Is this what offices will look like in the future?
THE MULTIVERSE IS ON THE HORIZON, AS FACEBOOK LAUNCHES
I’M not sure any of us really wanted it, but we have nevertheless been granted access to Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘multiverse.’
Facebook this week showed off its first contribution to the online collaborative space of Zuck’s wildest dreams with the Workrooms feature of its Horizon platform for sub-brand Oculus.
It’s a complex web they weave. Horizon is Facebook’s platform for designing and building virtual reality spaces for all kinds of activity. And it’s just part of the multiverse that Zuckerberg imagines.
The ‘multiverse’ is an online world of different spaces, which could be virtual reality, augmented reality, or even traditional
2D video or audio, all fulfilling different purposes dedicated to work or play, and all connected so users can shift from one to another.
Facebook sees itself as providing at least part of the ‘multiverse,’ and the Workrooms feature – which is available to users of the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset as we speak – is just the first of the spaces that will become available on the Horizon platform.
It is essentially a virtual reality meeting room that users can enter while using the Oculus VR system.
Rooms can be arranged in almost any configuration, and users can ‘exist’ inside the rooms and hold meetings as they would if they were in the real world – there are whiteboards for illustrating ideas, as well as features that allow users to work on documents together.
It is genuinely new in the sense that you are not just sitting in a room talking – a host of mixed-reality features like keyboard tracking, hand tracking, spacial audio, and new Oculus avatars, mean you can actually interact with the virtual world in a collaborative way that hasn’t been pos- sible before.
You can take part even if you don’t have an Oculus headset, but only in a boringly-traditional 2D way – you can appear on screen as in a video-conference, just as you no doubt have had to do at some point over the last year.
Facebook says the Workrooms feature has been created in response to a world in which actual face-to-face collaboration hasn’t been happening, but also to support a future in which this kind of work is more widespread.
It’s betting, in other words, that the shift to remote online work, made necessary by the pandemic, is a structural shift that will stay with us to some degree, even when the pandemic is over.
Facebook has more information about the system and how to get started on its Workrooms website, although the screenshots and videos released do throw up some questions.
The avatars resemble Nintendo or Snapchat characters of the kind most popular in the gaming and social worlds, which might make serious work meetings more challenging.
It also strikes me as a bit odd that the avatars do not appear to have any legs, which is at once both distracting and bewildering.
To get started with Workrooms you’ll need an account at workrooms.com, then you can invite others to collaborate in your room.