersive training third. |
| HTC VIVE, March 2024; survey of 400 U.S. professionals across ten industries | 50% of manufacturers surveyed said they were using XR for at least one listed area. Among XR-using manufacturers, 70% had implemented training and 67% had integrated XR to improve efficiency. | These are vendor-published survey findings scoped to respondents and XR, which includes more than VR. |
Sources: Deloitte’s industrial-metaverse analysis and HTC VIVE’s March 5, 2024 survey release.
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Retail, marketing, and customer experience
Businesses can use immersive experiences to let customers explore products, enter virtual shopping environments, or encounter VR advertising. These applications are most plausible when seeing scale, shape, or an environment adds something valuable to the decision. A virtual storefront by itself does not prove that customers will buy more; the experience must suit the product, audience, and sales journey.
Microsoft’s archived enterprise guide lists immersive shopping and marketing or advertising as possible scenarios. PwC UK’s mapping of XR examples places consumer engagement—including retail processes, consumer experiences, and sales support—at 37.9% of UK XR application categories; learning and development accounted for 21.7%. These are UK, XR-wide category figures, not global shares or measured sales results for VR shopping. PwC also reports engineering and manufacturing at 24.13%, retail and consumer at 10.90%, professional services at 10.65%, and healthcare at 7.68% among leading UK industries for XR. See PwC UK’s XR overview for its mapped data.
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Healthcare and professional services
Healthcare has distinct VR contexts: staff education and clinical or therapeutic applications. The evidence summarized here chiefly concerns training, such as surgical practice and anatomy learning described in the OECD review. It does not establish a universal clinical treatment recommendation. Organizations considering patient-facing use need to assess the relevant clinical evidence and requirements for the specific application, separately from the case for training employees.
Professional-services teams may also use immersive scenarios for instruction, collaboration, or client demonstrations, but a headset is not inherently an improvement over a video call or 3D desktop model. The value depends on whether spatial presence or interaction advances a defined task.
How to evaluate a VR business use case
- Define the task and baseline. Specify what people do today, what problem needs solving, and how you will measure change—such as competency, task completion time, safety, or operating cost.
- Test whether immersion is necessary. Compare VR with classroom instruction, video, a desktop simulation, or supervised practice. Choose the least complex approach that achieves the outcome.
- Check repeatability and risk. Prioritize cases where real-world practice is hazardous, costly, rare, or disruptive, and where a virtual scenario can reproduce the important decisions and actions.
- Estimate the content burden. Account for 3D assets, scenario design, localization, updates, and integration with existing training or operating systems.
- Plan deployment and support. Include software compatibility, headset provisioning, device management, charging, hygiene, user onboarding, and support across sites—not just hardware purchase.
- Set privacy and safety rules. Identify what body-motion or other user data the system collects, who may access it, and how long it is retained. Plan for physical surroundings, user comfort, and simulator sickness.
- Pilot against the baseline. Measure the same outcomes for VR users and the existing method where practical, then expand only if the evidence supports the cost and operational effort.
The OECD notes that detailed profiles can be inferred from body-movement tracking, alongside risks such as simulator sickness and physical safety concerns. Treat data minimization, access, retention, comfort, and safe-use procedures as part of the deployment design.
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The OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024, citing Ubrani (2023), reports that approximately 9 million VR headsets were sold worldwide in 2022; it also reports 260,000 AR headsets sold that year and attributes 80% of VR headset sales to Meta, 10% to ByteDance, and 10% to other firms. These are historical market figures, not current market shares or proof that a particular enterprise use case will succeed.
Across the available evidence, training and simulation have the most concrete business examples, while manufacturing and customer-facing uses span a wider mix of XR technologies and implementations. Results depend on a well-chosen task, credible content, sound deployment, and measurement—not simply on owning headsets.
Quick Recap
Sources and scope
- OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024: Virtual reality and its opportunities and risks
- Forrester Consulting: The Total Economic Impact™ of Meta Quest, July 2025
- Microsoft Learn: Enterprise use cases with Windows Mixed Reality (archived/prior guide)
- PwC UK: The business benefits of XR are real and all around us
- Deloitte Insights: Exploring the industrial metaverse
- HTC VIVE: March 5, 2024 survey release
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