Abstract: With the upsurge of new techniques and instruments in the field of survey and mapping and the development of enlarged enrollments of vocational colleges, it shows sharp challenges of training sites and equipment resources for the course "Comprehensive Training of Digital Mapping". This paper actively explores the utilization of educational informatization, especially virtual simulation technology. Virtual reality (VR) training platform is an effective measure to integrate modern information technology into practical training teaching. In this platform, the working scene for digital mapping projects has been reconstituted through VR and modeling techniques and then is integrated with surveying and mapping simulation intelligent equipment. That is conducive to expanding the content and flexibility of digital mapping training and improving the quality of training teaching. In this paper, the VR simulation platform which has been applied in the national digital mapping competition for geographic information vocational college students has been introduced to the comprehensive practical training of digital mapping to puts forward some suggestions for improvement under the background of "promoting teaching through competition".

Key words: virtual reality simulation, digital mapping, comprehensive training, promoting teaching through competition, vocational training