Today’s announcement is all about Vive XR Suite, which is an upcoming subscription package consisting of five VR applications that cater to various work and social needs. Think of it as the Microsoft Office for VR.
More importantly, these apps won’t be limited to PC VR systems nor standalone VR headsets of any brand (including Oculus, Valve and Windows MR), as they can also be viewed on a PC monitor and even a modern smartphone, meaning you can still somewhat interact in the virtual worlds if you left your goggles behind.
VR nerds may be familiar with some of these five applications. For starters, there’s Vive Sync which is HTC’s in-house remote collaboration service, and it’s currently still in open beta. Then you have Vive Sessions, which is essentially the integration of Immersive VR Education’s Engage virtual conference platform (as used by HTC today and back in March), and this lets you host up to 50 people per virtual location. Going further up the scale, there’s Vive Campus which will be powered by VirBELA, and this enables remote learning for up to a whopping 2,500 people on a virtual campus. Of course, there’s no stopping you from taking a quick break with fellow students by a virtual fountain.
Here are the five applications that make up the bundle, and the partners that HTC has chosen to deliver each:
VIVE Sync (HTC) – Meetings
VIVE Campus (VirBELA) – Virtual Offices
VIVE Sessions (ENGAGE) – Lectures
VIVE Social (VRChat) – Social
VIVE Museum (Museum of Other Realities) – Art Exhibit
The suite is ostensibly SteamVR-based, which means it should support the full range of PC-based headsets. HTC is also promising support for headsets based on Vive Wave, like the company’s own Vive Focus.
HTC plans to launch the suite of applications in Q3 this year, and will offer both a free version, and a premium subscription version with “enterprise/creator level capabilities and commercial use licenses.”
The company has also partnered with major brands in Asia, like Baidu and HP, to collaborate on the distribution of the app bundle.
There’s never going to be a single remote VR app that fits all needs, but bringing together a hodgepodge of apps with similar capabilities under a single umbrella might be more confusing than helpful. It’s hard to imagine a business that needs both a virtual meeting room and a space for art exhibitions—or one that wants to pay for both as part of one package.
Right now HTC says the suite consists of five “separate applications.” And while they’ll be unified under a single login, it isn’t clear yet if the apps will share common features and capabilities like avatars, interfaces, user-generated content, preferences, or friends lists. From the information provided by HTC, it seems like early days for the Vive XR Suite, so we’ll have to wait to see of the whole feels like more than the sum of its parts.
