Category: VR Education

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VR Education App ‘Human Anatomy’ Now Available on PSVR 2

The PlayStation Store has a growing number of games built specifically (or optimized) for PSVR 2, although there aren’t a ton of educational apps yet that you might use to get a better understanding of complex subjects like the human body. Now the creators of Human Anatomy VR have released their medical educational tool on PSVR 2.

Initially released on the original PSVR and Quest 2, the PSVR 2 app includes both high school and University-level content. High school content is simplified for “anybody who is curious about the human body,” while University-level content includes detailed 3D models and info that developers Virtual Medicine say “matches the needs of a medical doctor or a medical student who needs to prepare for their anatomical exams.”

Human Anatomy VR includes 15 body systems with more than 13,000 realistic anatomical structures designed by medical professionals, the studio says. This includes bone mapping with 5,000 bone features organized into parts, surfaces, borders, and landmarks. You’ll also be able to handle 21 microanatomy models, and see over 500 movement animations in action.

“It is perfect for sport, fitness & workout enthusiasts, science enthusiasts, high school students, medical and nursing students, universities, libraries and health practitioners,” Virtual Medicine says in the app’s description. “Feature rich content is delivered in a deeply engaging experience with excellent graphics, innovative presentation, and visual delivery.”

You can find Human Anatomy VR on PSVR 2 today, priced at $30. You can also find it on Quest 2 via App Lab as a free trial, and on the original PSVR for $10.

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‘Immerse’ Brings Live Spanish Courses to Quest 2, More Languages Coming in 2023

Immerse, a startup focusing on teaching languages in VR, has launched their social app on Quest 2 which lets subscribers take part in live Spanish or English lessons, peer-to-peer conversation practice, and weekly community events.

When Immerse first secured a $1.5 million Series A investment in late 2020 most of the world was working and going to school from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The idea: learn a language through full-immersion, with VR allowing you to talk face-to-face with other learners and an instructor while you took on real world scenarios.

In March 2022, the company further secured $9 million in its Series B, which allowed it to develop its app for Quest 2 in addition to partnering with institutions across the world to offer up a full-immersion language learning platform. At the time, the company was focused on teaching English as a foreign language, but now Immerse has launched its app on Quest 2 for users looking to improve their Spanish or English. The membership fee is priced at $45 per month, which includes:

  • 12 Live VR lessons facilitated by an expert Language Guide per month
  • 24/7 access to the Social lounge for Live Conversation Practice
  • Personalized feedback to accelerate fluency growth
  • Weekly events to build new community and cultural insight

Immerse is also set to add French and Japanese to their list of available languages, arriving sometime in 2023. Then, the company will be bumping its membership fee to $60 per month. The app does however offer a seven-day free trial to see if its right for you. For now, the free trial is only available for users looking to learn Spanish.

In defense of the app’s membership pricing, Immerse had this to say in the comments of a user review:

Our membership fee is $45 per month because we provide more than typical language learning apps. Our monthly membership includes 12 live VR classes per month, facilitated by a live expert Language Guide, plus 24/7 access to the Social Lounge where you can enjoy real conversation practice with other learners from around the world.

12 classes on a traditional tutoring platform would cost well over $200, and to experience language immersion in real life would require hefty international travel fees far exceeding $45/month. Our goal is to increase people’s access to that kind of immersive language learning experience, but for a fraction of the cost. We hope you’ll consider a 7-day free trial and book our Orientation to learn more about this new kind of learning experience we have to offer.

The studio says Immerse is also coming to other VR headsets in the future. On its road to greater adoption, the company will pioneer best practices for immersive teaching and learning, and build what it says it hopes will be “a thriving virtual world community that will one day rival the likes of Rec Room, Roblox, and VRChat.”

The studio also released a 6-minute video to show off the app, and some of the things you can do with it:

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Stanford Now Offers A Class Held Entirely In Virtual Reality Using Quest 2

A new course being offered by Stanford University garnered some attention in the last few weeks for being the institution’s first class taught and held entirely in VR using Meta Quest 2 headsets.

