I had a great demo recently using HTC's new VR meeting platform, Vive Sync. It is a free VR meeting platform and supports various ways to communicate and share/review documents, like a PowerPoint presentation stored in OneDrive. Today's post is all about that!
The demo was provided by HTC's Head of Product Marketing Vive Enterprise Europe, Marko Savkovic. The three images of "me" are from within Vive Sync were taken by Marko and are of me.
This meeting platform offers an engaging way to meet with others using VR. You are represented by a custom avatar, which has a full body that reacts to your arm movements, and the legs animate walking when you move (even though it does not know what your legs are actually doing).
FYI: If you have the HTC Vive Eye, your Sync avatar's eyes will actually track with your eyes! That is super cool... but you better watch those eye-rolls at the boss! :)
You can also connect to cloud-storage, like OneDrive, and easily pull up things like a PowerPoint presentation. You can load small-ish 3D models and sketch in 3D space. If you take pictures, they are saved in that same location/folder. Notes are taken using voice to text and saved as well.
This works with HTC and Oculus tethered VR headsets!
Avatar
Download Vive Sync Avatar Creator onto your model device. The app allows you to create an avatar which uses a photo of your face. You then push the results to Sync...
I forgot to create my avatar before the meeting, so the Sync-space photos are a generic avatar.
Schedule a Meeting
On the Sync website you can schedule meetings. People can join in VR or from a computer screen.
When you are physically sitting, your avatar is shown sitting in a chair.
Check out this video on YouTube, click here
Summary
This is a really exciting new feature. I see a future where everyone in our profession has their own VR headset as part of their professional technology toolbox. Until then, the biggest obstacle with this cool platform is people not having a VR headset.
Fun stuff!
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I also write blog posts for Enscape - a new paradigm in rendering, animation and VR for AEC.
