With everything that’s going on in the world at the moment you could be forgiven for thinking that escaping to a virtual reality world would be appealing – but how about working in virtual reality?

VR (virtual reality) is a booming trend and not just for the games industry. Virtual reality is adding an alternative way of working in many industries such as construction, the medical profession and teaching and learning, so there’s plenty of scope for careers.

Virtual reality allows people to have a fully immersive experience of an environment. You can walk around, interact with things – you can even perform a ‘virtual’ surgery for practise. VR is growing in importance in all sorts of areas that you might not expect.

Virtual reality jobs - technical

Jobs in virtual reality are not limited to programmers and developers. Roles exist for project managers, artists and quality assurance bods too. Here are just a few of the career avenues that you might like to consider:

Software and hardware engineers

Creating a virtual reality experience that works well for the end user and is as close to reality as possible is no easy task. In a playful sense, I guess you could say that it’s a bit like playing God in that you are literally creating three-dimensional, computer generated worlds. Doing this requires a team of individuals with specific skills – you need people who can great, fix and de-bug graphics programmes and also audio programmes for a start.

When you take the example of audio engineering you begin to see how VR can play an important role in industries outside of the games industry, for example in allowing people working on construction projects to anticipate how materials and design can affect the acoustics of a structure. This can be valuable in making long-term costs savings when planning and creating buildings.

It’s not all about the software of course – the hardware is key to a successful VR experience too and developers will be needed to work on headsets and other wearable technology such as gloves.

We mustn’t forget that a virtual reality experience needs content to work – 3D modellers, artists and animators as well as storytellers work hard to produce the storytelling and artistic elements of any VR product.

Virtual reality job roles – non-technical

Of course there are the usual array of job roles within the virtual reality arena, sales, marketing, quality assurance and project management for example. VR is pushing the boundaries in many ways, not just in a technical sense and there are also some more unusual areas of work, such as ethics. Virtual reality experiences throw up some interesting ethical issues. For example, are there some things that we should not be able to experience even in a virtual sense? Is there such a thing as a VR experience that is too real? And can this be harmful? And what impact could VR have on people and society?

If you want to know more about working in virtual reality, check out our interviews with Jonathon Rudd, Oculus Rift developer and with Rob Saxton, technical director of Aniode who we met at the EGX event last year.

New development in virtual reality in education

On the 15th November 2016 it was announced that Google will be bringing virtual reality directly into UK schools for both teachers and students.

Google will be offering five hours of free training to teachers via The Digital Garage which will prepare teachers to deliver digital skills and boost confidence amongst staff. They will also be offering their cardboard virtual reality headsets for use in schools.