Taught by Professor Jeremy Bailenson, Communication 166 deals with the various angles of emerging VR technology and its use cases. Bailenson, who you discusses the course in the video above, is the author of the seminal VR text Experience on Demand, which also is one of the class’ assigned readings.

Here’s a course description:

Virtual Reality is becoming mainstream, with more than ten million systems being used in the United States alone. This class examines VR from the viewpoint of various disciplines, including popular culture, engineering, behavioral science, and communication. Each student will receive an Oculus Quest 2 headset, and the bulk of our learning will occur while immersed in VR.

According to the course structure, students will sometimes use lecture time to take part in VR experiences by themselves (such as watching a 360 degree video in VR) or as a group (such as attending a meditation session in Altspace as a group). Class discussions take place in VR too, using Engage.

According to this site, 263 students took the course in 2021 using their own VR headsets and spent a shared 200,000 minutes in VR for the course.

The course attracted some attention last week when it was mentioned by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his Facebook profile, where he revealed that the students are all using Quest 2 headsets.

Stanford University has a strong history with VR, with the Stanford VR Experience tour playing a strong role in Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to purchase Oculus in 2014.

You can read more about Stanford’s Communication 166 class held entirely in virtual reality here.

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Curatours Brings Free Virtual Exhibitions To Oculus Quest And PC, Starting With… Plastics

Virtual exhibition platform, Curatours, is now available on Oculus Quest via App Lab and PC, and it’s launched its first destination, too.

The platform, which was revealed in late 2020 and created by Spaceteam VR developer, Cooperative Innovations, today introduced the Museum of Plastic 2121. As the name suggests, the exhibition envisions a future 100 years from now in which humanity has resolved the climate issues it faces today. The only single-use plastic left in the world is used within the museum. Check out a teaser trailer below.

Curatours – Museum Of Plastic 2121 Trailer

The museum’s aim is to create a positive outlook for the future whilst informing visitors about what needs to change and how they can play a part. It was created in a collaboration with South African activist group, Greenpop, and Baz-Art, an artist collective that helped create murals and 3D paintings for the exhibit. Around the site you’ll find information points to read more and other media drops. You can explore the exhibit with friends, and new wings of the museum are expected to open every Thursday of November 2021.

You can download Curatours for free on App Lab and SteamVR. The platform also offers live tour guides and other elements. Expect to see other museums and exhibits open in the future.

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Noun Town Brings Quirky Language Lessons To Quest, PC VR

Ever wanted to be taught Spanish by a talking avocado? Well, Noun Town is the VR app for you!

Noun Town is an upcoming VR app for Quest and PC VR that aims to teach you new languages using quirky and fun minigames set on a mysterious island filled with cute anthropomorphic objects.

The app is set for an early access release next month, but for now you can try out a short alpha demo version available via App Lab or over on Steam for PC VR. Plans for the full release include 25 language options (including Japanese, Spanish and French) with the ability to learn 500+ nouns for each. You’ll do this by befriending the cute anthropomorphic objects around Noun Town island and participating in educational minigames.

Based off the trailer, embedded above, you’ll also be using your headset’s microphone to speak words aloud, which is then verified by the app to check your pronunciation. Here’s a bit more info about what to expect, taken from the App Lab description:

Noun Town has mysteriously drained of color, with many residents missing. Fulfill the prophecy of HUE+MAN restoring the world, through language-learning minigames.

Developed using memory science research, Noun Town takes immersive language learning to the next level with tools like voice recognition, spaced repetition, and audio from fluent speakers. Grow your skills and save your villager friends!

The developers are also midway through a Kickstarter campaign, which is roughly 3/4 of the way toward their £2500 goal, which promises the full release with the planned 25 languages. Further stretch goals aim to add in other aspects of languages beyond nouns, such as verbs, as well as a companion mobile app.

Noun Town is set to release in early access next month for Oculus Quest and PC VR. You can learn more over on the Kickstarter campaign page.

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Mondly Brings Language Training To Oculus Quest Next Week

Mondly is bringing its language-teaching VR experience to the Oculus Quest next week.

