This paper focuses on the development of a virtual reality-based training application that strongly suggests virtual reality is a viable mechanism for cost-efficiently delivering technical training. The focus is on the development of SBC Town, a virtual city that EDS built for Southwestern Bell, and argue that its strengths are readily transferable to a broad array of other virtual-reality based training applications. We specifically argue that VR provides a robust learning experience that simultaneously delivers multiple layers of instruction, from subject-matter content to related subjects, such as logic and problem-solving. The application creates a city and its telecommunications infrastructure and is designed to teach service technicians how to locate problems, or faults, in telecommunications circuits. Students use a mouse to drive through the city, climb poles, splice cable, open crossboxes, descend into manholes, and use virtual tools to zero in on circuit glitches. The system allows users to focus exclusively on learning to find circuit problems. Southwestern Bell is spared the cost of sending technicians to remote training facilities, and technicians can continue their daily responsibilities while refining their fault-locating skills. The SBC application models the way its target systems and environments behave in the real world. It reproduces in virtual space the actual behavior of urban communications circuits. Unlike many virtual environments, SBC Town isn't a place for users to passively examine things. They act on circuits, which, in turn, respond. This interactivity ensures a constant and realistic dynamism between student and virtual world. The SBC Town application's uniqueness lies in the complexity of its elements, their interactions, and the faithfulness with which those elements' virtual behaviors reproduce a realistic version of the real thing in a virtual space.