Through its Fidelity Labs, the Boston-based financial services company announced it has built the new app to work with the HTC Vive virtual reality headset. The app is the latest evolution from when the lab designed an app in 2014 to help investors track their investment portfolios.
Fidelity tested the app with a dozen HR managers, who were virtually taken to a tan boardroom similar to a college lecture hall and where they could see a visual image of all their employees in the hall. The virtual employees were divided into sections depending on the years they worked at the company and were represented as green, signifying they had a good retirement plan, or red, signifying potential problems.
Sean Belka, senior vice president and director of Fidelity Labs, said that while being able to view data three-dimensionally and to manipulate the data may be more appealing than reviewing data in the traditional way, he acknowledges the virtual realty app is not ready for the mass market yet.
“We are taking a somewhat realistic view,” Belka said. “We’re not looking to go to scale tomorrow.”