An official version of the app will launch on the platform on August 26. It was previously available on Oculus Go, Rift, SteamVR and Gear VR and works in tandem with the Mondly smartphone app, too. Check out a trailer for those older versions below.

Mondly Oculus Quest Version Revealed

Mondly is an interesting idea for a VR app. Rather than guiding you through tutorials and more traditional language sessions, the experience plants you in real-life scenarios talking to people in different languages. You might be in the back of a taxi asking how much you need to pay, for example, or ordering at a restaurant. The app uses Quest’s microphone to allow you to actually speak and then have the app judge your delivery.

At launch, Mondly supports 29 languages. That includes English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Arabic, Russian, Korean and Chinese. Interestingly that seems to be less languages than older versions of the app, which touted over 30 languages when they were released years back. It also appears that the previously-revealed multiplayer feature, which would let multiple users try talking in different languages, isn’t included in this version. The app costs $7.99 on other storefronts, but a Quest price is yet to be confirmed.

Will you be checking out Mondly next week? Let us know in the comments below!

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Social VR Platform ‘ENGAGE’ Generated Over $1.4M in Revenue in First Half of 2021

VR Education, the virtual reality software firm behind ENGAGE, has reported a significant uptick in revenue generated by the social VR platform so far this year, with revenue from Engage in 2021 nearly doubling over the same period last year.

The Waterford, Ireland-based company has created a number of bespoke educational experiences over the years alongside its most successful product, Engage, which targets companies using it for things like virtual training, simulation, education, and online events.

Publicly traded companies working on VR are typically very large and diversified to the point where picking apart financials doesn’t always provide meaningful data. An overwhelming majority of companies working in the industry are however privately held, and therefore not obligated to specify their wins (or losses).

But VR Education is a fairly unique case in the industry. As a small to medium-sized company publicly listed on both on Euronext Dublin and London Stock Exchange, it’s not only obligated to give stock holders a peek into the financials, but it also conveniently serves as a strong watermark to see just how things are moving in VR.

In the most recent stock holder update detailing the first half of 2021, the company says Engage nearly doubled its revenue over the same period last year, with unaudited revenue in H1 2021 expect to come in somewhere around €1.25 million (~$1.5 million), an increase of 84% over an H1 2020 revenue of €680,000 (~$800,000). In H1 2021, Engage accounted for 72% of its overall revenue stream, an increase of 39% over the year prior.

To put that into perspective, in 2020 the company reported an annual total revenue across all products at €1.42 million (~$1.68 million). With a global pandemic bottlenecking most in-person business though online communication platforms, it seems VR Education has managed to capitalize.

And the company seems to have a fair bit of runway ahead of it too. In June the company announced it had raised €9 million (~$10.7 million) which will help it launch its Oasis metaverse platform—said to be a “fully featured corporate metaverse” where companies can meet and sell products and services directly to each other.

VR Education now counts more than 100 commercial customers using its Engage platform, including recent additions Abbott Laboratories, KPMG, MongoDB, and the US State Department. HTC, a strategic partner and shareholder of VR Education, has also started selling its ENGAGE-based product, VIVE Sessions, in China via its Vive XR Suite software bundle.

Engage is available across a host of VR devices including SteamVR headsets, Oculus Quest, Vive Focus Plus, and Pico headsets. It also supports mobile devices running iOS and Android, and traditional PC monitors.

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Osso VR Announces $27M Series B Funding For Surgical Training Platform

Surgical training platform Osso VR announced it raised $27 million in Series B funding.

The Series B round was led by GSR Ventures, along with Signalfire, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, OCA Ventures, Scrum Venturies, Leslie Ventures and Anorak Ventures. It’s an increase of $13 million in total funding per round compared to the Series A round almost a year ago, which raised a total of $14 million.

Osso VR is a training platform for medical professionals, allowing them to practice and perform difficult surgical procedures using VR headsets and custom hardware and haptic devices for feedback. The custom tools paired with the VR training application makes for a properly immersive and accurate experience that can simulate real training environments.

Osso VR surgery room

Osso VR claims that two recent randomized peer-reviewed studies showed surgeons who trained with the Osso VR platform saw “anywhere from a 230 percent to 306 percent improvement in overall surgical performance compared to traditional training.”

