Beyond Gaming and Movies. Exploring Unconventional Applications of AR and VR in Entertainment

Virtual and augmented reality continue to successfully transform entertainment because the immersive digital environment creates an unforgettable and unique experience.

According to Statista, the value of the VR gaming market was estimated at $7.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $45.09 billion in 2027.

In this article, we will delve into the most interesting cases that demonstrate the limitless possibilities of AR and VR in entertainment. We will explore the fusion of technology and craftsmanship, from exciting sports competitions to amusing theater shows in VR that blur the line between reality and the virtual world.

Explore Unusual VR Events That Redefine Entertainment

Unconventional VR Games in the World of Entertainment

One of the most popular areas where virtual reality is used is gaming. According to an IDC survey, 64% of virtual reality users said that the gaming industry is the industry where VR will thrive the most.

That’s due to virtual reality being an immersive digital space in which you can create any setting and game tasks. VR is best suited for quests, shooters, and other genres where you need to move in space and perform tasks with controllers or hands.

One of the original representatives of VR games is Job Simulator, where a headset user lives the life of an ordinary office worker. The essence of the game is performing all the tasks in the office of those times when many processes were not yet automated. The entire gameplay is complemented by bright graphics and specific humor. So, in this game, you can throw a stapler at the boss, fire employees, throw various objects in all directions, including food, etc.

Lights, Camera, VR! The Next Chapter of Theatre and Movies in Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is the next step in cinema after 3D and IMAX. VR can serve as an excellent tool for conveying the mood and idea of the movie since the main function of the movie itself is to immerse the viewer in the story.

Read also: Virtual Reality Entertainment – A New Look In Storytelling 

Speaking about theater, in the age of modern technology, live theater performances are also getting their boost with XR. One of these directions is the immersive theater, in which a viewer in a VR headset is directly immersed in the theatrical production itself. The distance between the viewer and the actors is thus reduced to a minimum.

In an immersive theater, the destruction of the fourth wall takes place and the audience can experience the story as if they were in the same room with the actors.

One of the leaders of this innovative direction is the National Theatre in London. A few years ago, they opened an immersive storytelling studio, which is designed for two main functions: developing and showing VR stage plays.

Since the studio’s inception, the National Theatre has produced a number of successful XR productions, including the surreal Alice in Wonderland-themed AR stage play wonder.land and VR documentary Home/Aamir about refugee life.

“It’s definitely not just for gaming. It’s definitely not just for performance. It’s a new technology and everyone’s trying to work out what it means to them. I’ve noticed that theatre makers respond well to it because they are used to an environment whereby the performer works in a 360 space and the audience can look wherever they want, any particular point in time,” said Toby Coffey, head of digital development at National Theatre. 

Painting in a New Dimension. Wonders of VR Art

Virtual reality has become a convenient platform for artists who create their works of art. Using digital space as a tool to draw installations, the level of an artist’s performance depends only on their imagination. The author no longer needs to buy an easel, canvases, expensive paints, or modeling clay. All you have to do is put on the VR glasses, and all the digital tools are at your fingertips.

One of the most famous tools for creating a picture in virtual reality is Google Tilt Brush. An artist can use a controller and a virtual brush to create a sculpture or paint a 3D picture. Thus, a user wearing VR glasses is not limited only to a virtual easel. They have the opportunity to paint the entire space around them with virtual paint, literally creating an immersive picture.

Gesture VR app allows you to create new 2D and 3D pictures in a digital studio with access to more than 200 models of people, animals, fantasy creatures, etc. Also, in virtual space, artists are able to control the lighting and poses of models and involve several friends in the creative process. In addition, Gesture VR gives an artist the option to draw both on a virtual easel and on real paper.

Virtual Reality Takes Center Stage. The Thrilling Integration of VR in Sports and Public Events

VR in Sports Entertainment

Virtual reality has become widely used in sports. In general, it is used in several areas: training, amateur games, competitions, and virtual visits to events. As for training, virtual reality provides an athlete with the most realistic training conditions, without the need to allocate a separate room and equipment. And sometimes it is difficult to create a believable environment in the real world, depending on the place of training and the amount of money.

Read also: The Way VR Improves Sports Training Experience 

Speaking about visiting competitions, spectators put on VR headsets to get to, for example, virtual football or car races. A sports fan does not need to spend extra time and money to get to the stadium, and VR headsets provide the effect of presence, which is completely absent during watching the competition on TV.

