The virtual reality market is growing, expected to reach a value of over $187.28 billion by 2032. It’s not just consumer technologies driving this growth. Countless companies have discovered the benefits of immersive technology for collaboration, training, and innovation.
Unfortunately, until recently, building bespoke enterprise-ready virtual reality solutions has been a complex, expensive process, making it harder for businesses to unlock the full potential of VR. Virtualware (EPA: MLVIR), the European leader in the virtual reality landscape, built its flagship Virtual reality as a service (VRaaS) platform, VIROO, to address this problem.
Recognized for its pioneering approach to enterprise VR, VIROO is helping major companies and institutions from GE Vernova or the Spanish Ministry of Defence to McMaster University, unlock new opportunities. We took a closer look at this platform, to discover why it was named the “premier VR solution” for businesses.
What is the VIROO VR Platform?
The culmination of 20 years of VR innovation, VIROO is Virtualware’s flagship VRaaS platform, an enterprise content development, deployment, and management platform focused on enterprise and educational entities that want to deploy advanced Virtual Reality technology.
Combining robust security features, including ISO 270001 certification, with simple tools for building and managing VR content, VIROO paves the way for faster VR adoption, and rapid business transformation, ensuring operational excellence in every aspect.
As a one-stop destination for enterprise VR, VIROO supports everything from VR content creation to immersive room deployment, standardizing Virtual Reality related initiatives in one unified platform. The all-in-one platform include crucial capabilities to power immersive journeys across industries worldwide with:
- Multi-user and collaborative VR content creation: With VIROO Studio for UnityVIROO Studio for Unity, the world’s leading engine for RT3D content, companies and institutions can produce multi-user and remote collaboration ready VR applications without coding skills. Unity-based creators just focus on the content utilizing VIROO Studio’s built-in tools to configure diverse interactions in VR, forgetting about the complexities of developing concurrency management and cloud functionalities for each project. This allows them to create VR content compatible out of the box with different kinds of target platforms, including VR / MR headsets, projection systems like CAVES, Windows Desktops, and continue evolving to include new ones.
- A comprehensive solution: VIROO supports everything from simple non-coding scenes to advanced coding required applications. This gives companies the freedom to build the ideal solution for their requirements, regardless of their access to skilled development professionals.
- Turn spaces into immersive collaborative VR rooms: VIROO Room transforms the physical space into a shared multi-user VR environment, where teams and collaborators can truly come together and for instance train in a true-to-life and low-pressure setting where mistakes carry no real consequences, affording limitless opportunities to practice. There they can master complex processes, collaborating with peers across continents, or exploring a full-scale VR replica with multiple users interacting at the same time. Businesses can even connect several VIROO Rooms remotely or even multi-projection systems such as CAVEs or similar.
- Leverage and grow your VR business at scale: The business model inherent to VIROO, coupled with its design, offers a unique opportunity for companies and institutions to leverage their respective expertise to create and offer innovative VR solutions, growing their business at scale.
In the energy industry, GE Vernova partnered with Virtualware to introduce a pioneering VR training solution based on the VIROO VR platform and its immersive VR rooms concept, that allows personnel to simulate complex real-life nuclear power plant scenarios. Currently the award-winning solution is available at two US locations and in Canada or can be set it up at customer’s facility.
This serves as just one illustration among numerous corporations worldwide adopting VIROO as their core platform for delivering services, ranging from complex VR content creation to the deployment and setup of VIROO Rooms. Such adoption enhances their existing business operations or cultivates new revenue channels.
VIROO: The full potential of Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality combined
VIROO is an enterprise-grade, scalable, and flexible VR platform that empowers users with the full potential of immersive technology in one place. Plus, it ensures businesses have all the tools they need to bring enterprise VR at scale, including Mixed Reality capabilities.
Key features include:
- ISO 27001 certified for data protection and security
- Multi-user and remote collaboration embedded functionalities
- Built-in tools for VR content creation in Unity aka VIROO Studio
- Immersive VR Rooms deployment including multi-projection system integration (CAVEs or similar)
- Mixed Reality capabilities blending VR and MR technologies within its sessions, incorporating full compatibility with the latest enterprise headsets, offering true cross-platform interoperability.
- Corporate-specific features and customization options including third-party integrations.
