The AR/VR World Summit answered some key questions on what types of organizations are interested in VR development to solve problems, and how they are solving those problems.
Primarily, companies incur enormous expense developing physical prototypes (Like Lockheed Martin’s control boards) as well as repeatable training excersizes (Like the UK firefighters having to prepare a fresh fire damaged house scene by burning a new one every time.) Creating these things in VR is relatively inexpensive in comparison.
The early research shown at the conference indicates that what the user experiences in VR DOES in fact transfer to the real world, even if the graphics are not photo-realistic, a testament to muscle memory and kinesthetic learning.