In a recent announcement, Facebook announced that its Oculus Quest 2 VR headset would be able to hold meetings for remote employees.
As part of its pandemic-driven hybrid work trend, Facebook today announced the launch of virtual reality meeting spaces. However, do employees actually want to virtually commute to the office for meetings?
As a result of the pandemic, our work processes have changed significantly. Workdays today are virtually unrecognizable from just a few years ago, thanks to flexible schedules and video meetings.
With Facebook’s new virtual reality meeting feature, your day-to-day life could get a lot more technological. That is, if anyone actually adopts the innovative technology.
Facebook introduces Horizon Workrooms
Horizon Workrooms, an Oculus Quest app that will enable employees and managers to hold virtual reality meetings, was announced by Facebook on Thursday.
„[Horizon Workrooms] is designed to improve your team’s ability to collaborate, communicate, and connect remotely — whether you’re meeting to brainstorm ideas, work on a document, hear updates from your team, chat, or simply have better conversations,”
Facebook said in a press release.
It sounds like the functionality is quite impressive. Users will be able to use their own computers in these virtual reality meeting rooms, use a whiteboard that will be visible to all attendees, and take advantage of different layouts based on the number of attendees.
Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have been trying to get this idea off the ground for a long time.
The Facebook Metaverse
Mark Zuckerberg made an innovative goal for Facebook earlier this summer.
Zuckerberg said, “I think what’s interesting is how these themes will come together into a bigger idea.” All our initiatives are focused on bringing life to the metaverse.
It’s not just you who’s feeling sci-fi vibes. Snow Crash, a sci-fi novel published in 1992, coined the term to describe a shared online space with virtual, augmented reality, and physical reality components. An example of a more recent OASIS can be found in Ready Player One, a popular novel, and film.
In terms of business, this means Facebook and its ambitious CEO hope to combine its many properties – like Instagram, Oculus, and WhatsApp, among others – into one unified, interconnected experience that combines work, play, and social interactions.
The aim of Zuckerberg’s project is to make the entire world accessible online. Are people really interested in that?
Does virtual reality have a future in the workplace?
Zuckerberg will be the first to admit that a full-on metaverse is a “down the road” plan. However, virtual reality meetings are a step in that direction, and the question remains: do people actually want this?
Virtual reality has had a decidedly meek impact since its inception, so our guess is no. Although VR has improved greatly in recent years, it has not gained much traction within the general public. In addition, experts still recommend playing for only 30 minutes at a time in order to prevent losing spatial awareness, and headsets remain uncomfortable for users, even while playing the most entertaining games.
Translate that into a work environment. For a short time, virtual reality meetings would be a fun change from Zoom meetings. Sadly, the novelty will soon wear off, and your employees will have to endure the rashes, eye strain, and general discomfort of VR for a meeting that may last longer than 30 minutes.
VR may be the future of work, but it’s much further off than Zuckerberg would like to admit. At least for now, let’s borrow a phrase from the incomparable Regina George: “Stop trying to make VR happen, Mark!” It won’t happen!”
