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takyon writes:

Walmart associates are being trained (briefly) using Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets:

Walmart's 200 "Walmart Academy" training centers are all planning to incorporate virtual reality by the end of 2017, after an earlier pilot program. The limited curriculum is being produced by Strivr, a company previously known for helping NFL players train through VR. New Walmart employees will put on an Oculus Rift headset and enter different real-world scenarios, during which they'll be asked to make simple choices based on what they see. Eventually, Strivr and Walmart hope to expand the program to all stores, not just the academies.

[...] One of the biggest problems for Strivr and Walmart is that high-end VR headsets like the Oculus Rift are expensive and space-consuming. That's why, for now, only one person will go through the training at a time, while other people watch on a flat screen. Everybody will eventually get to spend time in VR, but only over the course of their two-week training period, with each session lasting between 5 and 20 minutes. "In a perfect world, everybody has a VR headset," says Belch. "VR is not there yet. Even the mobile devices, there's a lot of challenges in getting that much hardware out into people's hands at scale." So for now, VR is a small, supplemental part of Walmart training.

From Walmart's blog:

Imagine you're a new Walmart store manager and you've never experienced a Black Friday. Wouldn't it be helpful to understand the dynamics of such a busy day before you ever had to actually manage your associates and customers through it?

Have you ever been punched in the face and trampled on in the virtual world?

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