Looking Back at the Most Notable XR Use Cases of 2024

Written BY

Emily Friedman

January 6, 2025

2024 Enterprise Use Case Trends:

--Greater interest in XR from healthcare and the public sector
--Training still the top XR application in enterprise (increasingly in combo with AI)
--Digital twins are expanding to more and more industries
--More reporting of quantifiable ROI
--Sustainability as a frequently cited driving factor and benefit of XR
--Up-and-coming use cases: PR and employee wellness

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Retail, Healthcare, and Government

Let’s start with Apple Vision Pro. Vision Pro arrived in February of this year, and numerous brands created apps for the spatial computer. These included popular retailers like Wayfair (Decorify interior design app), J. Crew (Virtual Closet), Lowe’s (Style Studio), and Best Buy (Envision to plan your home technology setup).

Though Apple’s headset failed to meet industrial enterprise needs, healthcare and medical professionals proved to be big fans. In breakthrough experiments, Apple Vision Pro assisted in spinal and heart surgeries at London’s Cromwell Hospital and Stanford Health Care in the Bay Area (March) as well as in dozens of surgeries at India’s GEM Hospital in Chennai (May). In all cases, Vision Pro provided consolidated, hands-free access to real-time information about the patient and procedure.

Meanwhile, Sharp Healthcare in San Diego established a Spatial Computing Center of Excellence and purchased 30 Apple Vision Pro headsets for workers doing “all sorts of jobs,” and Boston Children’s Hospital created a medical personnel training app for the Vision Pro.

The medical industry displayed interest in XR in general, as well: Boston’s Mass General Brigham tested XR for code cart training of new nurses, while surgeons from several departments established the UC Davis Medical Extended Reality (MXR) Research Group.

2024 also saw rising interest and even concrete use cases from the public sector, including federal agencies and local governments. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) expanded its use of Vuzix M400 smart glasses with the aim of reducing response times, improving operational efficiency, and boosting workplace safety.

In January, the World Health Organization tested VR training to further improve “public health capacities” at ports and on ships. 13 participants tested a lifelike immersive ship sanitation inspection experience with positive results. The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy explored XR training, as well, to sharpen active shooter skills (and improve graduation rates) and for just-in-time training on ships and submarines, respectively. The Air Force also chose GridRaster’s XR solutions to provide pilots and commanders with real-time operational insights.

At the city/state level, the Iowa Department of Transportation has employed AR to visualize each phase of the infrastructure lifecycle (March), while the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority used VR to present an upcoming construction project to the public (May).

All of the above reveal greater interest in consumer-facing XR applications, though training remained the most popular use case of XR in enterprise throughout 2024.

Training: Still #1, But Now with AI

XR training use cases including AI-enhanced learning applications continued to proliferate in 2024 in a wide range of industries.

TD Bank expanded its VR training pilot project that began in 2023 to additional branches in an effort to change the way new and existing employees learn to handle challenging customer scenarios.

Hilton also turned to XR for soft skills training, combining WebXR and Generative AI into a guest service training experience offering personalized coaching to employees in a “safe, authentic” yet virtual practice space.

In March, New Holland, a branch of the farm machinery and construction equipment company CNH, showcased a VR solution to train partners, dealers, customers, and students on its CR EVO 7.90 combine harvester. Advantages range from teaching flexibility to safety and learning speed.

BNSF Railway incorporated multisensory mechanical training simulations utilizing VR technology from HaptX and RoundTable Learning to enhance safety and improve role readiness. Meanwhile, German company Kloeckner Metals adopted VR - Pico 4 enterprise paired with a real crane remote control - to safely and efficiently train crane operators.

In July, BMW Group unveiled its new Talent Campus in Munich, which will utilize technologies like AI and VR to train “some 40,000 employees;” while AXION Energy introduced VR operator training at its Campana refinery in Argentina. More recently, Emirates announced its use of immersive learning platform MIRA to provide Safety & Emergency Procedures (SEP) training to 23,000 cabin crew workers; and Avangrid implemented VR for wind and solar technicians at its National Training Center in Oregon to complement traditional hands-on learning.

In April, we learned that Delta Air Lines worked with Futurus and ArborXR to improve deicing training for airplane technicians. The case stands out in particular for its impressive results. The airline managed to save millions of dollars in training, operational, and travel costs while increasing employee knowledge retention, muscle memory, and confidence. Moreover, where previously only 3 people could complete deicing training per day, it’s now possible to train over 150 technicians daily–nearly a 5,000% increase!

Buzzworthy: Digital Twins, Sustainability, and Impressive ROI

According to a recent survey by McKinsey Digital, 70% of C-suite technology executives at large enterprises are exploring digital twins. We certainly saw greater interest in digital twins this year and not only in manufacturing. Use cases may not be fully developed, but digital twins are finding their way into a wide range of industries.

BMO Bank, for instance, leveraged Matterport’s digital twin platform to plan rebrands of over 500 bank branches. Digital twins of each branch are used to determine necessary design updates, cutting down on physical site visits and approximately 6,000 hours of equivalent survey work.

6,000 hours of time saved, a 5,000% increase in training capacity…measuring ROI has long been a challenge for enterprise XR adopters, but it seems companies are either getting better at it or are growing more comfortable reporting actual numbers. Fortis Construction, for example, reported saving $3 million in three months on a large data center project with VR BIM reviews.

Less calculable but just as noteworthy are the sustainability benefits in all three use cases. More and more companies are citing sustainability as a driving factor and benefit of using XR. One obvious example is Rivian–the electric vehicle maker shared its use of VR (Autodesk on Varjo headsets) to cut down on emissions, waste, and costs at every stage of design and production.

Underrated: Immersive presentations and more

2024 saw some less popular XR applications, too, like PR (technical briefings, virtual tours, etc.) and employee wellness. In January, Porsche provided engineers and media with Meta Quest 3 headsets for an immersive presentation of the all-electric Macan. In another unique move in March, Porsche’s CEO attended the Taycan Turbo GT’s record-breaking lap around the Laguna Seca raceway via Apple Vision Pro. The spatial experience included a virtual track map and multiple windows of telematics.

In September, Nestlé announced plans to expand its Immersive Factory Experience to additional locations and languages. Designed to “reinforce trust” with stakeholders and reduce the brand’s carbon footprint, the virtual tour reveals the safety, quality and health measures involved in manufacturing well-known nutrition products.

In February, NASA deployed a custom HTC Vive Focus 3 VR headset paired with an exercise bike to provide a welcome mental and physical escape for astronauts doing long stints on the ISS. The federal space agency is also using VR to prepare astronauts for life on Gateway, the lunar space station or “home-away-from home” currently under development. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see similar instances of XR as a health and wellness tool in workplaces in 2025.

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