Category: varjo

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Varjo and MeetinVR’s new Partnership Aims to Create Photorealistic Enterprise Collaboration

Varjo x MeetinVR

At the moment each week seems to offer new ways for businesses to collaborate through virtual reality (VR) technology. The latest comes from MeetinVR which has just launched its open beta whilst partnering with Varjo, to release a highly realistic version of its software for Varjo’s headsets.

Varjo products

Having been in private beta for three years with select Fortune500 companies, the open beta launch will support companies looking for new ways to connect their workforce – a hot topic at the moment with the likes of Spatial and Oculus for Business arriving.

MeetinVR includes all the useful features you’d expect from a collaboration app, diverse spaces which suit individual company needs, a tablet to access beneficial tools, being able to place 3D objects mid-air and the ability to brainstorm on white boards.

Its collaboration with Varjo takes this a step further as MeetinVR will support the VR-2, VR-2 Pro and XR-1 Developer Edition for mixed reality (MR) meetings. While the implementation has yet to roll out, the companies have introduced a new bundle offer where new Varjo headset owners will receive six months of MeetinVR for free for five users.

“Remote working is now becoming our new normal and the need to be able to virtually collaborate with colleagues, customers and partners around the world is business critical,” said Urho Konttori, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Varjo in a statement. “As enterprises adapt to a new work environment, we’re excited to partner with leading industry players, such as MeetinVR, to help build the future of virtual and mixed reality collaboration.”

Varjo x MeetinVR

“Varjo’s photorealistic resolution gives users the ability to see reflections and shadows of their 3D models, as well as read text, all of which create a realistic experience for collaboration amongst meeting participants,” said Cristian Emanuel Anton, CEO of MeetinVR. “With this partnership, users don’t have to abide by the rules of physics anymore. They are able to merge real and virtual elements seamlessly in our collaborative platform. This sets a new benchmark for remote presence and interaction for professionals.”

MeetinVR is free to trial right now, supporting up to 20 users for 30 days. Once those parameters have been exceed then there are three main plans starting at 5-20 users for €35 per month/user, 21-50 users costs €30 per month/user, while 51+ users costs €25 per month/user. The collaboration software currently supports Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality headsets with Varjo support coming soon.

As MeetinVR continues to improve its collaboration software, VRFocus will keep you updated.

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Varjo Updates XR-1 Mixed Reality Headset to Support Chroma Key & Marker Tracking

Varjo, a Finnish virtual reality (VR) headset manufacturer for the enterprise market released its latest model, the XR-1 Developer Edition in December, offering companies the chance to switch between VR and mixed reality (MR) depending upon requirements. Today, Varjo its next early access feature for the headset, allowing customers to utilise chroma key for the first time.

Varjo XR-1

A process more commonly known as ‘green-screening’ and used quite often in broadcasting and film to create a range of CGI effects, using the XR-1 Varjo’s customers can mix the virtual with real physical objects in real-time.

Currently, one of the biggest issues MR technology has is occlusion; where a digital object can’t sit behind a real one, rather awkwardly overlaid. Using Chroma key, Varjo there’s no issue, allowing someone to walking into a scene you’re viewing on the headset or even seeing your actual hands rather than a digital representation.

Another part of the update is marker tracking where users can instantly anchor virtual objects to the real world using printable visual markers. This can range from placing and moving virtual furniture in a room to automotive designers sitting in a car replacing parts of the interior with designs that are not yet built.

“Since its commercial launch in December 2019, Varjo’s XR-1 Developer Edition has quickly become the most demanded mixed reality product for professional users, transforming the way companies train, design and conduct research in immersive environments,” said Urho Konttori, Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Varjo in a statement. “When our customers asked us to create a seamless solution for blending the real and virtual worlds, we immediately jumped to the challenge. We’re excited to introduce real-time chroma-keying and object tracking to our customers just three months after the first deliveries of the XR-1, enabling absolute immersion inside mixed reality.”

