{"id":42374,"date":"2021-08-20T11:03:55","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T11:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=5ff8a8cc606040722adb0d66597c6639"},"modified":"2021-08-20T11:03:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T11:03:55","slug":"facebook-unveils-vr-remote-working-experience-horizon-workrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/facebook-unveils-vr-remote-working-experience-horizon-workrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook unveils VR remote working experience, Horizon Workrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Keumars Afifi-Sabet<\/a><\/span>
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20 Aug, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Facebook has launched\u00a0a fully immersive virtual reality (VR) remote working experience, powered by the Oculus Quest 2 headset<\/a>, that tries to mimic physically being in a workplace.<\/p>\n

With Horizon Workrooms, workers can beam their own comic book-style avatar into a virtual office and perform office-based tasks alongside their colleagues, as they might in a real-world setting. Such activities include working at their terminal, brainstorming, socialising, and listening to presentations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorkrooms is our flagship collaboration experience that lets people come together to work in the same virtual room, regardless of physical distance,\u201d Facebook said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt works across both virtual reality and the web and is designed to improve your team\u2019s ability to collaborate, communicate, and connect remotely, through the power of VR – whether that\u2019s getting together to brainstorm or whiteboard an idea, work on a document, hear updates from your team, hang out and socialize, or simply have better conversations that flow more naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This VR experience, which businesses can sign up for in its beta state, is a logical extension of how collaboration tools have attempted to mimic the in-office experience.<\/p>\n

Tech firms, like Microsoft and Google, have made efforts to improve their workplace collaboration tools over the last 18 months after COVID-19 forced the majority of office-based workers<\/a> into some form of remote working.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While these efforts have improved the remote working experience<\/a>, they\u2019ve largely failed to live up to the real deal, whether it\u2019s through advances in video conferencing or iterative improvements to platforms such as Microsoft Teams<\/a>. This is because of the fundamental physical disconnect that remains with remote and virtual working.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s resulted in a new type of fatigue among many remote workers, with crucial aspects such as the office culture also going amiss<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As such, many businesses have instead opted for hybrid models as we emerge from the pandemic, which delivers a \u2018best of both worlds\u2019 scenario<\/a> for a majority of employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Facebook argues that its horizon Workplace experience, which is currently being used by Facebook employees, \u201ctransforms your home office into your new favourite meeting room\u201d, and your desk into a shared table where you can gather with teammates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Remote workers can also synchronise their computers with the virtual environment, and work on a virtual terminal, take notes, and share their screens with\u00a0colleagues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The technology is powered by spatial audio, expressive avatars and hand tracking, which lets you use your hands to point, type or give a thumbs-up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The innovation builds on Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s longstanding vision to build a metaverse that users can readily tap into and out of.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Facebook co-founder recently ramped up the rhetoric behind this concept, suggesting in July 2021 that his company’s future, and that of the internet<\/span>, lied in the \u201cmetaverse\u201d, according to Bloomberg<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something that\u2019s been on the executive\u2019s mind for many years, however, with Oculus hiring the former Google Glass lead engineer Adrian Wong in 2014<\/a> for a job as a \u2018professional daydreamer\u2019, with the task of \u201cbuilding the Metaverse\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keumars Afifi-Sabet<\/p>\n

20 Aug, 2021 <\/p>\n

Facebook has launched\u00a0a fully immersive virtual reality (VR) remote working experience, powered by the Oculus Quest 2 headset, that tries to mimic physically being in a workplace.
\nWith Ho…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42375,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42374\/revisions\/42375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}