On Thursday, tech giant, Facebook launched a virtual-reality remote work app. Users can hold meetings through the company’s Oculus Quest 2 headsets, and they will access the meetings as avatars of themselves.
This comes after the lockdown as a result of COVID-19, which forced companies to order employees to work from home. The app, in its beta-testing phase, will be a relief as companies work from home.
The launch of Facebook’s Horizon Workroom app is a positive step towards the reality of a futuristic ‘metaverse’ that the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has consistently mentioned in recent weeks.
Metaverse is a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.
Facebook has invested in virtual and augmented reality, and has been developing different hardware devices like the Oculus VR headsets, AR glasses, and wristband technologies. In recent times, the company has also been exploring different VR gaming studios, including BigBox VR.
Facebook has boasted that it will become the next big computing platform, that will allow it to be less reliant in the future on other hardware makers, such as Apple. Facebook is fast becoming a giant in the VR space.
In a VR news conference, Reality Labs’ Group Vice President, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said, “This is kind of one of those foundational steps in that direction.” He said the new Workrooms app gives “a good sense” of how the company envisions elements of the metaverse.
Bosworth said Facebook was now using Workrooms, Horizon’s co-working space regularly for internal meetings. He said Facebook would not use people’s work conversations and materials in Workrooms to target ads on Facebook.
