Since the beginning of 1960s, Geographic Information System (GIS) has been advanced in the analysis of geographic information and the services generated from it. Yet the rate of demands from geographers and large engineering projects continues to accelerate in the multi-dimensional geographic process simulation and the assessment of simulation results before those projects carried out. The set of increasing demands gives the Chinese scholars a sense of direction to explore the emerging concept Virtual Geographic Environments (VGEs) over the subsequent decades. In a broad sense, the VGEs is a collective term for all geographic environments except the real geographic environment while in the narrow sense, the virtual geographic environment can be considered as a computer-generated digital geographic environment in which the complex geographic systems are perceived and cognized by means of multi-channel human-computer interaction, distributed geographic modeling and simulation, and cyberspace geographic collaboration. From the very beginning, this paper elaborates on the transformation from the understanding of GIS to VGEs. In the second place, the evolution process of VGEs is analyzed including its current developing stage and a series of challenges it faced with. Aimed at facilitating the research on geoscience in the context of advanced technologies and accumulated geospatial information, this paper describes the new perspectives of VGEs research as followed: geographic space based on VGEs cognitive research, VGEs and experimental geography, virtual geographic cognitive experimental methods, and VGEs and geographic knowledge engineering in the context of big data. It can be foreseen that the study of VGEs is gradually moving towards an open, group-participated, collaborative scientific research paradigm. This is also a true reflection of the development trend of scientific research in the field of geography.