HTC launches Vive Sync beta, offers businesses free VR meetings

Hundreds of millions of people are taking online meetings from home due to the coronavirus lockdowns. And now they can do it in virtual reality. 

On Thursday, HTC announced its Vive Sync platform for business meetings in virtual reality is now in open beta. The platform has been in development since 2018, but now it’s open to businesses of all sizes, for free. 

The experience of using Vive Sync should be familiar to anyone who has used VR apps before. First, you create your Vive Sync avatar, starting with a selfie and then customizing it further. Features like hairstyles, facial features, body types, and clothing options are customizable, and more customization options will come later, HTC says. 

The avatar should be pretty lively, too — the HTC device you’re wearing will track your body and its mouth and eyes will move naturally, mimicking your actual movements. Users with the Vive Pro Eye headsets will have their eyes tracked as well, which will be reflected in their avatar’s eye movement. 

The virtual meetings on Vive Sync are integrated with business tools such as OneDrive, meaning you can publish stuff like PDFs, videos, and 3D models in your virtual meeting space. 

Vive Sync currently supports up to 30 meeting participants per session. Of course, those participants will all have to wear Vive headsets, which range from $549 to more than $1,000, so … you know what to do, bosses. 

Features that are planned for the future include compatibility with non-Vive headsets, host controls, and the ability to record sessions. 

With many key features missing (host controls seem particularly important), I doubt many businesses will adopt Vive Sync as their primary way of doing remote meetings. It might provide a nice change from the typical video meeting, though.