VIROO: The Premier VR platform for Training and Simulation
As Virtual reality is becoming an integral component of comprehensive industry training programs, VIROO is stablishing as a specialized platform for industrial corporations that want to bring team training and simulation in complex environments requiring intense collaboration, to the next level. Situations where companies need to simulate real-life complex scenarios, increase hands-on training time, or prepare workers to handle unexpected events and emergencies.
One remarkable case study is GE Vernova. The global leader driving electrification and decarbonization is introducing a breakthrough training solution within the nuclear industry for Fuel Movement and Vessel Assembly and Vessel Distension processes, a complex and highly skilled activity that requires top-level expertise and training, as well as outstanding coordination between the different parties involved.
“Customers can take our hands-on VR simulators to train newer employees, make teams more proficient, help with communication skills, and really improve their performance, which in the end, improves the industry,” says Jarret Heitzmann, Virtual Reality Program Owner, GE Vernova.
Another notable example includes ADIF, the Spanish public entity within the Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, in charge of managing the national railway network, who announced the imminent launch of a Railway Infrastructure Simulator (SIF) for training in maintenance operations. One of the key elements of the VR training solution is the new 120 square metre VIROO Room, located at the Valencia Technology Training Centre, which will allow multi-user and collaborative training sessions to be carried out on a real scale.
Within the realm of automobility, the Windsor-Essex Regional Technology Development Site (WE RTDS), led by Invest WindsorEssex (IWE), the lead economic development agency for the Windsor-Essex region, adopted VIROO to boost the collaborative and cross-platform capabilities of their Virtual Reality (VR) CAVE which is Canada’s largest publicly accessible VR CAVE. The immersive solution serves as a teaching, training, and simulation tool for the region and beyond, designed to support connected and autonomous vehicle development.
Even in the defense industry, the Spanish Military Health School is using VIROO to address the challenges of training army units in medical protocols for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear scenarios (CBRN). The VR solution allows the Spanish Armed Forces to meet NATO standardization agreements, also known as STANAG, and has been featured in prominent events such as the large-scale NATO CBRN defense exercise named Toxic Trip 2023 in Belgium, among various others.
VIROO VR as a Service platform: A powerful reality
There are multiple advantages VIROO brings with its VR as-a-Service model. For one, it simplifies VR products maintenance and management by end users. Two, it reduces IT costs while allowing for faster and transparent deployment of updates and releases to work optimally with the latest operating systems and hardware. Three, it fosters collaboration among multiple users in different locations. Four, it allows for the scalability and flexibility necessary to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes and in all sectors.
VIROO is redefining VR and turning its delivery into a service allowing more developers, clients and end-users to access its benefits for professional or industrial purposes with greater efficiency in terms of costs, time and opportunities for use. And the more empowered users are, the faster the adoption of VR solutions.
The Verdict: Own your VR Strategy with VIROO
Since 2019, when VIROO was awarded as the VR Enterprise Solution of the Year at the VR Awards in the same year of its launch, the platform has become a key driver in accelerating the adoption of VR technology in the enterprise. It grants businesses the autonomy to develop and own their VR strategies, and even create the entire value chain of their VR solutions. Some examples mentioned before including global conglomerates such as GE Vernova or institutions like The Spanish Ministry of defence.
This strategic approach not only empowers companies to customize their specific VR roadmap but also facilitates seamless integration of VR company wide. By taking ownership of their VR strategies, companies can align these initiatives more closely with their overarching business objectives, thereby enhancing efficiency and competitiveness in the market.
Furthermore, with the ability VIROO provides to autonomously develop VR content creation strategies, end users can tailor VR solutions to meet their specific needs and preferences. This democratization of VR not only expands its reach but also fosters a more dynamic and inclusive ecosystem where creativity flourishes.
Many companies have already advocated to VIROO’s ‘think big, start small and scale fast’ approach, a philosophy that helps organizations start on the scale that is right for them and envision the broader impact and value that the technology will bring from the start.
VIROO is exceptionally well-positioned to capitalize on emerging opportunities today and in the coming years. Backed by Virtualware’s two decades of expertise and a seasoned team of over 50 professionals, the platform is already serving as a preferred choice for industrial and educational clients. VR is now.
