--- title: "Virtual reality training that puts people inside the moment" description: "How PTR builds VR for role-play, perspective-taking and procedural practice: rehearse a hard conversation or high-pressure procedure, with evidence linked." canonical: https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/virtual-reality --- [XR](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr) # Virtual reality that puts people inside the moment A hard conversation or a high-pressure procedure can be described, or your people can rehearse it, standing inside a scenario that answers what they do. The moment ## Two clinicians in a corridor, and a sentence one of them has to say A junior doctor has to tell a senior colleague that the handover missed something, in a corridor, with a patient’s family in earshot. She has read the escalation policy. She has never said the sentence out loud. In the headset the colleague turns, answers what she says, and the corridor stays a corridor. Your clinical staff rehearse the corridor conversation with a colleague who answers back. Your staff stand in the place of the colleague everyone walks past, and remember it. Your crews point out the marked hazard before the shift, as many times as it takes. How PTR builds it ## Role-play, perspective and procedure, from inside the headset Role-play and rehearsal is practice of conversations that are difficult to stage any other way. Perspective experiences step a learner into another person’s position to build understanding that sticks. Procedural simulation lets someone practise a sequence, a decision or a high-pressure environment safely and repeatedly. All three follow one pattern: a safe environment, real pressure, the learner’s own choice, then reflect and repeat. Your nurses slow down as the hands arrive, from the patient’s own side of the bed. Your operators hover over the console and make the call with nothing at stake. Your drivers adjust their grip on a wet road at dusk, before the real one. Want your team practising inside a scenario like this? [Open the contact form](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/virtual-reality#contact) Ask our CEO Simon Lowe’s Digital Twin a question Where it is used ## Where the work has settled, and what was measured PTR’s VR work spans [healthcare and medical training](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/healthcare-medical), [education and workforce development](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/education), aged care and disability services, creative arts and galleries, government and defence leadership, and corporate and executive leadership. The projects include three published examples of those patterns, and a fourth backed by two peer-reviewed studies. Your observer and your participant share the perspective-taking room, then talk it through. 1,149 Eligible nurse and social worker leaders across Mayo Clinic offered a VR empathy and bias-recognition training, evaluated in two peer-reviewed papers. [Read the research](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/research-evidence/vr-nursing-leaders-mayo-clinic) 96% Of Mater Education staff said they wanted more VR-based learning after piloting a VR feedback-conversation simulation, per Mater's own program evaluation. 82% Of QA testers rated the facilitated post-VR group discussion useful or very useful, in Google's peer-reviewed CHI 2024 VR DEI case study (9 of 11 respondents). Featured work ## Mater Education, Google and Cornell University Mater Education brought its Speaking with Good Judgement program into a branched VR simulation of real hospital environments. PTR co-designed four VR scenarios with Google’s DEI team, each seen from two points of view and followed by a live, facilitated group debrief. Everyday Inclusion, co-designed with Cornell University and Angela Winfield, has led PTR’s inclusion library since 2018 and has been reused for Etihad Airways and Metro Trains workshops. [Mater Education. Your clinicians rehearse the feedback conversation at a bedside in a simulation of their own hospital.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/mater-speaking-with-good-judgement) [PTR and Google. Your staff live the same workplace situation from two points of view, then debrief it with a facilitator.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/google-vr-dei-training) [Cornell University. Your teams take the Everyday Inclusion module that airlines and rail operators have run since.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/everyday-inclusion-cornell) What the learner does ## Practice you do standing up Virtual reality replaces what a person sees and hears, so the floor underfoot belongs to the training room while everything within reach belongs to the scenario. Turning to face someone, stepping back, reaching for the thing on the table: those are part of the rehearsal. Psychological safety is built into the scenario before anyone puts on a headset, because a person standing in the moment cannot look away from it. Your staff stand in one room and reach into another, with the training room still underfoot. Your participants rehearse the safety walkthrough in pairs before it is real. Your staff rehearse the standing workplace conversation, stepping back when they