26 VR Apps for Remote Work, Education, Training, Design Review, and More

By Ben Lang –

One of VR’s biggest strengths is the ability to make those at a distance feel like they’re physically near each other. While this is great for visiting with friends remotely, there’s a great number of VR companies betting that virtual reality office environments, remote collaboration, and working from home in VR are going to be the future of work. Here’s a look at a handful of companies building remote collaboration VR tools and platforms for a range of use-cases.

Team Collaboration & Presentation

Team collaboration apps are designed for professionals who need to meet, discuss, present, and make collective decisions.

Glue

Glue is a modern collaboration platform that takes advantage of recent advances in immersive 3D graphics, virtual reality, and cloud computing. It is intended for business professionals who need global remote access to a shared team space for efficient collaboration.

MeetinVR

MeetinVR enables your company to have powerful meetings in interactive VR spaces. It enables activities which are impossible or very hard to do remotely such as to present and review products and 3D models, brainstorm, sketch, mind-map, prototype and have team-building activities. All of these while interacting in a natural and easy to learn way.

MeetingRoom

MeetingRoom has developed a platform which will transform how businesses collaborate. We offer a virtual meeting room with collaboration and presentation tools, manipulated by the participants; pointing, discussing, marking and deleting with up to 12 other team members using virtual reality headsets. Access from non-VR platforms is also available.

Rumii

Step into your virtual reality office or classroom. rumii can be used across virtual reality headsets and desktops for collaboration, classes and meetings. Great for remote teams, education and digital nomads.

Spatial

Image courtesy Spatial

Spatial turns the space around you into a shared augmented workplace. Remote users can collaborate, search, brainstorm and share content as if they were in the same room.

Dream

Collaborating within the confines of a screen is hard. Use Dream to work with your team just as you would in real life, without constraint or frustration. No fiddling with awkward teleportation mechanics. No fighting complicated interfaces. Dream is the simplest way to collaborate in VR.

Design, Creation, & Prototyping

These apps lean toward collaborative spatial design, sketching, prototyping, brainstorming, and review.

Sketchbox

Go from idea to a working VR prototype in minutes. Import your files, build your scenes, and transform your assets into a VR storyboard that everyone can understand. Finally you can design for AR & VR without using a game engine or engaging a developer.

The Wild

Collaborate with your team in a shared virtual space that evolves with your ideas. Meet in real time from anywhere, or leave comments for your team to see later.

Softspace

Image courtesy Softspace

Softspace is a spatial thinking tool for creative individuals and teams. Build beautiful virtual project spaces where you can organize, develop, and communicate your best ideas.

Visualization & Review

These apps are oriented toward collaborative visualization, review, and annotation of CAD designs, 3D models, big data, complex code, and more.

CAD Explorer

Easily upload your .FBX, .OBJ, .STEP, .IGES or .STL files via our web interface and have it within your digital space in seconds. You provide your common CAD data and turn it into a hologram in your Mixed Reality device. Control the objects with your gestures and place them freely in your space. Rotate, scale, or even slice it to get a cross-section view for a better understanding what is beneath the surface of your object.

As you use CAD Explorer, it is crucial to be able to work on objects with more than one person. Hence we developed different possibilities of shared experiences. Collaborate on the data together in one room with two HoloLenses, or bring in more people from all over the world, wearing a Microsoft Mixed Reality Head-Mounted-Display (HMD).

Improov

Visualize your prototype as if it was already built at scale 1, detect design errors and modify your 3D model in real time to test new ideas. Easily collaborate with your colleagues, contractors and clients and get feedback at once.

InsiteVR

All you need to get started is a BIM 360, Navisworks, Revit, or Sketchup model. In the click of a button your model will be VR ready and synced to the InsiteVR cloud for your coordination meetings. Inviting collaborators to your VR meeting is as easy as sending them a link. Participants can see other as VR avatars, talk over VOIP, and review model issues together. Compatible across desktop and standalone VR like Oculus Quest and Oculus Go.

NVIDIA Holodeck

NVIDIA Holodeck is a virtual reality (VR) innovation platform that brings designers, peers, and stakeholders together from anywhere in the world to build and explore creations in a highly realistic, collaborative, and physically simulated VR environment.

