VR Training for Companies

New Learning Experiences

Training Beyond Reality with Analytical Groundwork

Real and virtual worlds can be intertwined for full-on immersion: An expensive specialist tool can be tracked and transferred to VR, in order to test it on a machine. The real machine can keep running because it isn’t needed as training object, thus saving time and money.

Coaches also have an easier time in VR: the software supports them with clues and automatic analysis in case trainees are making mistakes. This reduces supervision efforts and helps to maintain the quality standard of trainings. Vice versa, trainees benefit from shorter waiting times and can be motivated through playful elements.

Benefits

In a VR simulation, companies are able to offer lifelike training, independently of time and location. This is a huge advantage already, especially when the training has to occur at machines or in scenarios that aren’t replicable at all or temporarily unavailable. Teams can collaborate across locations and learn together – distance is no longer an issue.

Learning through Experience – More Flexible than ever

Since VR training involves the whole body, it has a particularly intense effect on the human brain. The motor cortex is activated and with it our muscle memory: You have probably "thought outside the box" or "dropped something by the wayside" - humans think and act spatially. Compared to other learning media, training in VR provides a much more intense stimulus. The VR researcher Jeremy Bailenson from Stanford University has proven in numerous studies that knowledge learned in VR is imprinted particularly deep into the synapses through virtual reality movement components.

VR learning professionals therefore also speak of "experiential learning": With VR headsets, the trainee does not just view a content on a monitor. They carry out the actual action. In VR, learning experiences can therefore be conveyed in a particularly flexible and comprehensive manner - semantic, episodic and procedural memory are all active in VR training. The active, experience-based learning approach should be able to increase the long-term storage of information by up to 90 percent compared to conventional methods.

With so many advantages, it is not surprising that VR training is the most common application area for virtual reality technology in companies, according to a recent market study. VR-Training is the wrong tool if real training in all possible scenarios is possible without any problems and the effort and costs cannot be reduced by the use of VR or a data-driven analysis of the training is not desired. With the progress of VR technology, however, this boundary becomes increasingly blurred.

A suitable VR scenario exists for each learning task. VR training is also suitable to digitally enhance real, already tested and tried trainings, for example by adding playful elements or because of the superior, automated analysis possibilities.

Since VR can simulate countless learning scenarios and can be repeated as often as desired, the technology enhances the quality of training in just about any training and in many professions. This is particularly important when many people need to be introduced to new topics and content as efficiently as possible. VR training scales particularly well across the board.

A few examples:

• In medicine, VR training helps when hospital employees want to learn new treatment techniques.
• Patients can also use VR to learn how they should behave in a certain therapy scenario in the same way as during dialysis at home.
• Engineers learn how to maintain aircraft engines during a technical training in VR.
• Aircraft cabin crews benefit from VR training that is independent of time and location, for example when they need to learn new safety rules quickly.
• In VR, mechanical engineers learn about new machines or how to maintain old ones.
• Trainees, apprentices, trainees or students react with great enthusiasm and high attention to the playful transfer of knowledge with new technology. This enthusiasm is further enhanced by virtual reality training.
• Instructors and coaches benefit from comprehensive VR tracking in combination with sophisticated learning software. Both in combination give them detailed insights into the learning success of their protégés. This enables them to better control the training program.
• Even managers can train in VR. For example, how to navigate challenging conversational situations with employees during a hiring or firing process. Or the confident presentation in front of a large audience.

The basic rule for VR training is: the hardware must not get in the way of the learning experience. Cables that are too short, rickety headphones, bulky headsets, uncomfortable, unhygienic padding - all these are no-go's.

At NMY, we therefore use as little technology as possible and as much as necessary. The human being is at the center of the application. Accordingly, we attach great importance to comfortable solutions. What counts is the content, and that it is remembered – technical gimmicks that are not designed to help you learn unnecessarily complicate VR training.

At the same time, we have the appropriate VR technology at hand to implement comprehensive, technically sophisticated learning apps - including full body tracking in a special suit including gloves that make virtual objects tangible.

How does VR training reach instructors, trainers and the trainees?

VR trainings come as apps that are distributed via app stores (like the Steam Store). However, there are also other distribution options that make sense for a specific application – think of cloud solutions – and take into account all security-related and time-related aspects.

Sustainability with 3D asset management

Starting in the concept phase, you should plan how to optimally roll out the training program to the trainees. There are many possibilities, the important thing is that you pick the one that is best for your company:

• How do the trainees get to a VR station?
• Will each department perhaps be provided with a high-performance PCs with VR headsets?
• Or do they use mobile, self-contained VR headsets for quick trainings?
• Do you offer VR training as an app in popular online VR app stores like Steam or Oculus or in the cloud?
• The transfer to alternative channels is also possible like a web-based training for iPhones and iPads.

Especially the intersection between augmented reality – digital objects embedded in reality – and virtual reality – completely virtual worlds – is large. Often learning concepts that combine VR and AR make sense, depending on the learning stage or preferences of the trainee.

And once the 3D data and content are available, it can be used in an interdisciplinary way. For example, the marketing or sales team can better advise customers with VR learning content or 3D data. Often, only minor adjustments are necessary.