HTC’s Vive Sync: It’s reality but not as we all know it

Taiwanese brand HTC seems to have beaten Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to the punch when it comes to staking out the metaverse.

HTC’s Vive Sync virtual world.

Taiwanese brand HTC seems to have beaten Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to the punch when it comes to staking out the metaverse.

Zuckerberg recently hailed the metaverse as the future of Facebook, a virtual world where Facebook presumably again dominates advertising and social connectivity at great profit.

Think of the metaverse as a shared computer-generated universe, like the online virtual world Second Life of almost two decades ago, where everyone can have an alternative identity and interact socially and transact commercially with others across the virtual world.

The big difference is that the metaverse isn’t accessed just in your browser; you can put on a virtual reality headset and immerse yourself in it, as you would in an alternative world.

You could buy virtual real estate, run a corporation, develop and own IP and turn a profit.

If you think a virtual reality world is a mug’s game, posting on social media seems like a mug’s game, but there’s now an estimated $US10bn economy around influencers.

The snag for the Facebook CEO is that different companies can build their own universes and unless Zuckerberg’s attract everyone, people don’t have to be part of Facebook’s territory. There are suggestions of interoperability between virtual universes so if you buy a virtual car in one universe, it exists in others. But we will see.

Watching Olympic boxing in HTC's Vive Sync virtual world

Virtual universes have existed before. The Australian covered the now Microsoft-owned AltspaceVR where my icon attended a virtual wake with others across the world held on a virtual island when singer Prince died in 2016. You could mingle with the avatars of others living thousands of kilometres away and share memories.

Five years on, HTC’s Vive Sync world offers a higher resolution experience in virtual ­reality and unlike AltspaceVR years ago, you can create an avatar that is a cartoonish version of your self using the Vive Sync.

Individuals are recognisable, which makes a huge difference.

There’s no Covid in the Vive Sync world. You can sit in front a friend in VR and chat away; your cartooned lips move, even your eyes move, which all enhances reality.

I accessed Vive Sync using an HTC Focus 3 headset in my living room. It’s a stand-alone VR headset that means no cables and no positioning beacons. The set-up routine lets you define an area where you walk around, and you can add a chair, which becomes a virtual chair you can sit on in the VR world.

Unlike AltspaceVR, which was centred around social gatherings, Vive Sync is focused on enterprise. You meet colleagues in meeting rooms with all of you seated around a table, and people are recognisable. A team leader can give a presentation or host a video for all to see and it appears very large in your field of view. You can host virtual media conferences, classroom discussions and creative meetings for up to 30 ­people simultaneously.

I enjoyed a more carefree time in Vive Sync, sitting across a table from HTC Vive ANZ country manager Thomas Dexmier, whose avatar looked strikingly like him. We sat on seats near the water chatting and watching the Olympic boxing … you can beam the content from apps to a screen on the platform … waking around and inspecting the 3D model of a car.

An HTC virtual world conference centre

You don’t generally walk around these environments; you’d crash into your living room wall if you did. Instead you use a hand controller to bunny-hop to places you want to be.

You can choose garden and ocean meetings for virtual settings, small, medium and large meeting rooms, and social and formal meeting environments. The HTC Sync environment offers hand tracking, adding further to the realism. You can share files at meetings using Microsoft OneDrive.

This is a more souped up system than the Vive Sync Beta version that HTC launched last year.

HTC is offering six months free Vive Sync subscription to businesses. You can keep using the free subscription, which has caps such as limited meeting time, or pay $350 a year a user for a subscription. The big-ticket item is the Vive Focus 3 itself, which is $1999 per unit. That rules this system out straightaway for many businesses: six headsets would cost about $12,000.

Vive Sync might interest some cashed-up tech-oriented businesses that are tired of staff meetings via Zoom and other video messaging services.

Vive Sync definitely offers a more creative meeting environment. However, I don’t see this idea taking off anytime soon. AltSpaceVR has suffered the same fate already.

Do I see Vive Sync and similar universes viable long term? I think virtual work spaces will be more popular once VR headsets are cheaper and lightweight like sunglasses. Mark Zuckerberg certainly does.

TCL recently revealed Nxtwear smart glasses, which although not VR glasses, are the form factor that will fly when VR glasses can be that size. Offering VR tech with positioning in that size will be a more complex task though.

Until then, HTC Sync, AltSpaceVR and metaverses will be niche offerings. HTC nevertheless deserves kudos for tackling this cutting edge project and taking the fight up to the Facebook CEO.