Varjo

“With chroma key, Varjo took an industry-standard technique and turned it into a useful new feature for dynamic mixed reality simulations,” said Bob Vaughn, Product Manager at FlightSafety International, a worldwide leader in aviation training. “We look forward to further exploring the feature applied to a variety of simulation opportunities. We highly value our collaborative relationship with Varjo, and are excited to continue to push the boundaries of mixed reality.”

These early access features are available to all users of the XR-1 Developer Edition headset which retails for $9,995 USD. Take a look at the video to see the chroma key in action and for further updates, keep reading VRFocus.

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Watch: Varjo’s Stunning Mixed Reality Integration Put My Real Body Into VR

Time for another slightly cruel glimpse of the future of VR packaged into Varjo’s ever-impressive enterprise-level VR tech.

Today the Finnish company is releasing an early access version of chroma key integration for its XR-1 headset, facilitating some truly stunning mixed reality support. Chroma key compositing is an effect used to superimpose virtual images over a certain color, like a green screen. We see it used today for many of the mixed reality Beat Saber videos we enjoy on our lunch breaks. But Varjo’s integration, available for free to customers, activates the effect in real-time time inside the XR-1’s passthrough cameras.

That means that, when you look at a green screen with the headset on, you’ll see a virtual world. At the start of my demo in London last week, I gazed on in amazement at Google Earth running on the green screen. It was fully 3D, just like you’d expect, stretching beyond the walls of the room, literally like a window into another reality. But, when I turned my head away from the screen, I saw the real world again. Not only that but my full, human hands could be seen clear as day in the virtual environment and anyone else in the room could step into the screen and appear in my virtual world. It was pretty mind-blowing to behold.

Of course, my hands couldn’t interact with the world itself (though hand-tracking integration could change that) and, if I put them into a building they wouldn’t occlude (more on that later), but the quality of the passthrough made me feel like my entire body had travelled into Google Earth with me for the first time.

This feature, the company tells me, found its way into Varjo’s SDK after a client request. And you can see why; my next demo carves another hole in the wall to reveal a sudden extension to our office space, leading into a stylish kitchen area. Varjo’s Roope Rainisto walks over and puts a garbage bin and a pair of shoes next to me. The bin struggles with the reflection of the light, but the shoes instantly look like a part of the scene. Keep in mind, too, that I’m looking at all of this through Varjo’s super high-resolution displays.

Finally on the mixed reality front, I’m shown an enterprise VR favorite; a cockpit experience. Now I balance a flight stick on my lap and find myself inside DCS. I can see my legs, a flight stick I’ve just been handed and my hands, but the rest is entirely virtual, with little in the way of jitters and bugs. Rainisto hands me a placard, saying “Imagine if this was a set of instructions or directions.”

Chroma key 4 varjo

Then things get a little weird. We start talking about all the crazy things you could do with this technology. Rainisto picks up the green screen on the floor, wraps it around himself and then suddenly disappears inside of Google Earth. He runs to the other side of the room, away from the rest of the screen, carrying a window into the world with him. He has literally become Google Earth, offering glimpses of the 360 view of the Vatican all around me before dropping his makeshift invisibility cloak and reappearing again.

Varjo also showed me its new marker-based AR solution. This is a familiar system; Sony used marker-based AR all the way back in the PSP days, but here it offers rock-solid passthrough AR anchoring for enterprise use. I hold a high definition scan of the Mona Lisa, this time with full occlusion hiding my hands when I put them behind the frame.

Both of these features are available as early access features to the XR-1 developer kit right now. Varjo assures me yet more features are on the way, too. But, as fascinating as this all is, it’s important to remember that the XR-1 is about as far from a consumer headset as you can currently get, coming in at some €995,000. For now, this very much remains a glimpse of a far-flung future, unless you happen to be a military training company or something similarly lucrative. Still, we cam dream, right?

The post Watch: Varjo’s Stunning Mixed Reality Integration Put My Real Body Into VR appeared first on UploadVR.

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Now 150 People Strong, Varjo Talks Future Focus, More Affordable Headsets

Finland-based startup Varjo, maker of high-end enterprise VR headsets, has built an impressive product and charted a rapid growth, seemingly similar to the early years of Oculus. Now with 150 employees and some $46 million in venture funding, Varjo is aiming to make its headset lineup more widely accessible.

