Table of contents:
How VR Is Changing the Training Process
Tips for successful VR training scenarios
VR Training Solution Architecture
Features of Virtual Training Simulations
How Much Does VR Training Simulator Development Cost?
VR hardware and software have been developed a great deal since their early stages: now, software solutions are more consistent in quality and the hardware is more affordable than ever before.
That’s making more companies think about implementing VR in various business operations, especially in staff training routines. The reasons are obvious: VR training saves money and keeps trainees out of harm’s way until they’re completely comfortable with their tools.
Let’s dive into VR for corporate training and see how it helps to make training more effective.
How VR Is Changing the Training Process
Tips for successful VR training scenarios
VR Training Solution Architecture
Features of Virtual Training Simulations
How Much Does VR Training Simulator Development Cost?
Workforce training has never been easy. It often requires traveling long distances and the involvement of numerous trainers, which gets costly. In addition, in some fields of work, training carries potential safety concerns.
Virtual Reality has features that help companies make their training programs safer, more convenient, and effective.
Instructional designers can use Virtual Reality to create realistic training scenarios for specific roles. The ability to customize virtual environments makes it possible for companies to put trainees in a 360° virtual space where they can actively learn by experiencing sights and sounds and interacting with objects and other trainees.
Combined with a carefully structured learning curriculum, immersive technology can improve:
Next, let’s take a closer look at why Virtual Reality is important and recognize some of its advantages.
Now that we know how Virtual Reality in learning enhances staff training, we’ll examine further benefits it brings to businesses.
Sometimes employees have to work in a hazardous environment or use dangerous equipment. Life-threatening situations can happen on oil rigs, in steel factories, at mining sites, and tons of other workplaces, and VR training simulators can help workers learn safely.
With Virtual Reality, learning how to use dangerous equipment, such as heavy machinery, or how to respond to dangerous situations becomes easier than ever. Workers who take part in Virtual Reality employee training programs that simulate such situations will:
This is how SEAT decreased the rate of muscle injuries in the workplace by 70% within two years after the organization started using VR training solutions. Employees have encountered true-to-life scenarios without being exposed to real risks, learned how to complete dangerous tasks, and were ready to perform perfectly in reality.
Learning by doing is the most effective way to learn practical skills. When trainees have the opportunity to learn or practice skills in a VR training simulator, they not only perform better in reality but also show increased confidence in the process.
One study showed that retention rates for Virtual Reality training were 75%, compared to 5% gained from lecture-based learning and 10% from reading.
In Virtual Reality, the possibilities for creating immersive life-like experiences are endless. Inside the simulation, users can receive hands-on experience without any risk, practice an unlimited number of times, and perfect their skills, with a high retention rate.
Students who are training using Virtual Reality state that they are much more engaged in the process compared with in-person types of training or non-interactive e-learning. Engagement is tied quite closely to how well students retain new knowledge.
In terms of engagement, VR training solutions are inferior only to hands-on teaching by other people, where the retention rate reaches 90%.
Virtual Reality training benefits also include more efficient uptake of knowledge. According to the study by PwC, students learned soft skills four times faster with virtual training than with in-person training.
Virtual Reality training simulations built by expert instructional designers feature carefully planned educational modules that optimize the learners’ experience and provide personalized training.
Also, Virtual Reality training solutions provide better, faster opportunities for feedback, which also saves students’ time.
Another of the VR training benefits is that, using this technology for ongoing education, you can easily adapt and change a training program to incorporate new requirements, to cope with a rising number of users, to add new modules, and so on.
One definite advantage of Virtual Reality training is that it provides the opportunity to add and modify training scenarios, the environment, and objects, something that can’t always be said for education in a “physical” environment using real-life objects.
Training is typically expensive. The budget often includes the following expenses:
Companies can save a lot on the costs of training using Virtual Reality. With Virtual Reality training software, they can create comprehensive virtual courses with reusable and easily adaptable content for students to learn at any time, anywhere, and at their own pace.
Also, extra expenses related to travel, meals, repeated instructor fees, and perhaps equipment being out of commission are totally eliminated.
According to the 2020 Training Industry Report, companies with 100–999 employees spend about $1,678 per employee on training. And VR can cut this number by at least half.
VR training solutions offer efficient tools for student performance and progress tracking. One of these tools is xAPI — a specification for learning technology that allows for collecting data about how students learn.