PiXYZ Review

PiXYZ Review allows you to easily import a wide range of CAD models from industry-leading solutions, easily handling large and complex assemblies. Interact with your CAD model using manipulation and visualization tools for a desktop use. Also, instantly switch to a powerful VR mode for an immersive and interactive experience with a VR headset. Finally, collaborate easily with your coworkers thanks to an easy-to-use Collaboration mode.

Stage

STAGE gives you real-time communication, immersive visualization and an awareness for atmosphere. Additionally, a meeting in STAGE saves costs compared to present-meetings.

Symmetry

Instantly view your designs in VR with no additional preparation needed. Anybody can pick it up and get going, regardless of VR experience. View designs as intended at 1:1 scale, allowing for more effective design reviews.

VisionXR

VISIONxR Platform enables users to upload their own content and invite colleagues to work collaboratively regardless of their location on any device VR, AR, desktop or mobile. Users can review and improve the designs of the products and services they are working on; removing the barrier of distance and enabling faster iteration in the development and design cycle.

Vizible

Image courtesy Worldviz

Social VR platforms are made for connecting users for general purposes like discussions, group events, meetings, and more. Meet with others inside your secure, real-time VR environment. Interact with objects and each other. Engage your audience to the max. Review sessions, then revise, republish, and re-use your immersive experiences. Work on them with others in your organization in real-time, like with a Google Doc.

3Data

Step into the most effective way to monitor, analyze and control complex end-to-end business processes, infrastructure & operations, in real-time with a Single View. True 3D telepresence and remote virtual analysis. Invite colleagues to the 3VOC in augmented and/or virtual reality.

Primitive

The Primitive Immersive Development Environment is taking advantage of everything that collaboration in VR can offer while applying new tools for visually analyzing software in 3D. Using our plugins for popular IDEs, code is analyzed to be displayed as an interactive 3D structure that can be experienced in collaborative, immersive VR.

Education & Training

These VR collaboration tools are built with an eye toward remote education, training, lectures, and large presentations.

Engage

Engage is an education and corporate training platform in virtual reality. It empowers educators and companies to host meetings, presentations, classes and events with people across the world. Using the platform, virtual reality training and experiences can be created in minutes. The tools are very easy to use and require no technical expertise. You can choose to host your virtual reality sessions live, or record and save them for others to experience later. A wide variety of effective and immersive virtual experiences can be created with an extensive library of virtual objects, effects and virtual locations available on the platform.

Oxford Medical Simulation

Image courtesy Oxford Medical Simulation

Providing learners with quality clinical experiences is a challenge. OMS virtual reality nursing scenarios allows nursing educators to deliver immersive, standardized simulation scenarios, feedback and blended learning in one easy to set-up intuitive platform. The OMS VR platform allows nursing students to access flexible, immersive, engaging scenarios whenever they need to, achieving first rate educational outcomes whilst saving organizations time, space and money. With libraries of scenarios for nursing students, registered nurses and nurse practitioners OMS support all groups of learners.

Social VR Platforms

Social VR platforms are made for connecting users for general and entertainment purposes like discussions, group events, activities, and more. While there are many more social VR apps out there, we focused here on those which might provide value to those looking for remote working solutions rather than gaming and entertainment.

AltspaceVR

AltspaceVR is the premier place to attend live shows, meetups, cool classes, and more with friendly people from around the world. All thanks to the magic of Virtual Reality.

Easily start your own meetup, show or class and discover the next frontier of entertainment and community.

Bigscreen

Image courtesy Bigscreen

Use cases of Bigscreen include both entertainment and productivity. It’s used as a virtual living room to watch movies, play videogames, browse the web, and hangout with friends. It’s also used for productivity as a tool for remote teams to collaborate together in virtual offices.

Mozilla Hubs

Photo by Road to VR

Share a virtual room with friends. Watch videos, play with 3D objects, or just hang out.

vTime

Spend time together when you’re miles apart. Chat with friends, meet new people, and express yourself with virtual gestures.

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