Facebook AR/VR Remote Work App Launched
Facebook Inc on Thursday launched a trial of a new remote work virtual reality (VR) app that will allow users of the company’s Oculus Quest 2 headsets to host meetings as avatar versions of themselves.
Facebook’s Horizons Workrooms app is beta testing as many companies continue to work from home after the Covid-19 pandemic closed physical workspaces and a new variant was rolled out around the world.
Facebook sees its latest release as a first step towards building the futuristic ‘metaverse’ that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been promoting over the past few weeks.
The world’s largest social network has invested heavily in virtual and augmented reality (AR), developed hardware like its Oculus VR headsets, worked on AR glasses and wristband technologies, and bought out a variety of virtual reality game studios, including BigBox VR.
The dominance in this area, which Facebook is betting that the next major computing platform will be, will allow it to rely less on other hardware manufacturers like Apple Inc. in the future, the company said.
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Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, vice president of Facebook for his Reality Labs group, said the new Workrooms app gives “a good idea” of how the company sees the elements of the metaverse.
“It’s one of those fundamental steps in that direction,” he told reporters at a virtual reality press conference.
The term ‘metaverse’, coined in the dystopian novel Snow Crash from 1992, is used to describe immersive and divided spaces that are accessible on different platforms in which the physical and the digital converge.
Mr. Zuckerberg described him as “the personification of the Internet”.
He has been mentioned on several recent phone calls on the results from chief technology officers, including Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella of Microsoft Corp, David Baszucki of games company Roblox Corp, and Shar Dubey of Match Group Inc, who explained how their companies are shaping aspects of this futuristic realm could.
In July, Facebook announced the creation of a product team to work on the Metaverse that would be part of its augmented reality and virtual reality group, Facebook Reality Labs.
In its first full VR report, the company showed how workroom users can design avatar versions of themselves to meet in VR conference rooms and collaborate on whiteboards or tables, sharing documents while at their own desks, their physical and computer keyboard interact.
The app, available for free through Quest 2 headsets, which costs around $300, allows up to 16 people to get together in virtual reality and up to 50 in total, including video conference participants.
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