need to. Where VR needs care ## What the published work warns about Google’s CHI 2024 authors identify headset discomfort and fit with glasses, the cost of scaling headsets and facilitators, limited visual fidelity and participants wanting more agency, and name novelty as a possible contributor to the positive response. Mayo Clinic’s trial reports significant, durable gains in empathy and willingness to act, from a mostly white, female sample in one health system with no comparison group at the 6 to 8 month follow-up. New to VR? Start with [What is Virtual Reality?](https://peopletechrevolution.com/learn/xr/what-is-virtual-reality) or the [PTR Labs demos](https://labs.peopletechrevolution.com/). Your staff who use a wheelchair rehearse seated, with the scenario built for where they are. Your participants swap positions mid-scenario and feel the other side of the conversation. Your service staff practise the recovery conversation, paired with a facilitated debrief. > "Virtual Reality offers a unique and powerful training tool that can immerse individuals in realistic, high-pressure environments without the associated risks." Simon Lowe CEO, People Tech Revolution. [Let’s be prepared, Global Best Practice Group, August 2024](https://globalbestpracticegroup.com/vr/) The library ## Ready-to-run titles, built on the same patterns Much of this work now sits in the [PTR VR Library](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/ptr-vr-library) as ready-to-run titles, built on the same role-play, perspective and procedural patterns: a branching choice, a viewpoint swap, a procedure sequence, and a group debrief at the end of each. Your learners choose the branch and live with where it leads. Your learners swap viewpoints and see the same room from the other chair. Your staff rehearse the procedure sequence until the order is theirs. - [The PTR VR Library](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/ptr-vr-library) - [Immersive training and roleplay](https://peopletechrevolution.com/training/vr-training-and-roleplay) Panoramic capture ## Panoramic capture and review Where a rebuilt room is more than the job needs, a panoramic capture of the real one does the work: the warehouse aisle, the gallery, the rooftop. [360 experiences](https://peopletechrevolution.com/fast-builds/360-experiences) covers how a capture becomes a scene a browser or a headset can stand in. Your team reviews the panoramic bands of the aisle on a laptop before anyone wears a headset. Your visitors walk the gallery in a headset before the exhibition opens. Your crews practise hand tracking on the rooftop the job is on. Runs on - [Meta Quest 3](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/meta-quest-3) - [Meta Quest Pro](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/meta-quest-pro) - [PICO](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/pico) - [VIVE & Varjo](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/vive-and-varjo) - [Apple Vision Pro](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices/apple-vision-pro) - [Every headset & device](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/devices) Want your team practising inside a scenario like this? [Open the contact form](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/virtual-reality#contact) Ask our CEO Simon Lowe’s Digital Twin a question ## Related PTR work and further reading The ready-to-run library, the facilitated pattern behind it, and the evidence it rests on. [The PTR VR Library. The catalogue of ready-to-run VR titles.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/ptr-vr-library) [Immersive training and roleplay. The facilitated-debrief pattern behind every scenario.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/training/vr-training-and-roleplay) [Research and evidence. The published studies behind PTR’s figures.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/research-evidence) ## Sources and further reading Studies of VR diversity training, empathy and perspective-taking, with a systematic review of training outcomes. ### [Leveraging Virtual Reality to Enhance Diversity and Inclusion Training at Google](https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3637128) Bursztein, Brown, Sanderson and Kelley · ACM CHI EA ’24 · 2024 The CHI 2024 case study behind the five concerns listed above. ### [A virtual reality intervention to increase interracial empathy and upstander behaviors in nursing leaders](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117648) Phelan et al · Social Science and Medicine · 2025 The Mayo Clinic trial behind the 6 to 8 months follow-up figure above. ### [Building long-term empathy: A large-scale comparison of traditional and virtual reality perspective-taking](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204494) Herrera, Bailenson, Weisz, Ogle and Zaki · PLOS ONE · 2018 The large-scale comparison behind PTR’s perspective-taking pattern above. ### [The Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Training: A Systematic Review](https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2023.2240767) Chang, Kazemi, Esmaeili and Davies · "Journal of Organizational Behavior Management" · 2023 The systematic review behind PTR’s approach to VR-based procedure rehearsal above.