In addition, wearing headsets, a viewer can watch sports competitions from any angle: both from a seat and from the field itself. This is allowed in Xtadium app for Quest 2-3 VR glasses, where the viewer has an assortment of events to attend virtually, from Nascar races to boxing matches. The application provides an opportunity to visit the competition virtually with several friends using avatars.

In addition, VR broadcasts of basketball matches have also been secured by the NBA, which extended its contract with Meta for further broadcasts.

“We want to bring that arena atmosphere to them”, said Paul Massache, the NBA’s associate vice president of broadcasting content management. “Part of that is building this immersive experience. Now, to have viewers sit courtside virtually is an experience that really can’t be duplicated. Unless of course, you know, you’re at the game.”  

VR and AR Transform the Concert Experience

Another area where virtual reality is implemented is concerts. VR performances allow fans to see their favorite artist from the comfort of their own home, without taking their eyes off their favorite game. Also, virtual concerts open up new opportunities for artists. Singers and musicians can improve their performance with more complex visual effects that are very difficult or impossible to implement in real life. So, there are many examples where top artists have given concerts in virtual universes like Fortnite.

Read also: Unusual VR Events You Could Have Missed 

On the other hand, modern immersive technologies can enhance live performances and make them impressive and memorable for audiences. As the band Gorillaz did, which used AR for their performance at Coachella. With augmented reality, viewers could see 3D versions of animated band members on stage via a YouTube stream.

“Bringing the Gorillaz characters to life is the best possible use case we could have imagined for Unreal Engine and AR in the Coachella YouTube live stream. We’re excited to continue enabling artists to extend their performances in new and engaging ways,” said Sam Schoonover, Lead of Innovation and Emerging Technology for Coachella.

Today, XR continues to evolve. There are more unusual use cases that are redefining the way we think about modern entertainment. From drawing 3D pictures in virtual reality, VR sports events that transport us to the field, to immersive theater shows, the possibilities are endless.

The most unusual AR/VR use cases in entertainment have shown us the incredible potential of the technology, creating unforgettable moments and transporting us to new dimensions. As XR entertainment continues to develop and expand, we can only imagine the future extraordinary experiences that lie ahead.

Latest Articles

June 27, 2025
Methodology of VR/MR/AR and AI Project Estimation

Estimation of IT projects based on VR, XR, MR, or AI requires both a deep technical understanding of advanced technologies and the ability to predict future market tendencies, potential risks, and opportunities. In this document, we aim to thoroughly examine estimation methodologies that allow for the most accurate prediction of project results in such innovative fields as VR/MR/AR and AI by describing unique approaches and strategies developed by Qualium Systems. We strive to cover existing estimation techniques used at our company and delve into the strategies and approaches that ensure high efficiency and accuracy of the estimation process. While focusing on different estimation types, we analyze the choice of methods and alternative approaches available. Due attention is paid to risk assessment being the key element of a successful IT project implementation, especially in such innovative fields as VR/MR/AR and AI. Moreover, the last chapter covers the demo of a project of ours, the Chemistry education app. We will show how the given approaches practically affect the final project estimation. Read

June 27, 2025
What Are Spatial Anchors and Why They Matter

Breaking Down Spatial Anchors in AR/MR Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) depend on accurate understanding of the physical environment to create realistic experiences, and they hit this target with the concept of spatial anchors. These anchors act like markers, either geometric or based on features, that help virtual objects stay in the same spot in the real world — even when users move around. Sounds simple, but the way spatial anchors are implemented varies a lot depending on the platform; for example, Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCore, and Microsoft’s Azure Spatial Anchors (ASA) all approach them differently. If you want to know how these anchors are used in practical scenarios or what challenges developers often face when working with them, this article dives into these insights too. What Are Spatial Anchors and Why They Matter A spatial anchor is like a marker in the real world, tied to a specific point or group of features. Once you create one, it allows for some important capabilities: Persistence. Virtual objects stay exactly where you placed them in the real-world, even if you close and restart the app. Multi-user synchronization. Multiple devices can share the same anchor, so everyone sees virtual objects aligned to the same physical space. Cross-session continuity. You can leave a space and come back later, and all the virtual elements will still be in the right place. In AR/MR, your device builds a point cloud or feature map by using the camera and built-in sensors like the IMU (inertial measurement unit). Spatial anchors are then tied to those features, and without them, virtual objects can drift or float around as you move, shattering the sense of immersion. Technical Mechanics of Spatial Anchors At a high level, creating and using spatial anchors involves a series of steps: Feature Detection & Mapping To start, the device needs to understand its surroundings: it scans the environment to identify stable visual features (e.g., corners, edges). Over time, these features are triangulated, forming a sparse map or mesh of the space. This feature map is what the system relies on to anchor virtual objects. Anchor Creation Next, anchors are placed at specific 3D locations in the environment in two possible ways: Hit-testing. The system casts a virtual ray from a camera to a user-tapped point, then drops an anchor on the detected surface. Manual placement. Sometimes, developers need precise control, so they manually specify the exact location of an anchor using known coordinates, like ensuring it perfectly fits on the floor or another predefined plane. Persistence & Serialization Anchors aren’t temporary — they can persist, and here’s how systems make that possible: Locally stored anchors. Frameworks save the anchor’s data, like feature descriptors and transforms, in a package called a “world map” or “anchor payload”. Cloud-based anchors. Cloud services like Azure Spatial Anchors (ASA) upload this anchor data to a remote server to let the same anchor be accessed across multiple devices. Synchronization & Restoration When you’re reopening the app or accessing the anchor on a different device, the system uses the saved data to restore the anchor’s location. It compares stored feature descriptors to what the camera sees in real time, and if there’s a good enough match, the system confidently snaps the anchor into position, and your virtual content shows up right where it’s supposed to. However, using spatial anchors isn’t perfect, like using any other technology, and there are some tricky issues to figure out: Low latency. Matching saved data to real-time visuals has to be quick; otherwise, the user experience feels clunky. Robustness in feature-scarce environments. Blank walls or textureless areas don’t give the system much to work with and make tracking tougher. Scale drift. Little errors in the system’s tracking add up over time to big discrepancies. When everything falls into place and the challenges are handled well, spatial anchors make augmented and virtual reality experiences feel seamless and truly real. ARKit’s Spatial Anchors (Apple) Apple’s ARKit, rolled out with iOS 11, brought powerful features to developers working on AR apps, and one of them is spatial anchoring, which allows virtual objects to stay fixed in the real world as if they belong there. To do this, ARKit provides two main APIs that developers rely on to achieve anchor-based persistence. ARAnchor & ARPlaneAnchor The simplest kind of anchor in ARKit is the ARAnchor, which represents a single 3D point in the real-world environment and acts as a kind of “pin” in space that ARKit can track. Building on this, ARPlaneAnchor identifies flat surfaces like tables, floors, and walls, allowing developers to tie virtual objects to these surfaces. ARWorldMap ARWorldMap makes ARKit robust for persistence and acts as a snapshot of the environment being tracked by ARKit. It captures the current session, including all detected anchors and their surrounding feature points, into a compact file. There are a few constraints developers need to keep in mind: World maps are iOS-only, which means they cannot be shared directly with Android. There must be enough overlapping features between the saved environment and the current physical space, and textured structures are especially valuable for this, as they help ARKit identify key points for alignment. Large world maps, especially those with many anchors or detailed environments, can be slow to serialize and deserialize, causing higher application latency when loading or saving. ARKit anchors are ideal for single-user persistence, but sharing AR experiences across multiple devices poses additional issues, and developers often employ custom server logic (uploading ARWorldMap data to a backend), enabling users to download and use the same map. However, this approach comes with caveats: it requires extra development work and doesn’t offer native support for sharing across platforms like iOS and Android. ARCore’s Spatial Anchors (Google) Google’s ARCore is a solid toolkit for building AR apps, and one of its best features is how it handles spatial anchors: Anchors & Hit-Testing ARCore offers two ways to create anchors. You can use Session.createAnchor(Pose) if you already know the anchor’s position, or…

June 2, 2025
Extended Reality in Industry 4.0: Transforming Industrial Processes

Understanding XR in Industry 4.0 Industry 4.0 marks a turning point in making industry systems smarter and more interconnected: it integrates digital and physical technologies like IoT, automation, and AI, into them. And you’ve probably heard about Extended Reality (XR), the umbrella for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality. It isn’t an add-on. XR is one of the primary technologies making the industry system change possible. XR has made a huge splash in Industry 4.0, and recent research shows how impactful it has become. For example, a 2023 study by Gattullo et al. points out that AR and VR are becoming a must-have in industrial settings. It makes sense — they improve productivity and enhance human-machine interactions (Gattullo et al., 2023). Meanwhile, research by Azuma et al. (2024) focuses on how XR makes workspaces safer and training more effective in industrial environments. One thing is clear: the integration of XR into Industry 4.0 closes the gap between what we imagine in digital simulations and what actually happens in the real world. Companies use XR to work smarter — it tightens up workflows, streamlines training, and improves safety measures. The uniqueness of XR is in its immersive nature. It allows teams to make better decisions, monitor operations with pinpoint accuracy, and effectively collaborate, even if team members are on opposite sides of the planet. XR Applications in Key Industrial Sectors Manufacturing and Production One of the most significant uses of XR in Industry 4.0 is in manufacturing, where it enhances design, production, and quality control processes. Engineers now utilize digital twins, virtual prototypes, and AR-assisted assembly lines, to catch possible defects before production even starts. Research by Mourtzis et al. (2024) shows how effective digital twin models powered by XR are in smart factories: for example, studies reveal that adopting XR-driven digital twins saves design cycle times by up to 40% and greatly speeds up product development. Besides, real-time monitoring with these tools has decreased system downtimes by 25% (Mourtzis et al., 2024). Training and Workforce Development The use of XR in employee training has changed how industrial workers acquire knowledge and grow skills. Hands-on XR-based simulations allow them to practice in realistic settings without any of the risks tied to operating heavy machinery, whereas traditional training methods usually involve lengthy hours, high expenses, and the need to set aside physical equipment, disrupting operations. A study published on ResearchGate titled ‘Immersive Virtual Reality Training in Industrial Settings: Effects on Memory Retention and Learning Outcomes’ offers interesting insights on XR’s use in workforce training. It was carried out by Jan Kubr, Alena Lochmannova, and Petr Horejsi, researchers from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, specializing in industrial engineering and public health. The study focused on fire suppression training to show how different levels of immersion in VR affect training for industrial safety procedures. The findings were astounding. People trained in VR remembered 45% more information compared to those who went through traditional training. VR also led to a 35% jump in task accuracy and cut real-world errors by 50%. On top of that, companies using VR in their training programs noticed that new employees reached full productivity 25% faster. The study uncovered a key insight: while high-immersion VR training improves short-term memory retention and operational efficiency, excessive immersion — for example, using both audio navigation and visual cues at the same time — can overwhelm learners and hurt their ability to absorb information. These results showed how important it is to find the right balance when creating VR training programs to ensure they’re truly effective. XR-based simulations let industrial workers safely engage in realistic and hands-on scenarios without the hazards or costs of operating heavy machinery, changing the way they acquire new skills. Way better than sluggish, costly, and time-consuming traditional training methods that require physical equipment and significant downtime. Maintenance and Remote Assistance XR is also transforming equipment maintenance and troubleshooting. In place of physical manuals, technicians using AR-powered smart glasses can view real-time schematics, follow guided diagnostics, and connect with remote experts, reducing downtime. Recent research by Javier Gonzalez-Argote highlights how significantly AR-assisted maintenance has grown in the automotive industry. The study finds that AR, mostly mediated via portable devices, is widely used in maintenance, evaluation, diagnosis, repair, and inspection processes, improving work performance, productivity, and efficiency. AR-based guidance in product assembly and disassembly has also been found to boost task performance by up to 30%, substantially improving accuracy and lowering human errors. These advancements are streamlining industrial maintenance workflows, reducing downtime and increasing operational efficiency across the board (González-Argote et al., 2024). Industrial IMMERSIVE 2025: Advancing XR in Industry 4.0 At the Industrial IMMERSIVE Week 2025, top industry leaders came together to discuss the latest breakthroughs in XR technology for industrial use. One of the main topics of discussion was XR’s growing impact on workplace safety and immersive training environments. During the event, Kevin O’Donovan, a prominent technology evangelist and co-chair of the Industrial Metaverse & Digital Twin committee at VRARA, interviewed Annie Eaton, a trailblazing XR developer and CEO of Futurus. She shared exciting details about a groundbreaking safety training initiative, saying: “We have created a solution called XR Industrial, which has a collection of safety-themed lessons in VR … anything from hazards identification, like slips, trips, and falls, to pedestrian safety and interaction with mobile work equipment like forklifts or even autonomous vehicles in a manufacturing site.” By letting workers practice handling high-risk scenarios in a risk-free virtual setting, this initiative shows how XR makes workplaces safer. No wonder more companies are beginning to see the value in using such simulations to improve safety across operations and avoid accidents. Rethinking how manufacturing, training, and maintenance are done, extended reality is rapidly becoming necessary for Industry 4.0. The combination of rising academic study and practical experiences, like those shared during Industrial IMMERSIVE 2025, highlights how really strong this technology is. XR will always play a big role in optimizing efficiency, protecting workers, and…



Let's discuss your ideas

Contact us