One of VR’s biggest strengths is the ability to make those at a distance feel like they’re physically near each other. While this is great for visiting with friends remotely, there’s a great number of VR companies betting that virtual reality office environments, remote collaboration, and working from home in VR are going to be the future of work. Here’s a look at a handful of companies building remote collaboration VR tools and platforms for a range of use-cases.

Team Collaboration, Presentation, & Virtual Offices

These apps are designed for professionals who need to collaborate, meet, discuss, present, and make collective decisions, as well as those who want to be able to use their PC for productivity in VR while connected with others.

Connec2 “Connec2 provides the same basic tools that you will find in any consultation room: whiteboards with markers, post-it’s to post comments, interactive presentations and Kanban boards with overviews of current projects and documents, but also new and exciting tools that boost productivity in a way that only virtual reality can provide”

Glue “Glue is a modern collaboration platform that takes advantage of recent advances in immersive 3D graphics, virtual reality, and cloud computing. It is intended for business professionals who need global remote access to a shared team space for efficient collaboration.”

Immersed “Immersed enables you and others to collaborate remotely by immersing you into the same VR workspace! Be in the same virtual room with up to 7 people! Multiscreen Sharing. Share as many screens as you’d like with others, no matter what computer you’re using. Remote Whiteboarding! Brainstorm ideas with others.”

MeetinVR “MeetinVR enables your company to have powerful meetings in interactive VR spaces. It enables activities which are impossible or very hard to do remotely such as to present and review products and 3D models, brainstorm, sketch, mind-map, prototype and have team-building activities. All of these while interacting in a natural and easy to learn way.”

MeetingRoom “MeetingRoom has developed a platform which will transform how businesses collaborate. We offer a virtual meeting room with collaboration and presentation tools, manipulated by the participants; pointing, discussing, marking and deleting with up to 12 other team members using virtual reality headsets. Access from non-VR platforms is also available.”

Rumii “Step into your virtual reality office or classroom. rumii can be used across virtual reality headsets and desktops for collaboration, classes and meetings. Great for remote teams, education and digital nomads.”

Spatial “Spatial turns the space around you into a shared augmented workplace. Remote users can collaborate, search, brainstorm and share content as if they were in the same room.”

vSpatial “vSpatial is a virtual reality workspace that connects users to their computer applications and coworkers in an amazing way that makes their jobs easier and more delightful. vSpatial leverages the magic of VR and makes it possible for all participants in a meeting to easily share multiple applications with each other all at the same time. This all happens simply and seamlessly, with the voice conversation moving to the next level with intuitive controls and crystal clear spatial audio. Collaboration has now become more efficient and effective saving our users time, money and frustration.”

Dream “Collaborating within the confines of a screen is hard. Use Dream to work with your team just as you would in real life, without constraint or frustration. No fiddling with awkward teleportation mechanics. No fighting complicated interfaces. Dream is the simplest way to collaborate in VR.”

Design, Creation, & Prototyping

These apps lean toward collaborative spatial design, sketching, prototyping, brainstorming, and review.

Sketchbox “Go from idea to a working VR prototype in minutes. Import your files, build your scenes, and transform your assets into a VR storyboard that everyone can understand. Finally you can design for AR & VR without using a game engine or engaging a developer.”

The Wild “Collaborate with your team in a shared virtual space that evolves with your ideas. Meet in real time from anywhere, or leave comments for your team to see later.”

Softspace “Softspace is a spatial thinking tool for creative individuals and teams. Build beautiful virtual project spaces where you can organize, develop, and communicate your best ideas.”

Visualization & Review

These apps are oriented toward collaborative visualization, review, and annotation of CAD designs, 3D models, big data, complex code, and more.

CAD Explorer “Easily upload your .FBX, .OBJ, .STEP, .IGES or .STL files via our web interface and have it within your digital space in seconds. You provide your common CAD data and turn it into a hologram in your Mixed Reality device. Control the objects with your gestures and place them freely in your space. Rotate, scale, or even slice it to get a cross-section view for a better understanding what is beneath the surface of your object. As you use CAD Explorer, it is crucial to be able to work on objects with more than one person. Hence we developed different possibilities of shared experiences. Collaborate on the data together in one room with two HoloLenses, or bring in more people from all over the world, wearing a Microsoft Mixed Reality Head-Mounted-Display (HMD).”

Dimension10 “Experience and collaborate in your 3D-model like you are there. We allow you to experience your 3D-design rather than viewing it on a flat 2D computer screen. Make better decisions, save time and Identify design challenges together with your colleagues or customers. Increase common understanding and facilitate for more creative discussions.”

Improov “Visualize your prototype as if it was already built at scale 1, detect design errors and modify your 3D model in real time to test new ideas. Easily collaborate with your colleagues, contractors and clients and get feedback at once.”

InsiteVR “All you need to get started is a BIM 360, Navisworks, Revit, or Sketchup model. In the click of a button your model will be VR ready and synced to the InsiteVR cloud for your coordination meetings. Inviting collaborators to your VR meeting is as easy as sending them a link. Participants can see other as VR avatars, talk over VOIP, and review model issues together. Compatible across desktop and standalone VR like Oculus Quest and Oculus Go.”