The platform is used in over 20 countries and the company is a training partner with several large orthopedic medical device companies with nearly 20 hospital residencies using the platform for training around the world, according to the company.

“With this latest round, we plan to exponentially expand our library and platform so that every patient in the world can have the peace of mind knowing they are getting access to the safest, highest-value procedures,” said Justin Bara, MD, CEO and Co-founder of Osso VR, in a prepared statement.

You can find out more about Osso VR and its platform over on its website.

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VR Education Platform ‘ENGAGE’ Raises $10.7M to Build ‘Oasis’ Metaverse for Business

VR Education Holdings, the company behind the social VR platform ENGAGE, announced it’s raised €9 million (~$10.7 million) which will help it expand beyond the realm of immersive education & training and into a new product called ENGAGE Oasis. It’s billing the upcoming social VR platform as an enterprise offering comparable to a “fully featured corporate metaverse.”

As reported by Forbes and Silicon Republic, the Waterford, Ireland-based company has secured its latest funding from a number of investors via share placing, which includes Octopus Investment LTD UK. The new shares generated from the deal are said to represent 20% of the company’s issued ordinary share capital prior to the placing. VR Education Holdings is listed on both Euronext Dublin and London Stock Exchange.

In May 2020, VR Education secured $3.3 million from HTC to expand Engage, the company’s platform which allows educators and enterprise customers to create bespoke VR experiences for both small and large format events across a variety of devices, including SteamVR headsets, Oculus Quest, Vive Focus Plus, and Pico headsets. Only two months before the deal went through, Engage played host to HTC’s Virtual Vive Ecosystem Conference—a direct response to the pandemic’s deleterious effect on in-person events.

As the name would suggest, Oasis is fairly ambitious in scope. Aiming for launch in H1 2022, Oasis was inspired by the eponymous metaverse featured in the novel and film Ready Player One, which was the de facto platform in VR where users meet, play and do business. Oasis said to be an “always-on, fully persistent virtual world, where ENGAGE clients can meet and sell products and services directly to each other,” and it targets business professionals, corporations, young professionals, and college students.

“Employees from the world’s largest corporations can connect with each other to generate new business ideas and deliver value to their respective organisations,” the company says in a press statement. “ENGAGE Oasis aims to be an opportunity for corporate users to expand their customer base and provide immersive services at a reasonable price.”

The studio says avatars and virtual locations will be “tailored for professional users,” which includes no limits when it comes to the storefronts and meeting places they want to build. There, the company envisions the platform as a new marketplace for corporations and digital artists to sell digital items and provide services using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies.

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Osso VR Adds Endoscopy And More To Surgical Training Platform

Surgical training platform Osso VR has expanded its offerings to include more modules that cover intervention procedures and endoscopy training.

The new training modules join the existing on-demand, surgical VR training experiences provided by Osso which are used in over 20 teaching hospitals by thousands of surgeons each month across 20 countries.

You can see a video of the endoscopy training embedded above. It looks realistically gooey and as up close and personal as you would expect from any kind of endoscopy, let alone a virtual one designed for training.

“Initially Osso VR started mainly in orthopaedics, but what we have found is the unique platform we have built has been widely applicable across a range of specialties,” said Osso VR CEO and co-founder Justin Barad. “We’re excited to formally launch this expansion in order to reach more healthcare professionals in order to provide value for their patients.”

We tried Osso VR back in 2018 — UploadVR Editor David Jagneaux completed a training module that had him install a rod into a fractured shin. “It was a very kinetic training exercise” he said, “and one that wouldn’t be feasible to try for the first time on a real patient without prior knowledge.”

Midway through last year, Osso VR received a massive update that overhauled the graphics to provide a stunning new level of fidelity for the training modules. The new assets brought a level of realism to the platform that was previously not available — you can check out some screenshots here.

This was followed by an announcement in September 2020 that the company had raised $14 million in Series A funding, led by Kaiser Permanente Ventures, with participation from SignalFire, GSR, Scrum Ventures, Leslie Ventures and OCA Ventures.