VR meetings are replacing or extending in-person meetings and video conferences, while enterprises are investing in new technologies and office designs to usher in the post-lockdown era of hybrid working
Barcelona, Spain and Helsinki, Finland. March 9, 2021 – Given the move towards remote work, Pico Interactive, a global tech company that develops innovative virtual reality (VR) and enterprise solutions, is pleased to announce that its standalone 6DoF Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye VR headsets now support the leading virtual collaboration app Glue. Developed by Finland’s Glue Collaboration, Glue provides three-dimensional virtual environments where remote teams can come together as if they were face to face. The result: more productive and engaging meetings.
The global coronavirus pandemic-related lockdown is making video conferencing an entrenched part of everyday work for many people in the home office. However, long bouts in front of the camera can be tiring, while some employees can feel isolated – especially younger, less experienced members of staff. At the same time, collaborative work has been set back as people focus on individual tasks.
Glue offers a powerful antidote, providing a setting for natural, frictionless communication and enabling workers to feel closer to their colleagues. Businesses such as Axel Springer and T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH have turned to Glue as an alternative way of bringing their remote teams together, using VR to artificially create proximity and enable collaboration beyond physical boundaries and 2D monitors. With Glue now available in the Pico Digital Store, enterprises using the Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye VR headsets have easy access to immersive meetings that simulate the feeling of being there in person.
“Working in a home office can end up being harmful in excess. Remotely, it’s hard to innovate, maintain company culture, and keep employees from feeling lonely and isolated,” said Leland Hedges, General Manager for Pico Interactive Europe. “VR can make meetings immersive experiences, even while people work remotely. However, this requires both powerful VR headsets and sophisticated VR solutions like Glue. Our headsets are capable of making the most of Glue’s potential to enable true virtual collaboration.”
Meaningful, high-energy meetings in a 3D workspace
Glue provides shared virtual environments where spatially separated participants can come together as if they were facing each other in a real room. Glue engages people’s visual, haptic and auditory senses, providing a level of immersion in remote meetings that is not possible with traditional video conferencing software. Communication is natural and easy thanks to Glue’s 3D spatial audio design and highly expressive, artificial intelligence-powered avatars designed to more closely mimic people’s behavior and features. Meanwhile, users have access to many of the same collaboration tools they would expect to find in a physical meeting room.
“This partnership with Pico Interactive is a major milestone in the expansion of our hardware ecosystem,” said Jussi Havu, CEO, Glue Collaboration. “Our strategy is to enable our customers to use Glue on the most popular devices in the market. The Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye are top-tier standalone VR headsets that have become the enterprise VR headset-of-choice for many companies globally. As such, we anticipate many of our customers will adopt Pico’s headsets as their primary virtual collaboration devices.”
Pico Neo 2 and Pico Neo 2 Eye are two powerful standalone VR headsets based on the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 845 Mobile VR platform. The Pico headsets feature brilliant 4K resolution, 6DoF (Degrees of Freedom) and stereo speakers with surround sound. Thanks to 128 GB of memory – expandable by 256 GB with an SD card – and 4 GB of RAM, VR applications can also be played autonomously. Firefox Reality and Mozilla Hubs are already integrated into both headsets. In the Neo 2 Eye, Pico has installed an eye-tracking solution in collaboration with Tobii, which enables gaze-based interfaces, eye contact in social VR apps and gaze analysis. TIME Magazine named the Pico Neo 2 Eye as “The Corporate VR Solution” in its “100 Best Inventions of 2020” list.
For more information on Pico Interactive, visit www.pico-interactive.com. For more information on Glue, visit www.glue.work
About Pico Interactive
Pico Interactive focuses on innovative VR and AR solutions which enable businesses to create and experience the best in VR and Interactive Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI). With operations in the United States, Europe, China and Japan, Pico Interactive focuses on creating amazing VR platforms for any application and is built around the principle of “user first design.” To learn more, visit www.pico-interactive.com.
About Glue
Glue Collaboration (Helsinki, Finland) is the leader in real-time virtual collaboration software. We run Glue, a platform for teams that need remote meetings to be as great as working face to face. In Glue, teams collaborate in persistent, feature-rich and fully customizable shared virtual spaces. With world-class immersive 3D graphics, spatialized audio design and AI-powered avatars, Glue is a place where communication is natural and effortless, and where users experience a true sense of presence. Empower your team to do its best work by visiting: https://www.glue.work
