Use of VR training in the military

To say that virtual reality can help a business do something better, faster, more efficiently etc is easy, but to prove it is not so easy. Happily, several industries have been using it for decades and so a fairly decent corpus of empirical data exists to back up the effectiveness of VR training.

In a past Brain Man VR Business Blogs we have described its effectiveness when used in the context of training elite sports people and aircraft mechanics, helping people cope better with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and to address various phobias. Most recently we described the rapidly expanding use of VR with haptic feedback devices in getting trainee surgeons up to speed.

This week we continue to fill the gaps in this evidence base to cover the use of VR solutions in the military. Next week we’ll describe some of the ways VR is being exploited to accelerate training in the emergency services.

While the above video showcases a British company, the UK are relative newcomers to the field. The USA Army has been using Virtual Reality to train their soldiers for at least a decade.

Originally VR was used to familiarise soldiers with the lay of the land before being deployed into the field for real. But over the last 10 years the simulations have become more and more elaborate.