After an impressive demo of Varjo’s ‘workspace’ concept earlier this month, I sat down with CEO Niko Eiden and got a glimpse of the company’s focus and heading.

To Be (a Platform) or Not to Be

Eiden told me that Varjo isn’t planning to make an ecosystem play. Rather than profiting by owning a platform and the means of content distribution (as Facebook, Valve, HTC, and others are focused on) Varjo intends to be a product company—one which primarily profits from the sale of its hardware. The company’s headsets are currently compatible with OpenVR (the foundation of SteamVR), and every Varjo headset includes SteamVR Tracking built in.

More Affordable Headsets for a Broader Appeal

Image courtesy Varjo

Even among enterprise-focused headsets, Varjo’s are expensive. As the only headset on the market offering genuine retina resolution (at least in the central part of the field of view) the company at least has a truly unique differentiator which to justify the premium $5,000 pricetag for use-cases which demand visual fidelity that matches human eyesight. Even so, Varjo hopes to make its headsets more affordable in the future.

Eiden said that Varjo’s goal is to eventually make its products affordable enough that individual employees could reasonably ask their employer for the headset—the same way they might ask their department for a high-end monitor—whereas the cost today means there generally needs to be a very specific use-case and ROI in mind, which has kept Varjo’s headsets largely in the realm of Fortune 500 companies.

Indeed, impressive companies like Volvo, Audi, Saab AB, and Siemens PLM—companies with market caps in the tens of billions of dollars—are among Varjo’s “hundreds” of customers, Eiden said. But it’s going to take a cheaper headset for Varjo to reach medium-sized businesses, and to see its vision of seamless VR enterprise workflows come to fruition.

Image courtesy Varjo

Exactly where the price will fall, Eiden didn’t say, but with HTC’s Vive Pro Eye (perhaps the most complete enterprise-focused offering out there) at $1,600, somewhere between that and $3,500 (the price of well equipped workstation PC) seems reasonable.

Startup Trajectory

Since its founding in 2016, Varjo has grown quite rapidly. Eiden confirmed the company now has some 150 employees, about half of which he said are focused on hardware, with the other half on software. Varjo has raised some $46 million to date, and Eiden told me that the company is in the midst of raising its Series C funding round with a goal in the neighborhood of $55 to $110 million.

Image courtesy Varjo

As far as a the trajectory of a VR headset startup, that puts Varjo just about in a league of its own, with the nearest comparable seemingly being Oculus itself, which, over the course of about three years, raised nearly $100 million before being acquired by Facebook in 2014. Other VR headset startups out there which come close are Pico and Pimax, though neither have amassed the same level of funding.

Vision Driven

There’s a big question still in the air for Varjo. If the company doesn’t plan to own an ecosystem, what will differentiate its headset once others catch up with retina resolution visuals? For Eiden, the and rest of the company, the long term vision of the ‘workspace’ concept seems to be the pillar around which the company plans to ultimately build. “When we’re done, computers will look nothing like they do right now,” the company says.

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Varjo’s ‘Workspace’ Demo is a Glimpse of VR’s Long Term Future in the Workplace

Finland-based startup Varjo, makers of high-end enterprise VR headsets, has charted a rapid growth, similar to the early years of Oculus. Now with some 150 employees, Varjo wants to make its headset lineup more widely accessible by reducing prices so that smaller businesses can justify the cost. Beyond the unique selling point of the company’s headsets—a novel display concept which offers ‘retina resolution’—Varjo is pioneering the way in which VR headsets could be a part of the day-to-day enterprise workflow.

This week at CES 2020 I got to see Varjo’s latest demo which combined the AR-capable XR-1 headset with the company’s ‘workspace’ concept which envisions replacing real monitors with virtual ones to streamline 3D and CAD workflows.

Retina Resolution in a VR Headset

Image courtesy Varjo

Like Varjo’s other headsets, the XR-1 has what the company calls the ‘Bionic Display’; when you look through the headset you see a reasonably wide field of view but the center of the view has extremely high resolution. This is done with a novel combination of a small high density display in the center with a larger lower resolution display for the peripheral view. The result is genuinely impressive, and Varjo has reached a point where the boundary between the low and high resolution parts of the image is nearly invisible.

With this approach, Varjo is the only company selling a complete headset which can offer genuine 60 PPD ‘retina resolution’—detail which matches the limit of the human eye—at least in a portion of the field of view.

The above through-the-lens photos, captured by Varjo, are an accurate portrayal of the difference in visual fidelity between Vive Pro and Varjo, but only for the center of the field of view (which is what’s shown here).

And while there’s plenty of value to be had from headsets which don’t reach that level of detail, it’s an absolute necessity if you want to fully replace real monitors with virtual ones.

To that end, Varjo is going beyond just building headsets. The company revealed its ‘workspace’ concept, a vision of office productivity where 3D and CAD workers can easily be co-present with 3D content and with the traditional 2D tools they use to create it.

Varjo’s Vision of an XR Workplace

Image courtesy Varjo

At CES 2020 this week I got to see Varjo’s workspace concept in action. And while there needs to be major improvements to UX and form-factor before workers will be wearing headsets at their desks all day, the vision that Varjo showed is quite compelling.

Varjo XR-1 with AR pass-through | Image courtesy Varjo

In addition to the Bionic Display, Varjo’s XR-1 offers the best pass-through AR capability I’ve seen yet. This is thanks to high resolution, high-framerate, wide FOV, color cameras, and Varjo’s careful calibration of all the pieces in the passthrough puzzle.

In the demo, I saw the real room around me through the headset’s pass-through AR view, along with a virtual floating window that mirrored the Window 10 desktop of the PC that the headset was connected to. Thanks to the XR-1’s retina resolution, I could read even the smallest text on the screen just as well as if it was a real display in front of me. On most other headsets I’d need to blow up the window to be 10 feet wide in order to have the same level of text clarity.

But it isn’t just about having unlimited virtual monitor real estate. Varjo showed how it can bring 3D content out of the monitor and into the world around you. To show this function, the company pulled up a desktop window showing a 2D view of a 3D model, and with the click of a button, a fully 3D model suddenly popped into the room next to me at full scale. That meant I could stand up and walk around the model to see it in as if it was a real object before me.

For enterprises which deal in high-end 3D design (think architecture, automotive, engineering, etc), Varjo thinks there’s value in giving workers a way to seamlessly move between their 2D tools and the immersive power of VR in this way.

For example, in the demo the company showed how someone designing the spatial layout of an aircraft cockpit could make some changes and then, with the press of a button, find themselves sitting in the full-scale cockpit to check how their changes feel right. Too far to reach the throttle? Jump back to the CAD application make some tweaks and then check again in VR with just a click. This sort of fast iteration can save tons of time for this kind of design work.

Varjo even showed how they could turn on hand-tracking so that my real hands could be projected into the cockpit with me. While the hand detection and projection in the demo is still really coarse around the edges, the feeling of reaching out to the various cockpit controls with my real hands (and seeing them properly occlude behind the virtual model) was magical enough to make me frustrated when I couldn’t actually feel the model when I tried to touch it!

Beyond augmenting traditional 3D design workflows with the power of VR, there’s other obvious benefits to this ‘work inside of VR’ concept—like being able to instantly ‘teleport’  into the office of another VR worker across the building (or across the world) for a quick discussion about the changes to the model.

– – — – –

After a demo like the one Varjo showed at CES this week, it’s easy to let the imagination run with the possibilities, but there’s still mountains of friction to sort out in the short term. Everything from headset ergonomics, spatially interconnected software and services, social norms of headsets-in-the-workplace, and plenty more will need to be forged and honed before it’s all smooth enough to present true value to an enterprise. That said, some form of Varjo’s compelling vision is almost surely the long-term future of XR in the workplace.

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Varjo Unveils ‘Workspace’ User Interface, Exploring the Future of Always-on AR/VR Workflows

Varjo Technologies today announced its new user interface, code-named ‘Varjo Workspace’, which is designed to seamlessly let professionals use their Windows computer applications and 3D software tools with the company’s recently announced developer-focused AR/VR headset, Varjo XR-1.

The company’s software is said to let users fluidly switch between passthrough, AR, and VR modes, which aims to let developers more realistically work longer within the headset itself, and switch between modes when needed.

With access to Windows desktop, which includes multiple virtual monitors, the new software is built to leverage the company’s latest ‘human eye resolution’ headset, the new $10,000 XR-1 Developer Edition, which includes outward-facing cameras for passthrough AR. The company calls this simultaneous access to both 2D and 3D content “a critical part of Varjo’s vision of the future of computing.”

Image courtesy Varjo Technologies

Aiming to appeal to the enterprise sector, Varjo produces high-resolution headsets such as its pricey VR-2 and VR-2 Pro variant. Like the XR-1, these devices contain Varjo’s proprietary ‘bionic display’, which blends a central 1,920 x 1,080 micro-OLED ‘focus display’ with a larger ‘context’ display at 1,440 x 1,600. The idea is to give you a higher pixel per degree (PPD) where it counts the most—the center of your eye—while keeping a reasonably large field of view (FOV) with the larger, albeit lower pixel-dense context display. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our deep dive hands-on article here.

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Varjo Launches $10,000 XR-1 Dev Edition, Combining VR & AR in a Single Headset

Unlike the company’s other headsets though, XR-1 instead includes two fixed-focus 12 megapixel cameras, which have a 90 Hz refresh and a 94-degree circular viewing angle—larger than the FOV of the headset’s context display—meaning you’re served up AR imagery at an FOV that dedicated AR headsets simply can’t reach.

Coming out of stealth in 2017, Varjo has partnered with a few big names in the automotive industry, including Volvo, Audi, Volkswagen, and maintains that those professionals using its new software could hypothetically modify a 3D car model using existing CAD and visualization tools like Autodesk, or game engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine, and then observe the model in either AR or VR to get a better sense of its design.

Urho Konttori, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Varjo, says that with Workspace, the company is showing how professionals will use and interact with computers in the future:

“Unlike other immersive computing UIs, Varjo Workspace is not built on ‘hand-waving’ Hollywood UIs with no practical basis in reality, but instead integrates the way we work today using professional 2D applications – all enhanced by the capabilities of Varjo’s XR-1 Developer Edition,” Konttori said. “Varjo is unique in being the only product maker capable of photorealistic visual fidelity in both VR and XR, with perfect color accuracy and control. This is a key enabler for the next computing paradigm. Today, the XR-1 and Varjo Workspace greatly expand the value of mixed reality for professionals by enabling immediate iterations and radically faster 2D/3D workflows.”

Varjo is currently shipping its Workspace software to customers and partners in tandem with its XR-1 software suite.

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Varjo XR-1 Blends VR And AR For Nearly $10,000

The Varjo XR-1 Developer Edition is now available for developers with some highly touted mixed reality capabilities.

varjo xr-1

The headset offers a similar system to the Varjo VR-2, with a small foveal display sitting in the middle of a larger peripheral display. However, the XR-1 also offers the ability to display simulated objects in the real world, and real objects in a simulated world, using what’s claimed as “photo-realistic” pass-through video. Its creators claim the device can switch between mixed reality and full VR scenes easily, and also features an “industrial-grade 20/20 Eye Tracker.”

Varjo’s Founder and Chief Product Officer Urho Konttori tweeted about the pass-through mixed reality feature, showing an example of a user operating a helicopter.

Another example, provided by Varjo and pictured below, shows a virtual reality car model displayed in the headset on a pass-through video image of a parking lot.

Varjo xr-1 pass-through video

Varjo says its pass-through images are powered by two 12-megapixel cameras operating at 90 Hz. The company claims the “XR-1’s ultra-low latency image pipeline” operates at less than 20ms. The headset has a FOV of 87 degrees, is compatible with SteamVR and ART tracking systems, and weighs 1050 g, or 1300 g when used with a counterweight.

You can read more about the Varjo XR-1 Developer Edition on their website. The headset is available to purchase for business use in North America, Europe and Japan for $9,995.