With xAPI, businesses can see how students perform, which parts take more or less time to comprehend, how exactly students use educational content, and so on. With such data at hand, it is possible to perform powerful analytics on learning efficiency, automate all reporting routines, and gather any data required to make VR training better.
Now, let’s see how different companies apply VR to their staff training process.
Virtual Reality helps companies improve their staffers’ skills in many ways apart from saving resources.
Various VR training solutions offer scenarios that improve trainees’ professional knowledge and also teach collaborative teamwork, problem-solving, and other essential skills.
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For example, here are some of the benefits of VR training for developing soft skills.
Instructors can use Virtual Reality to create scenarios that put trainees in real-life situations where they have to find a solution to a certain problem. By giving them a life-like sense of the situation, the staffers will be encouraged to come up with reasonable decisions.
For example, instructors can use Virtual Reality to create an interactive environment such as a conference room, where trainees can practice giving presentations or sales pitches.
In such a situation, VR offers an experience-based learning process that guarantees that the knowledge sticks.
Another great thing about Virtual Reality training systems is that they let users practice crisis management.
Apart from putting a person under stress, real-life crisis situations may carry risks that negatively affect the person’s ability to think clearly, thus reducing the effectiveness of unprepared hands-on learning.
Virtual Reality is a great way to transport people into realistic, yet risk-free work scenarios. This allows the trainee to polish their skills and practice drills with a clear mind.
For instance, the British Navy has implemented VR training software to create submarine and warship simulations. These simulations allow recruits to experience an emergency situation without any actual risk. This way, they are able to better understand how they must react in a real crisis and stay in control of the situation.
When hiring new staff, it is crucial to get them oriented and working as quickly as possible. Many companies deal with this by offering presentations or videos on the company’s history and culture.
Certainly, these are helpful — but there’s always a way to make them more engaging and less time-consuming.
For example, a company can utilize VR technology to create a simulation that takes the newly hired employees around the building, showing them everything they need to know.
VR can also be used to introduce corporate culture to interns and hired staff.
Virtual Reality allows for creating engaging and interactive presentations that can help new workers better learn the environment they will work in, as well as to explain company benefits, growth prospects, important contacts — everything they might need.
IKEA has used Virtual Reality to build immersive simulations that allow workers to experience the workdays of their colleagues. This way, the staffers are able to better understand the opportunities IKEA offers.
Virtual Reality has proved itself an effective learning tool for all kinds of industries. Many companies are finding ways to implement VR to enable staff to learn essential skills in a better way.
Here is a quick rundown of how some businesses go about it:
It would not be honest to say that Virtual Reality training is a perfect match for any company and training purpose. It has its drawbacks, along with impressive benefits, which we discussed earlier.
Let’s determine whether AR/VR training might be a match for your company.
Is VR training right for you?
To learn whether the multiple Virtual Reality advantages apply when it comes to training at your company, ask yourself these questions. The answer may indicate whether it is truly a good fit for you.
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, a VR training simulator could be a perfect fit for your business. If you’re not sure that VR training fits you, contact us for a detailed consultation.
If the target skills require using interactive learning methods, or using equipment and physical space, they are likely to be trained better via VR. The same is true for virtual soft skills training, such as participating in challenging or sensitive conversations.
When it comes to building VR solutions, it’s best to first conduct thorough research into the market and find reliable specialists in the field.
Virtual Reality is a rather complex technology that requires experienced developers, designers, business analysts, and other team members. In terms of training, a subject matter expert is a must, too.
We recommend you turn to software development companies that possess expert knowledge in the field. They can provide you with a VR development team of hand-picked specialists, manage the development process and deliverables, and make sure that everything is done according to the best industry and technology standards.
Other facets of developing a training solution that can be done only by professional vendors include:
It’s especially important, when creating Virtual Reality for enterprise, to employ only experienced vendors with a number of successful projects under their belt, vendors who have proven they can accomplish complex enterprise-grade software development projects without surprises or disappointments.
Successful use of Virtual Reality in education depends entirely on setting the right training goals. As you’ve seen from the previous section, VR will best fit your learning solution if you have carefully analyzed your goals and objectives first.
Training goals usually can be divided into three groups:
With all that information at hand, businesses can prepare a well-thought-out plan for VR training implementation and build an efficient solution with a reliable vendor.
