Headquarters | Dublin, Ireland |
---|---|
Country of origin | Taiwan |
Founder(s) | Cher Wang |
Chairperson | Cher Wang |
Industry | Virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality, software, web3, technology, metaverse, content |
Services | Vive World, Market, Vive Avatar, Vive Wallet, Vive Guardian, Viverse For Business, VRChat, Vive Sync |
Parent | HTC |
Launched | 1 March 2022 |
Viverse is an open platform for virtual worlds and environments developed by HTC and encompassing multiple devices and applications. Conceived as a metaverse, the platform is intended to create an interconnected series of virtual worlds, and includes elements of augmented reality. The Viverse platform consists of various components, including virtual reality headsets, social applications, and content creation tools. [1]
Some elements that later became part of the Viverse ecosystem were developed as early as 2014. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] The formal announcement of Viverse only came in 2022 at the 2022 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. [7] Viverse was co-founded by Cher Wang, the CEO of HTC, who is also the Chairwoman of Viverse. [8]
While some HTC hardware has important implications for Viverse, [9] Viverse is envisioned as an open metaverse, and so is not confined to any HTC hardware. [10]
As of 2023, Viverse consists of a number of virtual environments, services, platforms, interfaces, and applications, including:
A number of virtual environments created by 3rd party developers are integrated into Viverse:
Viverse is intended to be as open as possible in order to encourage third party development and integrations, and supports both the Open XR and Web XR standards. [21]
HTC is also seeking to appeal to cryptocurrency users with cryptocurrency integrations, such as native support for Ethereum and Polygon tokens on the Desire 22, a cryptocurrency wallet built into the Vive Flow, and an NFT marketplace as one of Viverse's first applications. [22]
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment, education and business. Other distinct types of VR-style technology include augmented reality and mixed reality, sometimes referred to as extended reality or XR, although definitions are currently changing due to the nascence of the industry.
In science fiction, the metaverse is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In colloquial usage, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social and economic connection. In scientific research, it is defined as 'a three-dimensional online environment in which users represented by avatars interact with each other in virtual spaces decoupled from the real physical world'.
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