Facebook’s New Bet on Virtual Reality: Conference Rooms

With Workrooms, Facebook wants to take Oculus beyond just gaming. The service is intended to provide a sense of presence with other people, even when they might be sitting halfway across the world.

Mr. Zuckerberg sees the project as part of the next internet, one that technologists call “the metaverse.” In Mr. Zuckerberg’s telling, the metaverse is a world in which people can communicate via VR or video calling, smartphone or tablet, or through other devices like smart glasses or gadgets that haven’t been invented yet.

There, people will maintain some sense of continuity between all the different digital worlds they inhabit. Someone might buy a digital avatar of a shirt in a virtual reality store, for instance, and then log off but continue wearing that shirt to a Zoom meeting.

For now, that vision remains distant. VR adoption can be measured in the tens of millions of users, compared with the billions of owners of smartphones. Facebook has also stumbled, issuing a recall this year on the Quest 2’s foam pad covers after some users reported skin irritation. The company has offered new, free silicon padded covers to all Quest 2 owners.

At the Workrooms event with reporters this week, Mr. Zuckerberg spoke but had to leave at one point and rejoin the room because his digital avatar’s mouth was not moving when he spoke.

“Technology that gives you this sense of presence is like the holy grail of social experiences, and what I think a company like ours was designed to do over time,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, after the glitch was fixed and his avatar’s mouth was moving again. “My hope is that over the coming years, people really start to think of us not primarily as a social media company, but as a ‘metaverse’ company that’s providing a real sense of presence.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/technology/facebooks-new-bet-on-virtual-reality-conference-rooms.html