What is Virtual Reality?

Virtual reality (VR) fast becoming a powerful business tool that is reshaping how we train employees, showcase products, collaborate remotely, and immerse people in experiences that would otherwise be impossible.

Whether it’s a fully simulated factory floor, a safety training module, or a walk-through of an unbuilt architectural space, virtual reality is offering companies new ways to learn, engage and innovate.

Let’s take a closer look at what virtual reality really is, how it differs from augmented and mixed reality, and how businesses are using it today.

What Is Virtual Reality?

Virtual reality uses a headset or device to display a completely digital environment that replaces your physical surroundings. It’s an immersive simulation that lets users feel like they’ve stepped into another place, whether that’s a training centre, a design lab, or a completely imaginary world.

VR is typically accessed through a headset, like the Meta Quest 3 or HTC Vive, which blocks out the real world and fills your vision with a virtual one. High-end VR also includes hand controllers, spatial audio, and sometimes even haptic (small vibrations) feedback to complete the experience.

Virtual Reality in Simple Terms

Imagine putting on a headset and suddenly being inside a completely different environment.

You’re no longer in your office, your living room, or your workshop. You’re in a digital replica of a factory. Or inside a product you’re designing. Or standing in a client’s building that doesn’t yet exist. Or even a game!

You can move around, interact with objects, look in any direction and feel as though you’re really there.

Virtual reality replaces your surroundings completely, it’s full immersion with none of the distractions or limitations of the real world.

Virtual Reality vs Augmented Reality vs Mixed Reality: What’s the Difference?

While virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) are often grouped together under the umbrella of “immersive technology,” each offers a distinctly different experience and serves different business needs.

• Virtual Reality (VR) fully immerses you in a digital environment, cutting you off from the real world.

• Augmented Reality (AR) overlays digital elements on top of your physical surroundings, usually via a screen or smart glasses.

• Mixed Reality (MR) blends digital and physical environments, allowing both to coexist and interact in real time.

The key differences lie in how each technology treats your real-world environment, how interactive the digital content is, and the type of hardware used.

VR vs AR vs MR: Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Virtual Reality (VR)	Augmented Reality (AR)	Mixed Reality (MR)
Environment	Fully digital – replaces the real world	Real world with digital overlays	Combines real and digital, both visible
User Awareness	No visibility of surroundings	Full visibility of surroundings	Full visibility with spatial interaction
Interaction Type	All interaction in virtual space	Limited interaction with floating overlays	Real-time interaction with digital content anchored to physical space
Device Examples	Meta Quest 2, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR	Smartphones, tablets, AR glasses	Meta Quest 3, Microsoft HoloLens
Use Case Examples	Safety training, product simulations, virtual events	Furniture visualisation, social media filters, navigation prompts	Product demos in real space, contextual training, design collaboration
Spatial Awareness	No connection to the real-world layout	Basic overlay, no spatial anchoring	Digital content maps to surfaces and responds to physical objects
Mobility	Wireless (with full-room scale) or wired	Highly mobile – phones, tablets, glasses	Wireless, spatially aware with room-scale tracking
Level of Immersion	High – fully immersive and isolating	Low to medium – partial enhancements	Medium to high – digital content behaves as part of the real world
Best For	Total immersion, focused learning, simulated environments	Quick consumer engagement, remote instructions	Interactive sales, hands-on training, realistic demos in real context

Understanding which technology to use depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you need total focus and deep engagement, Virtual Reality is the most powerful option.

If you want lightweight digital additions to your existing environment, Augmented Reality is the most accessible.

And if you want digital content to feel like it truly belongs in your physical space, Mixed Reality gives you the best of both worlds.

What Is Virtual Reality Used For

Virtual reality is now firmly embedded in everyday life, not just in entertainment, but in how organisations train teams, engage customers, and visualise complex ideas. Once seen as niche, VR has matured into a versatile tool that’s being adopted across industries and business functions to solve real-world challenges.

Here are some of the key ways virtual reality is being used today.

1. Learning, Training & Simulation

One of the most transformative uses of VR is in education and workforce training. Whether you’re onboarding new staff, running high-risk safety drills, or teaching complex technical procedures, VR provides a hands-on, immersive environment where people can practise and learn without real-world consequences.

