Conference organisers have been hit hard by coronavirus lockdowns, but one answer is to hold events online or even better in virtual reality.
VR Education specialises in this type of technology and for the AIM-listed business, this period of enforced homeworking might prove to be a company maker.
A month ago, for example, it ran a virtual conference for Taiwanese electronics group HTC.
VR Education specialises in virtual reality conferences
The Hyve conference is normally an event that delegates attend but as it was due to be held in China, HTC asked VRE if it could host the event virtually.
Dave Whelan, VRE’s chief executive, says it had over 1,000 people log on at the event through its virtual reality software platform Engage.
Speakers and attendees from Europe and the US were able to interact with visitors from China while over 1.1million watched the live streaming of the conference.
Since the Hyve event, enquiries since taken off from organisers all over the world says Whelan, with the business having to employ additional business development staff to handle the workload.
‘Because of the virus, organisers are assessing how they have done business in the past and asking can we do this online in future,’ he says.
A key advantage of its Engage VR platform is that it has a very low bandwidth requirement for conversations inside the platform.
‘We don’t transmit video. What we send is positional data, which is a large text file, and MP3 audio,’ says Whelan.
That means Engage will work perfectly well in places where bandwidth constraints cannot run a Skype meeting or Zoom video conference. Anyone who has used Zoom and Skype also knows they can get very busy, very quickly as people talk over each other.
Engage though uses 3D spatial audio say Whelan, so if you are in a group of 50 people in a virtual room and there is a presentation going on at the front, you can lean over to the person next to you and whisper as if you were sitting next to them.
It is a leap forward for virtual events and conferences but VRE is making strides in other areas.
The Engage platform was built as an educational tool originally and here, too, business is flying.
Last week, it signed a partnership deal with US firm VictoryXR, which will use Engage to provide online science lessons to school children in the US.
VictoryXR has learning experiences across 50 different subjects, with teachers able to run live virtual classes through the Engage platform, add additional content and replay the lessons.
There are around 2.5million home students in the US, though Whelan expects this number to rise quickly now that people have become more familiar with home online tuition as schools have shut.
The partnership with VictoryXR will also expand VRE’s services and content globally.
Looking to the future: Virtual reality headsets are tumbling in price
Games activity, too, has rocketed since the lockdowns came into force and that has translated into big rises in the social usage of VRE’s software.
A new game Space Shuttle Commander is due to come out shortly on best-selling headset Oculus, and Whelan says Engage is being used a medium to help people keep in touch in the current lockdown situation.
He believes the enforced changes of situation for people that will prove a tipping for the VR sector. Up to now the sector has promised much but struggled to deliver, but few doubt that fundamental changes in how people work have taken place recently.
The concept is being proven, Whelan says, and going forward, the prospects look bright. Also helping is the fact that VR headsets are tumbling in price and a computer isn’t necessary any more as a 5G connection works extremely well.
Revenues in 2019 were a €1million and at 7.75p currently VRE is worth £15million, but that might not be the case for much longer if the interest turns into orders.
Following the success of the Hyve conference, HTC wants to be become a reseller of VRE’s software in China to combine with its hardware, for example.
Discussions are underway with other large conglomerates including telecoms companies and hardware businesses and Whelan believes a page has been turned.
‘Trading is going well,’ says Whelan, adding the last couple of months have been transformative.
‘Now one saw this coming. We thought 5G was going to be the push for VR technology, but with the virus causing a lot of people to reassess how they work and communicate, now is the time that this technology is going to flourish.’
Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence.