Microsoft has announced plans to create a 3D platform called “Mesh for Teams” for virtual meetings. As the name suggests, Mesh for Teams builds on the company’s existing Teams collaboration platform and implements the mixed reality features of Microsoft Mesh.
Announced earlier this year, Mesh is a platform for virtual meetings and other collaborative gatherings in mixed reality (an umbrella term for virtual reality, augmented reality, or any combination of the two) using a variety of devices such as the company’s HoloLens products and Windows Mixed Reality. , among other things. Users will have static avatars that accurately reflect their body language and facial expressions and will be able to move around in a virtual workplace.
Workplaces can use Mesh for Teams to invite employees to connect to 3D or 2D collaborative workspaces. By sitting around a virtual conference table, workers will be able to do things that are not possible in the real world. For example, a presenter can see his notes in a 3D space near the virtual board while those who watch your presentation see only what you write on the board.
The service will come with predefined workspaces, but companies will be able to create and customize their own workspaces, just as employees can create avatars. None of this will initially require a VR headset; Workers will be able to access smartphones and laptops and see the spaces on their screens.
According to Microsoft Blog post on this topicThe platform will initially animate avatar faces based on audio cues when users speak. But before long, Microsoft plans to provide a basic reflection of users’ facial expressions for these avatars through the use of webcams.
We’ve seen technology like this in Apple’s Animoji for the iPhone, the Kinect for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and even in online multiplayer games years ago, like EverQuest II. The technology has also featured prominently on Amazon’s Twitch streaming platform, as in VTuber Movement and innovative like banners Code Miko.
Microsoft ad full of references to the recently republished “metaverse” with statements of intent from Facebook is dead CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The term comes from a science fiction novel called Snowfall, although the novel describes the feature in dystopian terms, in contrast to the optimistic tone of Meta, Microsoft and other leading tech companies.
Although Zuckerberg recently announced the hub of the so-called metaverse for Distracted by deep and serious Meta/Facebook issues With its core business, the concept it has chosen to support (and which Microsoft is pushing here too) predates this movement. Venture capital is pouring into start-ups in mixed reality workplaces in unprecedented amounts two years ago.
This is not a new idea and has been seen on platforms like Second Life (that still exists). But investors and business leaders believe that a combination of the social and cultural impacts of the pandemic, upcoming improvements in virtual and augmented reality technology and accessibility, increasingly efficient mobile processors, the expansion of remote work and new machine learning applications are paving the way for an alternative, immersive, continuous, and interconnected 3D layer of place. work that would be natural enough to be attractive to workers and employers alike.
Today, however, there are still major technological barriers to achieving this vision.
Mesh for Teams is a far cry from what Zuckerberg and others describe for the distant future, which might include hologram technology and augmented reality instead of or in addition to virtual reality for more natural and relaxing experiences. But this is Microsoft’s first attempt to ride the wave of investor and media hype around the so-called “metaverse” concept.
The first version is expected to be available to Teams users sometime in 2022.
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