Manufacturers use VR to simulate machinery operation. Medical schools replicate surgeries. Emergency services rehearse crisis scenarios. Even classrooms are being reimagined, with students stepping inside historical events, exploring anatomy in 3D, or visualising abstract scientific concepts in ways that boost memory and engagement.

This kind of experiential learning improves retention, builds confidence, and reduces training time.

2. Sales, Marketing & Customer Engagement

VR turns traditional sales pitches and product demos into full-blown experiences. Instead of showing a product on a screen or in a brochure, businesses can now let customers walk around it, explore its features, and understand its value, no matter where they are.

Virtual Reality for events like exhibitions and trade shows helps brands stand out. For complex or large-scale products that are difficult to transport, virtual reality provides a lightweight, scalable solution that still delivers impact. Buyers get a full, interactive understanding of the product, without the logistics (what we call the Sustainable Hologram effect).

And because these experiences are memorable and emotionally engaging, they drive stronger interest, clearer understanding, and faster decisions.

3. Design, Planning & Review

Architects, engineers and planners are using VR to visualise designs before a single brick is laid. Clients can explore buildings, factories or public spaces at life size, giving feedback and making changes before costly work begins.

This spatial understanding is especially useful in construction, manufacturing, and infrastructure projects which helps teams avoid mistakes, align faster, and build with confidence.

It’s also valuable in product development, allowing cross-functional teams to collaborate on design iterations in immersive virtual environments without needing to be in the same room.

4. Gaming, Media & Entertainment

While enterprise applications are growing fast, gaming remains one of the most visible and advanced areas of VR adoption. Titles built for platforms like Meta Quest and PlayStation VR continue to push the boundaries of interaction, realism, and presence.

But the influence of entertainment goes far beyond gameplay. Innovations in controller design, motion tracking, spatial audio and user experience, driven by the gaming sector, are fuelling progress in commercial VR too. The familiarity consumers gain through entertainment makes adoption in the workplace smoother and more intuitive.

Beyond games, VR is being used in film, music and live events to create immersive content and shared experiences that would be impossible through flat screens alone.

Virtual Reality Headsets

To experience virtual reality, you typically need a headset. This is the core piece of hardware that makes immersion possible by replacing your view of the real world with a fully digital one.

The headset tracks your head movements and, in many cases, your hands or handheld controllers, allowing you to look around, move through, and interact with virtual environments in real time.

Headsets are designed to block out your surroundings and transport you visually and aurally into a virtual space. They’re equipped with screens (usually one for each eye), sensors, cameras, and speakers to simulate realistic depth, sound, and motion. Some also include haptic feedback or eye tracking for added realism and data insights.

Types of Virtual Reality Headsets

There are several types of VR headsets available today, each suited to different use cases and levels of experience:

• Standalone Headsets - These devices don’t require a PC or external tracking system. They’re wireless, self-contained, and offer impressive performance for both business and gaming. They’re ideal for mobility, simplicity, and quick deployment, especially in training or exhibition environments. Examples include: Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3

• PC-Connected Headsets - These require a powerful computer to run a VR application and are connected via cables. While less mobile, they typically offer higher visual fidelity and are suited to graphics-intensive simulations, detailed design reviews, and enterprise-grade development. Examples include: HTC Vive Pro, Valve Index

• Tethered Headsets with External Sensors - Some older or specialist headsets use external tracking systems (like base stations) to map your movements. These are often used in advanced simulation environments or for precise motion tracking in fields like engineering, aerospace, or defence. Examples include: Varjo XR series, original HTC Vive

• Mobile-Based Headsets (now largely phased out) - Earlier VR models used smartphones as their display and processing power. While they helped popularise VR, most mobile-based headsets like Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR are now obsolete due to limited performance and functionality.

Popular Headsets on the Market Today

If you’re considering VR for your organisation, here are some of the most widely used and emerging headsets on the market right now, each with its own strengths depending on your goals.

• Meta Quest 3 - A powerful standalone headset with high-resolution displays, full-colour passthrough for mixed reality, and excellent inside-out tracking. It’s currently one of the most versatile headsets for both consumer and commercial use, especially in training and marketing.

