Oculus for Business Expands to More Regions

It has been amply demonstrated that virtual reality (VR) can have a positive impact on businesses, offering facilities such as immersive training as well as the chance for long-distance collaboration. Oculus for Business was set up to provide this facility as part of a service to businesses and organisations. Oculus have now announced that companies in new regions will be able to take advantage of the Oculus for Business service.

Oculus are expanding the availability of Oculus for Business to Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan, and are also reducing the price of the Oculus for Business Rift bundle.

Mark Zuckerberg - Oculus Touch

The price of the Oculus for Business Rift bundle is being knocked down to $799 (USD) from its former price of $900, so businesses in many countries will be able to take advantage of the benefits provided by VR at a lower price.

The Oculus Rift for Business bundle contains an Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch controllers, three sensors for room-scale tracking and three hygienic face masks for sharing the headset.

For a more portable option, the Oculus Go bundle is also available through Oculus Go for Business, with pre-orders going live in May. The Oculus Go for Business is priced at $299 and comes with an Oculus Go 64GB headset, a worldwide multi-prong charger, and two facial hygienic masks.

The Oculus Go for Business pre-order bundles are expected to begin shipping in later Summer 2018.

Oculus for Business is now available in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, and the USA.

Further information can be found on the Oculus for Business website.

For future coverage of VR apps, services and hardware for business and enterprise use, keep checking back with VRFocus.

Oculus Unveil Oculus Go for Business

It has been reported many times on VRFocus that virtual reality (VR) in many forms is being utilised by businesses for a variety of applications. Oculus have long offered a version of the Oculus Rift for business use, and now the Oculus Go is joining it.

The Oculus Go for Business is priced at $299 (USD) and is available for pre-order now through the Oculus for Business website.

Oculus Go GDC Promo 03

The Oculus Go offers some advantages over the Oculus Rift for business use. As a standalone unit that doesn’t need a powerful PC rig, it is much more portable than the Oculus Rift so is able to be easily transported to site visits or business trips.

The much lower price of the Oculus Rift will no doubt prove to be attractive to businesses, as the Oculus Rift business edition is priced at $900, a significant amount of cash when compared to the more modest price of the Oculus Go.

The Oculus Go for Business bundle comes with an Oculus Go 64GB headset (the higher-end model compared to the standard 32GB version) it also comes with a worldwide multi-prong charger, a commercial warranty and 2 facial interface masks to make it hygienic to share with other users.

The Oculus Rift for Business bundle, by contrast, contains and Oculus Rift with Oculus Touch controllers, three sensors for room-scale tracking and three face masks for sharing the headset.

Oculus Go Shipping Announcement (F8 2018)

Though most business-level VR apps are currently geared towards high-end devices like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Microsoft HoloLens, the release of standalone VR devices like the Oculus Go is likely to spur development of apps for those devices. VRFocus will keep you informed on business use for VR.

Oculus Gets Down to Business With New Rift Bundle Aimed at Commercial Use

A new commercial-focused hardware bundle including Rift headset, Touch controllers, three Sensors, and three facial interfaces was revealed at Oculus Connect 4 this week. The bundle, which can be ordered in bulk, for the first time offers a commercial license, enterprise-grade warranty, and dedicated customer support.

Hugo Barra, VP of Virtual Reality at Facebook, announced the Oculus for Business program on stage during the event’s opening keynote, highlighting two examples of existing commercial partnerships, one with Audi who have Rift experiences for viewing custom car configurations installed in hundreds of showrooms worldwide, and Cisco, who created a VR collaboration environment on top of their Spark platform:

Oculus have been slow to entice the enterprise & commercial sector, perhaps because their room-scale solution took far longer to reach a high standard compared to the HTC Vive, which offered a near-flawless room-scale VR package since its launch in April 2016. HTC introduced a $1,200 Vive ‘Business Edition’ in June 2016, dominating the enterprise sector for well over a year.

The new Oculus Rift Business Bundle, which starts at $900, has been detailed on the official Oculus Blog, stating that the Rift can be used to “boost productivity, accelerate trainings, and present the otherwise impossible to their employees and customers—across industries like tourism, education, medical, construction, manufacturing, automotive, and retail.”

Oculus still doesn’t doesn’t offer a commercial/enterprise app platform, something that Valve and HTC have been focusing on lately through Steam and Viveport. Interestingly, Oculus is shipping to 17 counties, none of which are China, a country where VR adoption is relatively high but largely dominated by HTC’s Vive headset.

The post Oculus Gets Down to Business With New Rift Bundle Aimed at Commercial Use appeared first on Road to VR.

Customise Your Audi with Oculus Rift

German car maker Audi have long been regarded as one of the companies on the forefront of technological development. The Audi brand is associated with luxury, quality and business, so fitting it alongside Oculus for Business seems to be a natural fit for both companies.

Audi have previously used virtual reality (VR) technologies for technical development, design and training, but now the company is going further and offering a customer-facing experience that will soon be rolled out to various dealerships.

As demonstrated in the below video, by donning the Oculus Rift headset, customers can view their dream car sitting on an idyllic beach at sunset, the sound of waves crashing in the distance. The user can then use the controls to customise every aspect of the car. Change the paint colour from blue to red, alter the interior from black to red to match the exterior. Add a body kit, pop the top down on a convertible, change your engine preferences, add or remove options and even sit inside the virtual recreation to drink it all in.

The VR experience was created for Audi by Oculus and ZeroLight with collaborations from Intel. The carefully crafted VR recreation of the Audi reacts to the user’s position and lighting, granting it an impressive amount of realism.

It is expected that the VR experience will soon be rolling out to Audi dealerships in Europe, though an exact date has not been set and it is unknown if and when it will appear at Audi dealerships in North America.

VRFocus will continue to bring you news on Oculus for Business.

Oculus Creates New Bundle Specifically for Business

So it’s been quite a start to Oculus Connect 4 (OC4) with the wireless Santa Cruz headset getting a mention, and now Oculus Go, a complete standalone VR headset. But Oculus Rift hasn’t been forgotten with the company announcing a new focus on business.

Oculus for Business will come as a new bundle which will feature Oculus Rift and Touch, three sensors for 360-degree room scale tracking and three face guards so multiple users can enjoy the headset hygienically.

Oculus for Business

The bundle is very similar to the HTC Vive business edition and to tailor to businesses Oculus will be accepting bulk orders – although it didn’t state if big orders would see a discount.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of OC4, reporting back with the latest announcements.