Virtual reality has been creeping into military training circles for years, but usually in fairly limited ways — a headset here, a simulation pod there. Virtuix, the company behind the Omni line of full-body VR treadmills, just added a new branch of the U.S. military to its client list, announcing that an Air National Guard unit based in Horsham, Pennsylvania has purchased its Omni One system, marking the company's first deployment specifically with the Air National Guard.

Unlike a standard VR headset setup where a user sits or stands in place, the Omni One is built around actual physical movement. Users walk, run, and turn on a low-friction platform while the system tracks that motion and translates it into the virtual environment in real time, which is precisely why the military has taken an interest. Rather than mapping a joystick to movement, soldiers can walk through a virtual building, sprint for cover, or navigate terrain the way they actually would in the field, all while staying inside a compact physical footprint. The Pennsylvania unit plans to use the system to experiment with and evaluate AI-driven immersive training methods, specifically looking at how movement-based simulation might improve warfighter readiness compared to more traditional training formats.

Virtuix CEO Jan Goetgeluk framed the deal as part of a much larger pattern rather than a one-off sale, noting that the company has picked up traction across nearly every branch of the U.S. military in a fairly short window of time — the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, and Army among them — and that the Air National Guard is simply the latest addition to that list. He described full-body virtual reality, spatial computing, and AI-enabled simulation as technologies he expects to become a standard part of how the military trains and prepares troops going forward, rather than a passing novelty.

That framing is backed up by a fairly busy stretch for Virtuix on the defense side. In recent months, the company was selected by the U.S. Air Force for a Phase I AFWERX SBIR award, funding to develop its AI-powered Virtual Terrain Walk platform, which is aimed at mission planning and letting military leaders rehearse operations in a virtual environment before executing them for real. Separately, Virtuix was named lead systems integrator on a virtual reality infantry training project with the Marine Corps' Training and Education Command, and it signed a development agreement with the Navy to evaluate immersive training capabilities on its end as well. On top of that, Virtuix has continued selling Omni systems to the Army and Air Force more broadly, including a sale to the United States Military Academy at West Point, which suggests the company's reach now extends from active operational units all the way into officer training programs.

Virtuix isn't shy about where it thinks this is heading. The company has described its recent momentum as strengthening its position within one of the fastest-growing corners of the immersive technology industry, and it isn't relying solely on organic growth to get there. Alongside its government contracts and military rollouts, Virtuix says it's actively reviewing acquisition targets in the defense training and simulation space, with a fairly specific profile in mind: companies pulling in somewhere between $10 million and $50 million in annual revenue that could help it move faster into government contract vehicles it doesn't already have access to. In other words, the Pennsylvania deployment isn't really the headline on its own — it's one more data point in a broader effort by Virtuix to plant itself firmly inside U.S. defense training budgets before the market gets any more crowded.