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Varjo Launches $10,000 XR-1 Dev Edition, Combining VR & AR in a Single Headset

Following the launch of Varjo’s enterprise-focused VR-2 headset back in October, the Helsinki-based company has now made available its XR-1 Developer Edition headset, which at $10,000 includes the company’s high fidelity ‘bionic displays’, integrated eye-tracking, and now passthrough cameras which promise to make the headset an ideal platform for both AR & VR enterprise development.

Like Varjo’s enterprise-focused VR-2, the new XR-1 includes the company’s ‘bionic display’, blending a central 1,920 x 1,080 micro-OLED ‘focus display’ (60 PPD) with a larger ‘context’ display at 1,440 x 1,600, which has a lower PPD but provides the headset with an 87-degree field of view.

Varjo’s display architecture left quite the impression on us to say the least, as we called the company’s prior headsets a “breathtaking preview of VR’s future.”

Image courtesy Varjo Technologies

In addition to its integrated eye-tracking, which was previously made available in both VR-2 and VR-2 Pro variants, Varjo has now included in its XR-1 two fixed-focus 12 megapixel cameras, which have a 90 Hz refresh and a 94-degree circular viewing angle. This, the company says in a blog post, aims to let developers build “truly photorealistic mixed reality experiences where virtual objects seamlessly merge with reality for the first time in full field of view.”

SEE ALSO
Lenovo Partners with Varjo to Validate Enterprise PCs as 'Certified for Varjo'

To highlight this, Varjo also released a video showing an unmodified capture shot through XR-1 Developer Edition, which shows a cockpit-based XR solution built by Bohemia Interactive Simulations which lets the pilot and co-pilot to interact with the physical cockpit while immersed in a virtual environment.

Below you’ll see the pilot looking out at the virtual world and down at the instrument cluster, revealing that the superimposed virtual simulation environment is actually blended to include his own physical hands and flight controls.

Like all of its enterprise-focused headsets, the company is also tacking on its mandatory one-year software and support package, which costs an extra $1,995, bringing the whole package to just under $12,000—no small bananas, but apparently a price range large names such as Audi, Volkswagen, Saab Group, haven’t minded shelling out in the past, as Varjo has seemed to tap into a variety of industrial usecases that require the highest fidelity 1:1 virtual environments for skill transfer.

If you’re looking to try out Varjo’s headsets, the company will be demonstrating the XR-1 Developer Edition, as well as VR-2 and VR-2 Pro headsets, at I/ITSEC 2019 through December 5th, 2019.

XR-1 Developer Edition Key Features:

  • Photorealistic video pass-through enables users to see digital objects in true-to-life color, lighting and shadows in a full field of view (87 degrees).
  • The ability to switch between mixed reality and ‘full’ VR so users can interact with the real and the virtual world in one device for applications such as testing designs in different environments or manipulating their surroundings with pixel-perfect clarity.
  • Industrial-grade 20/20 Eye Tracker delivers unmatched sub-degree accuracy of users’ eye movements in mixed reality scenarios for valuable insights into research, training and simulation and product design.
  • Ultra-low latency imaging pipeline lets users experience the most realistic digital worlds as extensions of the natural environment without perceivable lag.
  • Human-eye resolution Bionic Display™ (over 60 PPD/3,000 PPI) brings high visual fidelity to even the most demanding industrial scenarios where extreme precision and photorealistic accuracy is required.
  • Varjo’s products can also be experienced at I/ITSEC at various customer booths including Bohemia Interactive Simulations, Vertex Solutions, Ryan Aerospace, Presagis, Flight Safety International, and Aechelon.

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Varjo’s XR-1 Mixes VR & AR for $10,000, Developer Edition now Available

In the Spring, Finnish virtual reality (VR) headset manufacturer Varjo revealed it was entering the field of mixed reality (MR) with a new device called XR-1. With I/ITSEC 2019 currently underway in Orlando, for the event, Varjo has just announced that the XR-1 Developer Edition is now available for purchase for the rather tidy sum of $10,000 USD (almost).

Varjo XR-1

Actually, the Varjo XR-1 Developer Edition headset retails for $9,995 but companies will also need to shell out for Varjo’s Software and Support service at $1,995. Small change for companies like Volvo who have been working with Varjo to develop the device – Varjo even received investment from Volvo’s Cars Tech Fund.

