Delivering personalized computing experiences and the right IT solutions is only possible when you understand the technology needs of the customer. According to McKinsey & Co., the pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of customer interactions by more than 3 years, with many people turning to technology for connection, collaboration, and creation1. Today, HP is announcing powerful new capabilities to the HP Omnicept Solution, as well as critical tools, including new hardware alerts, for IT departments to manage and monitor their ZCentral Remote Boost connections through ZCentral Connect.
HP Omnicept – Personalized VR
The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition brings the cutting-edge features of the HP Reverb G2 and more – delivering Valve-designed lenses and audio alongside a state-of-the-art sensor system that measures muscle movement, gaze, pupil size, and pulse. To further enhance the experience, we will be offering HP VR Spatial Audio, ML-powered spatial audio for VR to the HP Omnicept SDK2.
When we introduced the HP Omnicept Solution, our goal was to bring powerful, intelligent technology to developers for them to create new hyper-personalized, engaging, and adaptive VR experiences for enterprises. HP VR Spatial Audio delivers dynamic head-related-transfer-functions (HRTFs) for a more life-like experience and personalized sound as the audio adapts to the specific user in VR. For the developer community, we’re proud to announce that our Omnicept features are supported across both Unreal Engine and Unity.
“Our collaboration with HP on the development of the HP Omnicept Solution will advance the XR industry in important ways, including improving the efficacy of VR training and simulation,” said David Weinstein, director of virtual reality and augmented reality at NVIDIA. “HP Omnicept works hand-in-hand with NVIDIA’s latest commercial RTX solutions to open new avenues to improve well-being and advance high-fidelity VR experiences with state-of-the-art foveated rendering and spatial audio.”
Coming in May 2021, the HP Omnicept Solution SDK will be officially available for download with flexible business models at developers.hp.com/xr and the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition VR headset will be available starting at $1,249 USD on HP.com/reverb.
HP ZCentral – Personalized IT
The ZCentral solution has been an integral part of keeping key businesses up and running during the pandemic. From Hollywood studios to engineering and product development, architecture, and higher education institutions, ZCentral has been an essential tool in offering remote compute to allow users access to high performance computing from anywhere.
Over the last year, the Z by HP team engaged with customers to get their insight into how to better serve companies and aid higher educational institutions who are preparing for a hybrid approach to their IT infrastructure. In a recent study, 42% of US companies said they plan to introduce split schedules for reduced office density3 and 66% percent of educators reported an expected increase in blended learning4.
To reduce the stresses to IT departments as we continue hybrid work and learning, HP is adding critical new tools to manage and monitor ZCentral Remote Boost connections5, allowing them to personalize their computing environments more than ever before. IT managers can now receive hardware alerts for their Z workstations within the admin console, monitoring the health of their fleet of centralized hardware. The ability to streamline resources is crucial for IT departments and ZCentral Connect6 now gives more control with the ability to close idle connections and free up hardware remotely. The new ZCentral Connect scheduling feature is perfect for engineers or visual effects teams trying to optimize resource allocations and workstation power. For our higher education customers this will allow for students to request and reserve workstation power or have a professor do a bulk reservation for each of their classrooms. Enabling this feature removes the burden of managing and scheduling ZCentral Remote workstation power from the IT administrator so they can focus on other critical needs in the organization.
For customers in the areas of digital arts, animation, and product development, Wacom® tablets and displays are critical to the creative process. In late 2020, we were excited to announce a preview that enabled natural inking with Wacom. Since that time, the ZCentral team has collaborated with customers to fine tune pressure sensitivity across a variety of creative applications accessed via ZCentral Remote Boost and today we are proud to bring creatives and engineers full compatibility with Wacom displays and tablet devices. Users can now capture ideas, conceptualize, and create from anywhere with more natural 2D and 3D drawing and manipulation.
To learn more about our HP Omnicept Solution, you can visit HP.com/Omnicept. For more information about HP ZCentral Remote Boost and ZCentral Connect, customers can visit HP.com/ZCentral.