Industrial-grade virtual reality and extended reality headset maker Varjo Technologies Oy announced Wednesday that a partnership with enterprise virtual collaboration software provider MeetinVR will bring photorealistic meeting technology to the workroom and boardroom.

Through this partnership, MeetinVR will develop a dedicated version of its VR collaboration application designed to support Varjo’s enterprise-class headsets – the VR-2, VR-2 Pro and XR-1 Developer Edition.

“Remote working is now becoming our new normal and the need to be able to virtually collaborate with colleagues, customers and partners around the world is business critical,” said Urho Konttori, co-founder and chief product officer at Varjo.

Using photorealistic 3D quality, MeetinVR can deliver high-fidelity imagery and immersive environments in real-time to enable workers and supervisors a sense of “being there” without the need to actually be in the same room. This uses immersion to provide a true sense of presence that MeetinVR believes will greatly enhance remote work.

Varjo’s headsets use a unique, high-quality screen technology to produce human-eye resolution graphics suitable for this sort of application.

The MeetinVR technology enables both virtual reality and augmented reality collaboration. Using virtual reality, the user is completely immersed in a different environment, everything is replaced with computer graphics, which the user can see and interact with. In the case of augmented or mixed reality, 3D computer graphics are mixed into the visible environment that move with the user as they walk around the space.

Use cases include the remote sales and production of high-value products such as medical machinery and new vehicles, participating in the launch of new products and even remote training for distributed teams.

“Varjo’s photorealistic resolution gives users the ability to see reflections and shadows of their 3D models, as well as read text, all of which create a realistic experience for collaboration amongst meeting participants,” said Cristian Emanuel Anton, chief executive of MeetinVR.

MeetinVR’s software is designed to be used out-of-the-box with a simplified user interface and will seamlessly load into whatever network the Varjo headsets are connected to. Once loaded, remote workers need only don their headsets, load into their collaborative environment and add assets from whatever sources they need to work together.

Volvo Cars, a subsidiary of multinational manufacturing company Volvo Group, has been using Varjo with MeetinVR’s collaboration software to enhance the collaboration experience of its workers in order to use mixed reality to change how they work together.

“The high quality and fidelity of what Varjo’s headsets offer, together with the effective collaboration tools from MeetinVR, bring remote collaboration to the next level,” said Timmy Ghiurau, lead of virtual experiences at Volvo Cars. “From user experience evaluation to hosting virtual workshops to ideating around our products, being able to do so in a realistic virtual environment will make our processes more efficient and collaborative, especially in the current context.”

For Varjo and MeetinVR this is only the beginning of what this sort of partnership can offer. Following this official launch, any buyer of a new Varjo headset will receive six months of MeetinVR for free for up to five users.

“With this partnership, users don’t have to abide by the rules of physics anymore,” added Anton. “They are able to merge real and virtual elements seamlessly in our collaborative platform. This sets a new benchmark for remote presence and interaction for professionals.”

Image: Varjo