VR Takes The Stage As Conferences Cancel

https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2020/03/11/vr-takes-the-stage-as-conferences-cancel/

Katie Kelly, Program Owner at AltspaceVR. “I did a rough estimate and factoring in the travel time and CO2e estimates that would have been spent. This summit took about 9 thousand cars off the road for the week of the summit and saved attendees around 5 million miles of travel. So whether we’re combating a global outbreak, climate change or remote work – there’s a lot that AltspaceVR and other VR platforms can do to help.”

HTC is moving its annual Vive Ecosystem Conference (VEC) in China to a virtual world built by Engage, a product of Immersive VR Education.

The crisis has put new wind in the sails of the first virtual world, Second Life, which continues to thrive. “We are seeing increased interest in Second Life as it is a safe place for people and organizations to socialize and work during this time of great anxiety and social distancing,” said Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, which created and operates Second Life.

VictoryXR is an AR & VR school curriculum provider that also uses the Engage platform. They are now in the process of becoming accredited in Iowa and California to become an online virtual reality school (as opposed to a virtual school on a platform like Second Life, which is PC based).

Exp Realty is a virtual, cloud-based real estate brokerage founded nearly a decade ago, similar to Second Life. It is also optimized for PCs and laptops. The virtual real estate company has more than 27,000 agents who they log on to “eXp World.” The technology is provided by VirBELA, which also builds virtual tools for universities and virtual classes like Coursera.

Glue, based in Helsinki, Finland, today introduced significant upgrades to its virtual world platform, Glue Team Space. Team Space is immersive 3D environments optimized for teams of up to twenty people.

Spatial.io, a new remote conferencing system that works with every device and creates convincing avatars who can collaborate in the virtual space where participants can share whiteboards, post-its, videos and 3D models.