In recent years, virtual reality technology has been widely applied and researched in various fields. In digital architectural design and simulation, it has gradually become an important tool. For the evacuation of commercial buildings, virtual reality technology is introduced and a digital building evacuation simulation model based on panic emotions is proposed. Meanwhile, based on this model, the behavior and distribution of pedestrians are simulated, targeted evacuation design schemes are proposed, and the spatial evacuation congestion situation of each scheme is evaluated. These results confirm that in digital commercial building simulation design, the visibility loop rate of the strip path model is as high as 71.25%, which is 8.93% and 11.35% higher than that of the circular path and radiation path, respectively. Meanwhile, the reachability loop back rate of this model is as high as 76.39%. In addition, when the horizontal spacing is 2.5m, the time for the group to complete evacuation is the shortest, only 180 seconds. And its evacuation rate reached a maximum of 0.4. When the horizontal spacing increases to 4.5 meters, the evacuation time and efficiency are close to the barrier free situation, and obstacles have little effect on reducing congestion. The adoption of the proposed method can help designers develop reasonable evacuation strategies more efficiently and safely, providing strong technical support for the field of architectural design.