Facebook has just announced a new virtual reality meeting tool that is available to anyone who has an Oculus Rift headset. The tool allows users to create and join virtual reality meetings with other people, without having to leave their computer. The meeting tool is free to use and can be found on Facebook’s website.
Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms Tool Is Here
You can download the beta version of Hozion Workrooms right now if you want to try it out. You’ll be able to enter a virtual “room” with your coworkers. In it, you can mess around with virtual whiteboards, the layout of the room, and even use the virtual computer that mimics your real one, allowing you to share your screen, send messages, and type naturally.
Workrooms is designed to use the Quest 2’s hand-tracking instead of controllers for input. After all, you’ll be typing and working, so holding the controllers would be impractical.
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In its blog post, Facebook spoke about using Workrooms. The company said, “Using features like mixed-reality desk and keyboard tracking, hand tracking, remote desktop streaming, video conferencing integration, spatial audio, and the new Oculus Avatars, we’ve created a different kind of productivity experience.”
For your colleagues who don’t have virtual reality headsets, there’s a web version that allows the tool to be used like a more traditional video call. This way they can still participate in the meetings without having to go out and buy an Oculus Quest 2 headset.
Will This Actually Take Off?
It’s hard to say whether this will become a useful tool for meetings or a fun distraction to let coworkers who own VR headsets mingle. It seems like video meetings do the job just fine for getting together remotely, making Horizon Workrooms feel more like a fun gimmick than an actual productivity tool for businesses.
We’ll have to wait and see if companies actually start using it for meetings. Between the distraction the VR provides and the fact that most companies aren’t going to supply their employees with VR headsets, it seems like this will go down as a cool tool that no one really uses, but we shall see.
Mark Zuckerberg is now one step closer to creating his metaverse.
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