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What is a VR Classroom? Explanation and Top Software in 2025

February 26, 2025
by Shreya Mattoo

I remember the sudden wave of euphoria that took over my classroom when the professor broke the monotony of classroom teaching with outdoor play. But, even when I was out and about, the nerd in me used to dream of books. Had VR classrooms been a thing back then, I'd be delving into cosmic physics while playing basketball.

Traditional classroom teaching came to a halt not because students had less learning potential but because of the never-ending chain of study monotony.

As we step into a cutting-edge web 3.0 immersive age, we have a huge opportunity to channel digitization into a VR classroom experience to accelerate learning proficiency, rate of cognition, and student excellence. But how is it done? What are the hardware and software investments to run a VR classroom? Let's have a look. 

Apart from investing in new-age VR headsets with less latency, more coverage and high-resolution camera trackers, creating an immersive digital pedagogy with VR visualization software or AR visualization software is the main fuel behind a VR experience. 

For a VR experience to function correctly, a school needs to make a checklist of investments. Cost-effective headsets (like Meta Quest  2, Merge) that cost under $100, wearable VR glasses, bulk VR storage, and less expensive smartphones are necessary to make an environment VR-friendly.

Teachers must be trained in deploying VR software, bulk downloading VR apps, and setting up VR headset configurations for students. Instead of opening their books or paying attention to the blackboard, students would plug in their VR systems and interact with different concepts in 3D.

How to use VR in the classroom

For students to learn VR in the classroom, a teacher must set the stage in a virtual environment. The entire experience needs to be uninterrupted, high-quality, and responsive. Scrutinizing the components of VR hardware and tethering it to VR software in real time helps map out a 3D environment.

To make the space perform better, these components need to be ready. 

1. VR headsets

VR headsets are strap-on headsets students mount on their heads to enter a virtual universe. VR content is displayed on the screen of a smartphone, which is attached to stereoscopic lenses, cameras, and input trackers to create an illusion of an immersive environment.

VR headsets have positional trackers that let you move forward, backward, right, or left.  Any action taken while wearing the headset becomes the action the students’ digital avatars emulate on screen.  

Best VR headsets for 2025:

Before you hit the market and shudder at expensive and hardware-intensive VR headsets, save that headache by referring to the top VR headsets that are popular among educational institutions today:

  • Meta Quest 3: Meta Quest 3 is a standalone VR headset with a high-resolution display and mixed-reality capabilities. It is versatile and compatible with educational applications without a PC connection. 
  • Valve Index: Valve Index is a PC-tethered headset that provides a 360-degree immersive experience suitable for technical and critical educational simulations. It is known for its fidelity and evokes a "touch and feel" emotion in the learner. 
  • HTC Vive Pro 2: HTC Vive Pro 2 features a sharp 5K resolution and expansive field of view that hooks the attention of the learner. This headset is ideal for high-quality visual presentations in a classroom setting. 
  • HP Reverb G2: The HP Reverb G2 offers a high-resolution, photorealistic display and clear visuals to enhance learning capacity. It's pretty comfortable to wear and suitable for non-technical learners. 
  • Pico 4 Ultra: Pico 4 Ultra is a standalone headset with a high-resolution display and a comfortable design, convenient for long educational sessions. 
  • Playstation VR2: PlayStation VR2 is designed for use with PlayStation 5 and offers super high-definition visuals, smooth navigation, and an immersive audio experience. 

2. Smartphones

For schools that cannot afford expensive headsets, smartphones can be an easy way to keep up with VR technology. Smartphones support VR content and are readily available. Educational institutions place bulk orders for smartphones and integrate them with Google Cardboard, Merge Cube, and VR eyeglasses to show VR lesson plans to students. 

Students in STEM can learn from the VR curriculum by interacting with 3D components, model spare parts, engine components, and geometric shapes.

3. VR collaboration tool

The VR collaboration tool is immersive software that enables teachers and students to access, interact with, and manage remote locations from a central location. It gives the same feeling as a “walk-in” visit to a particular place. If a person is interested in learning more about space tech, a VR collaboration tool can place them inside the space galaxy and help them learn about celestial bodies. 

By aligning lesson plan content with VR applications, teachers amplify the traditional classroom experience and empower students to learn more skills. 

With this software, you can also conduct virtual meetups, parties, and informal gatherings where students visit a venue through their avatars and interact with others. The transitions behind each VR environment are quick and low-latent, so students don’t feel the difference between physical and virtual worlds.

