In recent years, rapid technological developments and online communication have allowed companies to actively expand their workforce by hiring employees from all over the world. “The pandemic in the last 18 months has only given us greater confidence in the importance of this as a technology,” Andrew Bosworth, VP of Facebook Reality Labs, said while addressing a (virtual) room of about a dozen people on Tuesday.Challenges to Conferencing and Meetings in Businesses He said Facebook has been using the app internally for about a year. It’s not the first time Facebook and its subsidiary Oculus have tried to popularize social interaction via VR. The company launched virtual-hangout apps Oculus Rooms and Facebook Spaces in 20, respectively, which let small groups of users gather in VR. The company shut down both VR apps in October 2019, however. Instead, it announced a virtual social world called Horizon, which was set to be released in 2020. Horizon has yet to appear for most users and Facebook confirmed this week that the app remains in a private beta testing stage. Workrooms may offer users a sense of what’s to come. It shows how far Facebook has progressed in blending hardware and software since its purchase of Oculus in 2014 - and how far it still has to go. The app employs a slew of technologies and tricks to make the experience feel as in-person as it can be when you’re represented in virtual space by an animated approximation of yourself. Headset wearers can view their real-life computer screen in VR via an accompanying desktop app. And Workrooms uses a combination of hand tracking and spatial audio - which accounts for room acoustics and makes sounds appear to come from specific directions - to allow users to interact with each other in ways that mimic real life, except for a sound cancellation feature that eliminates background noise.īut it’s clear Facebook is still working out some kinks. While Bosworth, the Facebook executive, was in the middle of describing how he sees Workrooms as a more interactive way to gather virtually with coworkers than video chat, his avatar froze mid-sentence, the pixels of its digital skin turning from flesh-toned to gray. He had been disconnected.Įven with the rollout of Workrooms, Facebook continues to suffer from some of the problems plaguing VR: it must convince people (or perhaps in this case companies) to buy its headsets, use them regularly, and adapt to new methods of interaction - both with the virtual world and with others within that world - that remain far from perfect.įor instance, while Quest 2 can track hands and even individual fingers - making it possible for users to do things like gesture naturally while talking or flash an okay sign in VR while using Workrooms - if you try to touch both hands together during a VR meeting, it’s likely they’ll simply overlap in an awkward way that breaks the illusion of reality and presence. Bosworth said he expects people will use the app for about 30 minutes at a time, and that another team at Facebook is working on improving the ergonomics and weight of VR headsets. (Facebook halted sales of the headset in late July following a voluntary recall related to reports of skin irritation caused by the headset’s removable foam face pad the company said it will resume selling the headset, this time with a silicone pad cover, on August 24.) The Quest 2 currently weighs a bit over a pound, which may not sound like much but was definitely noticeable throughout the course of a half-hour meeting. One thing Bosworth noted that the app can’t improve on, however, is how engaging meetings are. “Even VR cannot make your boring meeting less boring,” he said. ™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.Children and adults have already been able to get an updated booster, but some people have argued that older adults should be offered another shot because advanced age comes with the highest risk of developing severe disease.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |