###### Abstract  
The advancement of VR technology through the increase in its processing power and decrease in its cost and form factor induced the research and market interest away from the gaming industry and towards education and training. In this paper, we argue and present evidence from vast research that VR is an excellent tool in engineering education. Through our review, we deduced that VR has positive cognitive and pedagogical benefits in engineering education, which ultimately improves the students' understanding of the subjects, performance and grades, and education experience. In addition, the benefits extend to the university/institution in terms of reduced liability, infrastructure, and cost through the use of VR as a replacement to physical laboratories. There are added benefits of equal educational experience for the students with special needs as well as distance learning students who have no access to physical labs. Furthermore, recent reviews identified that VR applications for education currently lack learning theories and objectives integration in their design. Hence, we have selected the constructivist and variation learning theories as they are currently successfully implemented in engineering education, and strong evidence shows suitability of implementation in VR for education.  
virtual reality; VR labs; engineering education; learning theories; constructivist learning theory; variation learning approach; university education  
16 February 2021 19 March 2021 23 March 2021  
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and sophisticated laboratories used in education. Therefore, this paper looks at evidence from multiple publications such as those using VR labs and arguing that the learning experience is better than traditional [6; 7; 8] while others argue that the learning experience is at least on par [9; 10]. Lastly, the benefits of being affordable and as good as the physical laboratory opens new doors for distance and remote learning improvement, which will give the universities an edge in terms of their international offerings and use of technology in education, are also discussed in this paper.  
Having said that, there are excellent potential benefits pedagogically and economically through integrating VR in university curriculum, especially considering the added benefits in the learning experience and the potential cost reduction and expansion in terms of experimental offerings. Hence, this paper carefully collects, studies, and analyses the most recent publications in terms of VR use in education, benefits, drawbacks, and research gaps, and uses it as grounds for the applicability of VR for engineering education. The findings are significant as the systematic review papers that are analysed point towards a gap in the deployment of the VR technology which greatly reduces the pedagogical benefits to students in education broadly and engineering education specifically. Hence, this review paper suggests with confidence a theoretical approach based on analysing recent research papers through inclusion and exclusion criteria, to closing the gap, and unlocking the full potential of VR in engineering education.