How Businesses are Applying VR to Hold Meetings During the Coronavirus Pandemic

In the face of a crisis of unprecedented proportions, companies all over the world are scrambling to keep their employees safe and have them work from home. Remote offices are nothing unheard of but they do challenge the centralized mindset most businesses seem to favor.

Now, left without any other choice, we have to find innovative ways of connecting. Work cannot suffer, and the easier it is for a team to get in touch and brainstorm, the easier it is for everything to continue operating as smoothly as possible. So here are only some of the advantages of holding business meetings in VR.

Video calls, Skype, Zoom, Hangouts and similar can only do so much. While these apps work to an extent, they don’t take into account distractions an employee might face when they’re working from home. They might not have a suitable workspace; they might have little children or pets around. These don’t lend themselves to focus-friendly, productive meetings.

Enter VR. As mentioned on the MeetinVR homepage, VR offers a more than 25% increase in attention compared to regular video conference calls. We’re not sure about their sources yet, but the data makes sense.

VR is completely immersive, transporting you in the form of an avatar into a life-like meeting room, where nothing can stop you from laying out your ideas or discussing the project with your coworkers.

In this uncertain and hectic time, we thought it would be a good idea to discuss the best ways your business could apply VR to increase productivity.

Spaces was specifically developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to help businesses keep up their productivity. This app is a combination of Zoom (Skype or Hangouts) and VR that allows you to enter a conference call from within a virtual reality. Meaning, if you already have a VR space with everything you need, such as a whiteboard and perhaps some cool data graphics or design blocks, you can easily share your ideas with the team without leaving that VR space.

Offering fully customizable meeting rooms and surroundings, Engage is a powerful tool for business meetings, training, and education all at once.

With this app, you can organize a regular conference meeting where your coworkers join as avatars. In the meetings, you have access to anything you want: a whiteboard, slides, tools for taking notes, and much more.

Beyond that, your company can construct entire education simulations and scenarios for their employees. Just because they are working remotely doesn’t mean their training needs to suffer.

Released before the coronavirus outbreak, meetingRoom had the purpose of reducing travel costs as well concerns about renting a space for meetings. In this app, you can create a meeting room for you and your coworkers, and everything you write down or place in that room stays there waiting for you when you log back in again.

A meeting room for up to eight people is free and coworkers who don’t have access to VR can also join, making it perfect for everyone.

With a similar look and feel to meetingRoom, rumii is also a virtual reality space with a primary goal of bringing coworkers together. Employees from anywhere on the planet can collaborate and brainstorm as though they’re all in the same location. Display PDF files and PowerPoint slides, load 3D objects to better explain your thoughts, even play videos for everyone!

Rumii also allows the executives to design classrooms and educate their employees, meaning that even online courses got a whole new makeover with this app.

For business meetings and project planning, a basic meeting room will do just fine. Most teams don’t require more than a whiteboard and perhaps a way to share their files.

However, it’s different for designers of all different kinds and similar creatives who need a lot more tools at their disposal to accurately convey their ideas.

Sketchbox is one of the first apps built to integrate design tools into VR. Creatives no longer need to gesture wildly to describe what they mean – they can simply build it right then and there, in the VR meeting room. This one is great for collaborative design work and going from rough drafts to prototyping without having to change apps.

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We at ARVRtech would like to advise you to #StayHome! In the mean time check out our list of 5 things to try in VR while you’re at home!