Facebook is revisiting meetings with virtual reality

It may be another step toward building a “metaverse,” a universe in which reality and the Internet end up mingling in a harmonious way, according to the Californian company. Facebook introduced the new Career Collaboration service on Thursday, August 19th. In the Workrooms, participants appear around a round table in the form of a personal avatar, resembling cartoon characters. They can interact via the microphone, draw on the virtual whiteboard using remote controls that repeat their gestures or even broadcast the screen in front of them, in the room they are physically in.

“It works just as well in virtual reality as it does on the web and is designed to improve your team’s ability to collaborate,” the company said in a statement on the blog of Oculus, the virtual reality (VR) headset brand that Facebook acquired in 2014. “It works just as well in virtual reality as it does on the web,” the company said in a statement. The new technology is available in beta for users of the Quest 2 headphones. Colleagues who do not have this equipment can join meetings via video calls.

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The successor of the mobile Internet?

Fin juillet, Facebook an annoncé la création d’une équipe dédiée au “metaverse”, c’est-à-dire un “méta-univers” où se fondent le réel et le virtuel, une vision de science-fiction déjà présente dans des des video games. The metaverse represents the successor to the mobile internet and the future of the social network, according to its founder Mark Zuckerberg. “To achieve our metaverse vision, we need to build the connecting fabric between (different) digital spaces — in order to overcome physical limitations and be able to navigate between them just as easily as moving between rooms in a home.” He gave details of his boss on his Facebook profile.

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He explained that screens, holograms, virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses are supposed to gradually allow the flexible “movements” of virtual universes in physical places, such as “teleportation”. “The core quality of the metaverse will be presence, the feeling of being with people, and FRL (Facebook Reality Labs, department responsible for the project, editor’s note) building products that bring presence in different digital spaces for years.” Oculus has largely focused on video games so far, but the department is also exploring other applications, from tourism to remote work.