• Meta Quest 2 - An affordable and widely adopted standalone headset used for everything from learning simulations to product demos. Easy to set up and deploy at scale, making it ideal for businesses looking to integrate VR quickly and cost-effectively.

• HTC Vive Pro 2 - A high-end, PC-connected headset designed for advanced enterprise use. It offers excellent visual clarity and precision tracking, making it a favourite for engineering reviews, spatial planning, and simulator environments.

• Valve Index - Known for its expansive field of view, finger-tracking controllers, and premium build quality. Often used in development-heavy environments, creative studios, and advanced simulation setups.

• Varjo XR-4 - Positioned at the ultra-premium end of the market, the XR-4 combines cutting-edge resolution with mixed reality capabilities. It’s typically used for mission-critical applications in aerospace, defence, automotive design and research.

• Apple Vision Pro - Apple’s first spatial computing device blends high-resolution virtual reality with powerful mixed reality capabilities. While currently positioned more as a productivity and content consumption device than a VR gaming platform, it introduces best-in-class display quality, gesture control, and seamless passthrough. Its integration with Apple’s ecosystem and emphasis on spatial computing could significantly influence how businesses approach virtual workspaces, collaboration, and immersive storytelling in the years ahead. It’s a premium option with early enterprise applications in design, retail, and remote presence.

Each headset comes with its own strengths, and the right choice depends on your goals, whether that’s portability, realism, compatibility, or cost.

Getting Started with VR in Your Business

Virtual reality is now a practical, scalable tool for businesses of all sizes, not just large tech giants. Whether you're in manufacturing, retail, education, or professional services, VR can be integrated into your operations to boost engagement, accelerate learning, reduce costs, and transform how you communicate value.

VR has a multitude of uses and therefore can support multiple functions across your business. In sales, it enables immersive product demos that clients can experience rather than just observe.

For marketing, it powers memorable brand activations at exhibitions and events that stand out from the competition. In design and engineering, teams can visualise prototypes at full scale, make faster decisions, and collaborate more effectively.

Training departments benefit from safe, repeatable learning environments that accelerate onboarding and skill development. Even operations teams can use VR to simulate workflows, plan factory layouts, and onboard remote staff with greater clarity and efficiency.

If you want to start integrating virtual reality into an area of your business, here are our top 5 tips to getting it right.

1. Define the Business Challenge

Begin with a specific problem you want to solve. Are customers struggling to understand your product? Is your team wasting hours on manual onboarding? Are you shipping heavy demo units across the country? The clearer the pain point, the easier it is to design a solution.

2. Pick a High-Impact Use Case

Start where you’ll see results quickly. This could be a single virtual sales experience, a product walkthrough for events, or a training module for new starters. Focused pilots give you measurable ROI without the need for full-scale rollout upfront.

3. Get Stakeholders Involved Early

VR works best when it aligns with existing workflows. Include team members from sales, ops, training or marketing to help shape the experience. Their input ensures the solution feels natural and useful, driving faster adoption.

4. Choose the Right Technology Partner

VR isn’t just about the headset. You’ll need strategic input, user experience design, software development, and integration with your existing systems. At Vision Strike Studios, we offer consultancy-led development tailored to your goals, helping you build something that actually works, not just looks good.

5. Test, Learn, Scale

Launch with a pilot. Gather feedback. Measure engagement, outcomes and time saved. Then refine. Once you’ve proven the value, you can expand with confidence, whether that’s rolling out training across multiple sites or taking your sales experience on the road.

Whether you're looking to modernise your sales toolkit, train staff more effectively, or present your designs in a whole new way, VR can be a powerful asset. The key is to start with purpose, and build from there.

Virtual Reality at Vision Strike Studios

At Vision Strike Studios, we help businesses create and build immersive mixed reality experiences using virtual reality which puts you completely inside a digital world and augmented reality which adds digital elements into your real world view.

As an immersive technology consultancy we engage with your team to build an experience suited to your business needs and requirements to help your team learn faster, your customers engage more deeply, or your sales team close faster.

Book a discovery call today to explore how our AR solutions can unlock new potential in your business.