4. VR storage

With the huge bandwidth of VR software and hardware comes the innate need to store and manage VR data. VR storage for hardware systems consumes a lot of physical space, leading to the need for VR warehouses. With limited storage capacities, schools often struggle to store VR gear. 

Large containers store VR glasses, VR headsets, and other motion controllers that students need. But, for VR software, hybrid cloud storage on a standard LAN connection becomes an issue. As the lesson plans and school data are private to the school servers, a need for database backup or VPN service providers arises to maintain data integrity.

5. WiFi routers

To support VR, a school must peer ahead of standard network providers. Local area network (LAN) or mobile network providers seldom maintain high-speed connections. Poor connectivity is a common consequence of standard routers that a school uses. Replacing them with high-speed wireless routers can improve VR quality, quicken scene transitions, and eliminate latency in the virtual ecosystem. 

6. VR hardware

Apart from VR headsets, other gear like motion controllers, gloves, and room trackers also aid in providing a 3D immersion. Maintenance of all these devices costs a fortune, so VR hasn’t been expensive yet.

VR hardware devices required to run VR classrooms:

  • Gaming controllers: VR gaming controllers allow free movement in a virtual space. Users can jump, walk, run, shoot, and navigate in a controlled motion.
  • VR glasses for TV: These inexpensive wearables project TV content onto physical spaces. It can be used during virtual presentations and classes in schools as an inexpensive way of delivering lessons.
  • VR input devices: Devices like cameras or webcams register physical markers and overlay 3D visualizations on them in a straight path.
  • Phone acceleration cards: These cards are used for internal computations of 3D graphics and registration of human movements as social interactions in the VR environment.
  • Magnetometers: In augmented and virtual reality, magnetometers are responsible for the rotational tracking of head-mounted displays so a person can move freely.
  • Sensory displays: These use haptic technology to sense the user’s next action and execute that action in the virtual universe. They direct the user in a specific direction by interpreting the current speed with which the user moves.

By aligning academic curriculum with VR content, schools give students room to grow digitally and academically. This propels the students forward and opens pathways to newer forms of learning.

7. VR curriculum 

The only difference between the traditional curriculum and the VR curriculum is that students don’t have to cram content from their books. The entire learning experience is through digital technology. 

Students come to learn important concepts by interacting with them in person. With VR, their lesson plans are visualized through 3D projections. Students can travel to different places, explore monuments, and interact with others through 360° videos. 

The tech-powered scenario leaves a lasting impression on the students, and 3D content helps them remember the important dates and events that took place in yesteryears.

8. VR gamification 

Adding gamified elements to digital VR visuals is another way of improving student engagement. Putting creative animations, gamified rewards, or creative user interfaces that give "eureka" moments to your learners or professionals can take your proficiency up a notch.

Some educational institutions have also invested in launching quizzes, polls, contests, and olympiads with gamification in VR classrooms to prevent learners from getting diverted and degrading their own performance. With high-resolution, interactive, and 3D gamified experiences, there is always more to the student's expectations than what meets their eye. 

9. VR excursions 

Why limit the learner's experience to indoor premises? Offering VR excursions is a great way to combine the 2D and 3D atlases and empower your learners to experience new places and relish the experience of exploring new cities without the requirement of a tour guide or even money. 

Virtual Reality excursions not only spike the fun element but also offer a massive room for learning. Putting these new VR environments and overlaying annotations that describe the essence of those places in detail can curate an experiential learning scenario for students and enable them to feed their curiosity with the curriculum.

VR classroom applications that you can use today:

  • NYT VR is a mobile-friendly app for creating digital 3D simulations of tourist attractions.
  • Within features the best VR content from famous cinematic creators. It offers a 360° dome-like experience. It can be used on iPhone, Android, Samsung Gear VR, and Google Cardboard.
  • VR Expeditions creates 3D maps of eminent places and enables students to navigate a particular area.
  • 360 cities feature high-quality, 360° interactive panoramic photos and videos of cities.
  • Discovery Channel teleports you to picturesque locations where nature is at its best. By exploring this application, you can interact with animal species, plant species, and different types of topographies and learn more about them.
  • Avanti’s World is the first virtual reality educational theme park where students can visit and experience different types of fossils in 3D.

Sometimes, working with VR can even be dangerous. As the person remains immersed in a virtual space, they might be unaware of where they are going in the real world.

Want to learn more about Virtual Reality (VR) Collaboration Platforms? Explore VR Collaboration products.