IrisVR Prospect “Communicate your vision with greater clarity and gain the trust of clients. Make decisions with speed and confidence by experiencing a true to scale space. Run QA/QC to catch costly coordination issues. Walk through your 3D files with colleagues in VR, no matter their location. Multiuser provides reliable voice chat and a shared virtual environment for presentations and design reviews.”

NVIDIA Holodeck “NVIDIA Holodeck is a virtual reality (VR) innovation platform that brings designers, peers, and stakeholders together from anywhere in the world to build and explore creations in a highly realistic, collaborative, and physically simulated VR environment.”

PiXYZ Review “PiXYZ Review allows you to easily import a wide range of CAD models from industry-leading solutions, easily handling large and complex assemblies. Interact with your CAD model using manipulation and visualization tools for a desktop use. Also, instantly switch to a powerful VR mode for an immersive and interactive experience with a VR headset. Finally, collaborate easily with your coworkers thanks to an easy-to-use Collaboration mode.”

Stage “STAGE gives you real-time communication, immersive visualization and an awareness for atmosphere. Additionally, a meeting in STAGE saves costs compared to present-meetings.”

Symmetry “Instantly view your designs in VR with no additional preparation needed. Anybody can pick it up and get going, regardless of VR experience. View designs as intended at 1:1 scale, allowing for more effective design reviews.”

VisionXR “VISIONxR Platform enables users to upload their own content and invite colleagues to work collaboratively regardless of their location on any device VR, AR, desktop or mobile. Users can review and improve the designs of the products and services they are working on; removing the barrier of distance and enabling faster iteration in the development and design cycle.”

Vizible “Social VR platforms are made for connecting users for general purposes like discussions, group events, meetings, and more. Meet with others inside your secure, real-time VR environment. Interact with objects and each other. Engage your audience to the max. Review sessions, then revise, republish, and re-use your immersive experiences. Work on them with others in your organization in real-time, like with a Google Doc.”

3Data “Step into the most effective way to monitor, analyze and control complex end-to-end business processes, infrastructure & operations, in real-time with a Single View. True 3D telepresence and remote virtual analysis. Invite colleagues to the 3VOC in augmented and/or virtual reality.”

Primitive “The Primitive Immersive Development Environment is taking advantage of everything that collaboration in VR can offer while applying new tools for visually analyzing software in 3D. Using our plugins for popular IDEs, code is analyzed to be displayed as an interactive 3D structure that can be experienced in collaborative, immersive VR”

Education & Training

These VR collaboration tools are built with an eye toward remote education, training, lectures, and large presentations.

Acadius “Acadicus provides a flexible method for delivering a wide variety of VR training scenarios. Live VR sessions enable multiple instructors and/or students to be together in VR, interacting with assets while participating remotely.”

Engage “Engage is an education and corporate training platform in virtual reality. It empowers educators and companies to host meetings, presentations, classes and events with people across the world. Using the platform, virtual reality training and experiences can be created in minutes. The tools are very easy to use and require no technical expertise. You can choose to host your virtual reality sessions live, or record and save them for others to experience later. A wide variety of effective and immersive virtual experiences can be created with an extensive library of virtual objects, effects and virtual locations available on the platform.”

Oxford Medical Simulation “Providing learners with quality clinical experiences is a challenge. OMS virtual reality nursing scenarios allows nursing educators to deliver immersive, standardized simulation scenarios, feedback and blended learning in one easy to set-up intuitive platform. The OMS VR platform allows nursing students to access flexible, immersive, engaging scenarios whenever they need to, achieving first rate educational outcomes whilst saving organizations time, space and money. With libraries of scenarios for nursing students, registered nurses and nurse practitioners OMS support all groups of learners.”

Wonda VR “Create your own immersive experiences. Combine any content to make your own VR experience in a couple of minutes. Collaborate and learn together from anywhere, synchronously or on-demand.”

Social VR Platforms

Social VR platforms are made for connecting users for general and entertainment purposes like discussions, group events, activities, and more. While there are many more social VR apps out there, we focused here on those which might provide value to those looking for remote working solutions rather than gaming and entertainment.

AltspaceVR “AltspaceVR is the premier place to attend live shows, meetups, cool classes, and more with friendly people from around the world. All thanks to the magic of Virtual Reality. Easily start your own meetup, show or class and discover the next frontier of entertainment and community.”

Bigscreen “Use cases of Bigscreen include both entertainment and productivity. It’s used as a virtual living room to watch movies, play videogames, browse the web, and hangout with friends. It’s also used for productivity as a tool for remote teams to collaborate together in virtual offices.”

Mozilla Hubs “Share a virtual room with friends. Watch videos, play with 3D objects, or just hang out.”

vTime “Spend time together when you’re miles apart. Chat with friends, meet new people, and express yourself with virtual gestures.”