What are the top AR/VR collaboration platforms for conducting virtual meetings and presentations?

If you're looking into VR meeting tools, you probably already believe in the value of 3D meetings. However, you need to first consider the challenges of adopting these tools before choosing the right one for your team. Ease of use for first timers is really important. Are there in product guides? quality documentation for FAQs and troubleshooting? White gloved service to help with onboarding and training? Quality of the tech: Web accessible to non VR users? Device agnostic? Scalable for a global team? Security certifications? spatial audio? integrates to existing tools and workflows? Workrooms while limited is a great free option for 1st timers. For solving all of the above, Arthur is the most built out for large global enterprise teams.

There are a handful of virtual meeting space apps, with a variety of tiers that enable additional functions, API calls, avatar personalization, and third-party software integration. One example of this, is Meta Horizon Workrooms, free with a Meta Quest. It can show more than one screen at a time and provides a "private office" in XR. Since it can connect to a PC, one can take advantage of the extra horsepower to more easily handle meetings that will involve multimedia, and likely apps from Office 365 from Microsoft (native integration, b/c they funded Facebook), along with any and all local storage and media. If you dislike that app in particular, others such as Glue, Engage (Virbellla), Arthur, VR Chat, Microsoft Mesh, etc., exist.

One of the more popular XR design tools, is Gravity Sketch. Originally for VR, it has since added mixed reality passthrough, and collaborative workspaces. Not only can one co-inhabit the same virtual space, but they can also similarly manipulate media made with Gravity Sketch by another user(s). There are a growing number of apps that cater to specific domains, where more generalized "meeting" apps simply won't do. For example, "Resolve" on the MetaQuest focuses on proving a collab environment for BIM, which can be as much for review of projects, as it could be for onboarding and/or training. If focused on the entertainment side, from video, to games, to storyboards, then something like MasterpieceX Studio would fit the bill.

One of the biggest problems for using XR in meetings today, is that not everyone has an XR device, wants or needs one, nor are they adept in an XR space. How to get over the hump of people having different, or no, XR devices? Enter apps like "Engage," which work across PC, Mac, Android, iOS, VR, AR, and XR. If someone doesn't have an XR device, they can still log in via a standard monitor, even their smartphone device. In this manner, participants may be "present" in a 3D space, and with headphones, appreciate spatial audio for ascertaining spatial relationships to fellow attendees. It isn't as easy on mobile devices, but on a computer, with a headset or not, editing and sharing multimedia office materials is as straightforward as IRL.

Once again, using "Engage" as an example, one may have a very large number of individuals attending a conference, trade show, or lecture, in a virtual space. These setups are designed for scale, and many hundreds, even thousands of users, can simultaneously co-inhabit virtual spaces, as they would IRL. The platform also permits users to import unique virtual spaces, from tools like Unity. Bespoke creations can reflect a physical location IRL, something fanciful, and also great for brands who may wish to activate some kind of product launch. This can be ideal for situations where serendipity is appreciated and expected. This can also be a great way of doing focus groups, since attention is undivided, and content can be secured with DRM.

I think some of the tools, like Shapes XR, Masterpiece, etc., are really fantastic for filmmakers. Sharing a document by "handing" the "file" to someone in a virtual office space such as many tools enable, is fun, helps build teams, and can reduce misunderstandings that might suffer from abstraction in conversation, or in being 2D on a board, slide, or paper. A good example from the aforementioned apps, is that one can do a mockup for the frame(s) of a storyboard and get interactive feedback from a director or cinematographer. One can block a scene, make lens selections, and alter set dressing in ways that get everyone on the same wavelength. When shooting, there is no guesswork, because everything has been considered beforehand.

Virtual Reality is extremely powerful for remote collaboration. It allows people to work together in virtual environments regardless of their physical location. At the moment, it's a shame that we've lost Glue as a key player in this market. It was a really great app! Let's see what Microsoft has to offer with Mesh. Unfortunately, they are taking too long to release a fully functional platform for everyone...