As the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge due to the Delta variant, workplaces across the country are debating whether or not it's safe to bring their employees back into the office. Well, Facebook has a solution: Give Facebook a ton of money and make your office a virtual one. On Thursday, the company announced Horizon Workrooms, a virtual office that lets workers don a virtual reality headset and remotely collaborate with coworkers.
To understand Workrooms, think of it like a souped-up Zoom call. Put on an Oculus Quest 2 headset (friendly reminder that Facebook owns Oculus) and you are transported to a virtual office, where you will be able to see avatar versions of your office mates — except they are all legless, for some reason. Built into the room are some features for communicating and working together: Drawing pads and white boards let workers collaborate in the shared space, and workers can use a virtual projector to share slideshows or stream video for the room. Workrooms also tries to make things feel a bit more immersive than your standard video conference: Arm and hand tracking create more realistic body movements and spatial audio technology makes it sound like a voice is coming directly from whoever is speaking.