VR training solutions are very helpful at improving trainee retention and skill development during the learning process.
Before you decide whether to apply the technology to your instructional endeavors, let’s take a look at how the VR training app works.
At its most basic, VR training software includes three elements:
Virtual Reality applications feature complex software that goes beyond your usual social media or texting apps.
As we can see from the architecture of the VR training app, the software always consists of several layers that are built with different technology.
So, let’s break the VR technology stacks down according to the job they do.
For the web administration panel, JS, HTML, and CSS are the base of the frontend section. Developers use those tools to build the interface of the panel.
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When it comes to the backend of the VR training solution, Python and Go are some of the most popular options.
In terms of cloud services, there are already developed infrastructures. Companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft provide their own solutions: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud. Many VR developers rely on those services for asset storage.
The last thing to discuss here is the base of the actual VR simulation. Essentially, VR is a three-dimensional environment, where the user can move and interact with objects freely.
Those environments and objects are built with Unity and C languages. Depending on the platform chosen to run the VR app, the following SDKs are used: Oculus SDK, GearVR SDK, iOS/Android SDK, WebVR.
Web administration panel | JS, HTML, CSS, Python, Go |
Cloud storage | Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud |
VR training app | Unity, C languages, Oculus SDK, GearVR SDK, iOS/Android SDK, WebVR |
VR training software can serve various business domains, solving different kinds of problems for different users.
The different purposes to which a VR training app can be applied will require varying features.
But there are many features that are essential in any type of VR training software. Let’s review those.
To give you a better perspective on the kinds of features that may be included in training software, we’ll divide them according to the element of the software they will be part of.
These are features that will help you cover the basic needs of whatever domain you provide training for.
Now, let’s talk about the actual cost of building a VR training application.
Given the many purposes VR training software serves, what it can do can vary greatly.
This means that a different set of features will be included in each app, which influences the overall development cost.
So, before giving an estimate of virtual reality app development services, we have to discuss everything that can affect the cost of Virtual Reality training.
There are three major types of VR training apps companies can use, depending on their business needs:
The cost of the fully-featured VR app will obviously be higher than that of a more limited solution.
But before you can build any of those apps, you must consider one of the most important factors in VR training software development — getting the training part right.
Before building virtual environments and assets, you’ll need to figure out what assets you need and how they will work together to help workers learn new skills.
That is what instructional design is all about. Here’s what instructional designers do before the development process kicks off:
That information will help developers create VR training solutions that trainees can rely on to polish their skills and attain new knowledge most effectively.
Now that you know how your training is going to work, it is time to create content for it.
Depending on your training scenarios, you might need:
After the assets are complete, developers can start putting them together into the VR training software.
When it comes to development cost, the composition of the development team also can change it greatly. A team can include a variety of specialists, depending on the job you need to do.
A general team of software developers includes:
With VR training software specifically, you also might need:
On top of the cost of virtual reality app development services, employing VR requires specific hardware to run the apps.
You will need to purchase VR headsets from companies like HTC, Oculus, or Samsung. Some of the more affordable options from Oculus start at $300 apiece.
A rough estimate for a VR training app would be from $10,000 to $35,000. Keep in mind that this cost is based on a developer rate of $35/hour, which is the average in Belarus and Estonia. Developers from those regions are highly skilled but offer comparatively lower rates.
Both Virtual and Augmented Reality are great technologies that can bring staff training to a whole new level. They offer new ways of interacting with learning content that improves user retention.
But how do those two stack up against each other?
Let’s compare AR and VR for corporate training from two major points of view:
Augmented Reality is great for breaking down specific topics, and it is a lot cheaper to implement. If there is a need for more complex immersive training scenarios, VR would be a preferable option.
The HQSoftware team has partnered with an American startup to develop a VR training solution that enables users to learn technical skills and find new jobs.
The software features a selection of VR simulations from various domains, such as electrical engineering, soldering, or cooking.
The training process goes through two stages:
There is also a scoring module that assesses the trainee’s performance.
We have also built a Virtual Reality application for a driving school. The application simulates the distorted vision of a drunk driver, allowing students to experience the physical impairments that come with intoxicated driving.
The app simulates the effects of latency vision, swirled, blurred, vignette, and double vision.
If you are looking to develop your VR training solution — talk to us. We will discuss your ideas, come up with a project specification and a cost estimate.
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