How to use AR in the classroom

Augmented reality is different from virtual reality. With AR, students can experience 3D objects in the real world. It uses object detection techniques to detect, identify, and label objects and overlay content on top of them. The use cases of AR in education surpass VR, as AR requires half the amount of hardware and software knowledge compared to VR.

Popular augmented reality (AR) apps for education

  • Photomath is an interactive VR platform that can simulate mathematical shapes and geometrical objects and derive formulas in real-time.
  • Quiver is a design and drawing app that helps you color 3D objects,
  • 3D Bear introduces your kids to AR by helping them see and play with 3D models.
  • Skyview Lite uses a phone camera to visualize objects like stars, planets, and constellations.
  • AR Atom Visualizer for ARCore replicates the structure of an atom so that a student can see the movement of neurons and electrons along the atomic orbit.

Students who once shuddered at learning bookish concepts get excited to mount a headset and experience new ideas. It acquaints them with their studies and the current progress in technology.

Use cases of AR and VR in education

Extending immersive tech to schools has had mixed outcomes. While some schools are on board with incorporating VR into the curriculum, others are reluctant about its benefits. A few areas where VR systems have proven successful are listed below.

  • Enhanced training: With 3D simulations, concepts get ingrained into students' minds. Virtually witnessing a particular subject through VR headsets and engaging with it creates a recall in memory.
  • Distance learning: As a replacement for online classes, VR helps students collaborate with their peers and teachers through holograms. It enables everyone to raise questions, debate, or gain the speaker's attention.
  • Digital twins: Replicating book-based objects and figures is easy in VR. Machines and equipment can be replicated in a virtual universe as holograms for students to walk through and learn how the parts function.
  • Remote collaboration: In contrast to extracurricular events, VR enables students to connect, play, and collaborate in a virtual space through hand trackers.
  • Improved collaboration and group learning: A virtual environment brings all students together and enhances productivity through team collaboration and group learning.
  • Immersive lectures:  Teachers can address a class of students in VR, similar to in-person teaching.
  • Group learning: Schools can teach a group of students in VR without any distractions. This helps give students a global learning experience through interaction with students from different schools across the world.

Who can benefit from VR education?

  • Biology students or Biologists can try VR to study plant textures and species, learn about human anatomy, or explore fossils. 
  • Interviewees who want to work with a corporate firm can try VR classrooms to simulate a mock interview, improve their communication skills, and answer questions confidently.
  • Civil engineering students use VR software to examine the design of buildings, build prototypes, and render images.
  • Aviation students can break down different aircraft components and take facility checks.
  • Travel bloggers use VR to ignite the same set of emotions by virtually trotting different tourist spots, historical monuments, or parks.
  • Archaeologists are experimenting with VR to study the world’s most famous artifacts.
  • Medical science students are experimenting with painless ways of doing surgeries by visualizing human organs in semi-VR.

Best VR collaboration platforms in 2025

VR collaboration platforms allow remote access and management of activities through VR devices. Businesses use them to create virtual chat rooms, metaverses, security and privacy systems, and social networks from a user’s location.

However, given the newness of this technology, deciding on a platform presents a challenge for educational institutions. To create a virtual reality space, first consider your company's software requirements. Then, keep reading to learn more about the top VR tools in 2025.

To be included in this category, software must:

  • Allow users to select an avatar to represent their likeliness.
  • Enable users to select and edit environments to host meetups.
  • Provide the ability to communicate with other participants through speech or text.
  • Allow users to participate in a given activity together.

The following data was collected from the G2 Winter 2025 Grid Report in February 2025. Some reviews might be edited for clarity. 

1. VrChat

VrChat makes it easy to create, modify, and launch 3D immersive experiences via a compatible VR headset or a mixed-reality headset. With an agile virtual ecosystem, users can collaborate, learn, and play virtual games while collaborating with other users, initiating conversations and physical interaction with haptic feedback features and audio sonics. 

What users like best:

This platform allows you to take the chat to a genuinely superior level. It is a fantastic increment to the chat scene and more embedded in the world and technology of today. The platform supports both VR and non-VR modes which is great because although it is available to embrace the world of VR it also doesn't exclude those who don't have the equipment yet, providing a unique and immersive social experience to all."

- VrChat Review, Tiago F. 

What users dislike:

"There is no real filter if you have voice chat activated, which for me is not a problem, but if you have younger people using it, then they could run into all types of conversations, you know?"

- VrChat Review, Bernardo F. 

