Facebook has announced its new Horizon Workrooms platform, a service that allows business meetings to be held in digital environments through the use of their helmets virtual reality Oculus Quest 2, being possible to interact with other people through their avatars.
Horizon Workrooms, which It is available from this Thursday in beta Open in countries where Oculus Quest 2 is supported, it represents the “flagship collaboration experience” of Facebook, as the company reported in a statement.
The platform allows users different functions in a mixed reality environment, such as holding business meetings, regardless of the physical distance that the employees are.
Horizon Workrooms allows users to participate in meetings in virtual environments in virtual reality through their Oculus avatars, as well as spatial audio technology for greater immersion when perceiving sounds from different places in virtual space.
For this they use the Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality viewers from Facebook, but also other compatible external tools such as computers and keyboards that can also be brought to reality.
The service is compatible with the new Oculus Remote application for Windows and Mac computers, and in this way users can share the content of their screens in the virtual reality environment to the rest of the participants in the meeting, in addition to other functions such as taking notes.
Horizon Workrooms virtual offices also include a whiteboard with which users can interact and draw via the Oculus control knobs. It is also possible to paste images coming from the computer on the board, and for this the tool tracks the position of the user’s hands.
The digital rooms of this platform are not always the same, Rather, they can be customized according to the needs of each meeting, depending on whether collaboration, conversation or a presentation is more necessary.
Although users can join virtual meetings using the Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality glasses, the new platform also allows users to join directly from the computer, making a video call.
Horizon Workrooms has support for up to 16 participants at the same time in a virtual reality meeting, although it can go up to 50 people adding members from video call.