This paper reviews the area of combined discreteevent simulation (DES) and virtual reality (VR) use within industry.While establishing a state of the art for progress in thisarea, this paper makes the case for VR DES as the vehicle of choicefor complex data analysis through interactive simulation models,highlighting both its advantages and current limitations. This paperreviews active research topics such as VR and DES real-timeintegration, communication protocols, system design considerations,model validation, and applications of VR and DES. Whilesummarizing future research directions for this technology combination,the case is made for smart factory adoption of VR DES asa new platform for scenario testing and decision making. It is putthat in order for VR DES to fully meet the visualization requirementsof both Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet visions of digitalmanufacturing, further research is required in the areas of lowerlatency image processing, DES delivery as a service, gesture recognitionfor VR DES interaction, and linkage of DES to real-time data streams and Big Data sets.
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