2. Telia VR Conference 

Telia VR Conference provides the ability to build high-resolution and agile virtual environments to simulate real-life scenarios, communicate with peers with 3D audio and video immersion, and create realistic-looking avatars in the metaverse. Telia VR conference also enables you to develop and overlay 3D objects in the physical environment for enhanced learning.  

What users like best:

"Meeting in a three-dimensional space instead of a two-dimensional grid makes me more excited. Visualize yourself brushing on a virtual whiteboard with your colleagues or convincing your superiors in a balmy, warm place. In addition, the universal compatibility across devices suggests that everybody will be able to join the fun, regardless of their VR hardware."

Telia VR Conference Review, Asad L.

What do users dislike:

"I personally feel that the hardware requirements to use this software are a bit more high-end; basic users will not be able to use this software due to hardware constraints, mainly due to the graphic card requirements."

- Telia VR Conference Review, Ashfaq A.

3. ArborXR

ArborXR provides an integrated development studio and device management platform to monitor and control your AR and VR experiences. With its help, you can adjust and tweak settings in the VR ecosystem and manage the health and steadiness of VR gadgets for a lag-free and high-resolution immersive experience. The centralized dashboard of ArborXR enables you to protect devices, manage screen times, and create and deploy hybrid content to bridge the gaps between the virtual and real worlds. 

What users like best:

"One thing I really like about ArborXR is managing the whole VR device portfolio because when you work with different devices, you need to control and manage them properly."

- ArborXR Review, Siraj a.

What do users dislike:

"My only complaint is that remote viewing isn't available on the Meta headsets, but I understand that this is a limitation imposed by Meta, not a limitation of Arbor."

- ArborXR Review, Steve D.

4. MeetinVR

MeetinVR offers real-time collaborative features to initialize and run VR meetings, design breakout rooms, and replay or rewind the speech of presenters to comprehend and understand the sessions with improved concentration. MeetinVR is a great way to bring remote teams together, create engaging sessions, and have immersive brainstorming sessions to factor in each and every person's opinion on an upcoming idea and strategy. You can also share 3D design prototypes, enable video conferencing, and edit or modify the contents of a common project at the same time.

What users like best:

"MeetinVR integrates with popular productivity tools like Slack and Trello, making it easy to bring work into the virtual environment. We have used similar virtual meeting platforms in the past that did not allow such collaboration and integration."

- MeetinVR Review, Kaitlyn L.

What users dislike:

"Online platforms make people discouraged and disconnected. Also, there is a regular need for the internet, and in a space where people seem to use fewer screens, it has increased the screen time"

- MeetinVR Review, Mansi D.

5. Qbit

Qbit offers a platform to run glitch-free, high-quality AR and VR content ecosystems with ease. Its seamless and dynamic interface with built-in AI support allows you to sort out your immersive worlds, change themes or layouts, and even sync the virtual world with your headset or other VR gear without a lot of integration or configuration. 

What users like best:

"Qbit gives a fluid 3D Augmented Reality experience with a smooth, user-friendly interface, but what truly distinguishes it is the AI support, which adds an extra degree of convenience and makes it stand out from other AR applications on the market."

- Qbit Review, Rupal S. 

What users dislike:

"Qbit requires a certain level of technical expertise to use effectively. While the software is designed to be user-friendly, quantum computing is a complex field that can be challenging for those who are new to it. As such, users may need to invest some time in learning how to use the software and understanding the underlying principles of quantum computing."

- Qbit Review, Joel B.

Click to chat with G2's Monty-AI

Two plus two is 4, even in VR

Learning takes a toll on students as they pore over weighty books all day. During exams, their stress levels increase. Virtual reality is a majestic realm of technology that makes learning fun, interactive, and creative. The intersection between learning and education will put our world at the forefront of innovation, deep thinking, and fast literacy.

Hop on the VR bandwagon and take a step forward for your brand by exploring the best augmented reality software development kit (AR SDK) and fueling your ROI with low-code efforts.

This article was originally published in 2023. The content has been updated with new information.

SM

Shreya Mattoo

Shreya Mattoo is a Content Marketing Specialist at G2. She completed her Bachelor's in Computer Applications and is now pursuing Master's in Strategy and Leadership from Deakin University. She also holds an Advance Diploma in Business Analytics from NSDC. Her expertise lies in developing content around Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning, Peer Review Code, and Development Software. She wants to spread awareness for self-assist technologies in the tech community. When not working, she is either jamming out to rock music, reading crime fiction, or channeling her inner chef in the kitchen.