The Varjo XR-1 Developer Edition is essentially an upgrade to the VR-1 headset Varjo launched earlier in the year. So the device still features the Bionic Display made up of two screens. The main ‘Context screen’ delivers 1440×1600 per eye while a microdisplay or ‘focal screen’ delivers a resolution of 60 pixels per degree (or 3000ppi). Other features include Varjo’s own in-house 20/20 Eye Tracker system and an 87-degree field of view. To make the headset ‘mixed reality’ Varjo has added two 12mp cameras on the front, thus enabling users to switch between MR and full VR modes.

“Many companies understand the benefits of implementing virtual and mixed reality into their workflows, but haven’t had access to technology sophisticated enough to create photorealistic, 3D content and simulations,” said Urho Konttori, Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Varjo in a statement. “We are excited to bring the XR-1 Developer Edition to market as the industry’s first device that can flawlessly blend the virtual with the real world like never before – pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in training, design and research.”

Varjo XR-1

Varjo no longer sells the VR-1 as this design was recently superseded by the VR-2 and VR-2 Pro models launched in October. Retailing for $4,995 and $5,995, the new headsets feature an upgraded Bionic Display with improved peripheral vision and colour consistency. The VR-2 Pro also comes with Ultraleap hand tracking built-in.

All the headsets can be purchased off Varjo’s website and for further updates on enterprise VR keep reading VRFocus.

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Lenovo Partners with Varjo to Validate Enterprise PCs as ‘Certified for Varjo’

Varjo, maker of ‘bionic eye’ headsets, is gaining increasing notoriety as the high-end option in the enterprise VR space. This week Varjo announced a partnership with Lenovo which will see the PC maker specially certifying some of its enterprise workstation computers to designate compatibility with the headset.

Similar to the ‘Oculus Ready’ program in which Oculus tests and badges gaming PCs with an ‘Oculus Ready’ sticker, Lenovo will begin designating some of its enterprise PCs as ‘Certified for Varjo’ to make it easier for businesses to identify and purchase machines that have the necessary power and ports to run Varjo’s headsets.

While HTC has a strong presence in the enterprise space, Varjo is targeting the high-end of that sector with its ~$5,000 headsets. The company’s headsets feature a novel lens and display arrangement which provide a small window of retina resolution fidelity in the center of a wider field (and lower resolution) of view. This makes the headsets uniquely useful for some enterprise use-cases, especially those which value being able to easily read realistically sized text or see textures and other details with high precision. As such, Varjo has positioned its headsets as being ideal for design, architecture, high-end training, and more.

SEE ALSO
Varjo Launches VR-2 Headset with SteamVR Support, Improved 'Bionic Display', and Hand-tracking Option

And that’s where the Lenovo partnership (described as a “technical and business collaboration” between the companies) comes into play. Next to its consumer PC line, Lenovo also sells high-end enterprise workstations under its ThinkStation and ThinkPad product lines. These machines are often built specifically for performance, security, and reliability. However, workstations aren’t always equipped with the kind of high-end graphics power required for VR, let alone headsets like Varjo’s which need to run two displays per eye.

To make it easy for enterprise customers to identify and buy Varjo-capable machines without needing to get into the technicals weeds, Lenovo will designate some of its enterprise PCs as ‘Certified for Varjo’, though it’s unclear if this will be represented with a physical badge on the machines, as we’ve seen with similar certification and badging programs.

Image courtesy Varjo

This is a boon for Varjo; not only is Lenovo one of the worlds largest PC manufacturers, they also have a strong reputation in the enterprise space specifically; their sales channels could bring additional business to Varjo thanks to the big business proximity.

Lenovo itself also has a growing reputation in the VR space. The company manufacturers the Oculus Rift S headset, as well as the Mirage Solo standalone headset; the Varjo partnership adds to the company’s clout as a recognized player in the VR space while also working to boost the profile of Varjo. The inroads made through this “technical and business collaboration” may ultimately go deeper than mere product certification in the future.

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