VR Education joins Facebook platform for VR vendors

Education-focussed virtual reality technology company VR Education announced on Friday that its ‘ENGAGE’ platform has been selected by Facebook for its Oculus Independent Software Vendors (ISV) programme.

The AIM-traded firm explained that the Oculus ISV programme worked with enterprise developers and software companies to engage with Facebook’s ‘Oculus’ virtual reality platform, in order to accelerate customer adoption of VR solutions built for Oculus enterprise products.

As a result, following the anticipated roll-out of the Oculus for Business platform in early 2020, VR Education's ENGAGE platform would, for the first time, be available via a special portal for Oculus enterprise clients to access and connect with.

In addition, the group said it would be one of a few select developers who would be able to provide services using Facebook equipment, as well as receiving additional support from them.

Facebook, which manufactures the Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest hardware platforms, was currently the “market leader” in standalone VR device sales, VR Education said, with the Oculus Quest on track to sell more than one million units in 2019 following its release in late May.

The board described the ENGAGE platform as an “advanced” virtual reality training and education platform, designed to make it easy to collaborate on tasks remotely, create new content and learn in virtual reality.

It said the ENGAGE team had signed up various commercial deals with educational institutions in the United States and Korea, with the group currently engaged in negotiations with a number of large multinationals to provide enterprise solutions to their workers and training professionals.

“It is fantastic to be chosen by Facebook to help accelerate the wider adoption of VR globally,” said chief executive officer David Whelan.

“Oculus has an amazing technology platform and ENGAGE is leading the way when it comes to distance learning and remote team collaboration.

“I see an extremely bright future for this technology with the release of high-end mobile devices, such as the Oculus Quest and the HTC Vive Focus, as well as the release of 5G high speed mobile internet.”

Whelan said business and enterprise would only adopt new technology when they saw compelling advantages to doing so, explaining that ENGAGE was being developed to meet those business needs, providing virtual meeting rooms and training scenarios which could save customers time and money.

“To date, adoption of virtual reality [and] augmented reality has been steady, however with Facebook, HTC, O2, Deutsche Telekom and many others all now working towards the growth of 5G and AR/VR, we believe that will see an acceleration of adoption over the next 18 to 24 months.”