[notacoward]

There are some problems it addresses and some it doesn't. Arranging people in a space, with audio to match, gives you some extra cues about who's looking where or interacting with whom. If the avatars reflect actual facial expressions that could be useful too (though also intrusive). Seems no worse than the "Brady Bunch" gallery view we're all used to, and quite possibly better.

OTOH, it doesn't address bad remote-meeting etiquette like side conversations or eating next to the microphone. It doesn't address latency (might even make it worse), so a single remote might still find it impossible to break in when majority-site participants are interrupting and talking over each other so there are no gaps. These are limitations, but they don't totally negate the benefits of increasing visual/spatial awareness.

[JshWright]

> OTOH, it doesn't address bad remote-meeting etiquette like side conversations

Interestingly, my team has found that side conversations taking place in the meeting chat are extremely helpful (to the point that as some members of the team have been resuming in-person meetings, they have been bringing laptops and having a Slack thread running for the meeting).

It's great for questions/comments that may not be worth interrupting the flow of the conversation for, but are important enough that they shouldn't get lost entirely.

[notacoward]

Side comments via chat are fantastic, for exactly the reason you mention. Vocal side comments, OTOH, tend to make the main conversation unintelligible for anyone already trying to follow without being able to direct their ears in a particular direction.

[shafyy]

I would expect latency to be better because you don't need to send video data around, just some data to synchronize the 3D scene which is run locally on everyone's headset.

Edit: Not necessarily latency since latency is not related to data size, but I mean the general performance should be better.

[JshWright]

Latency can definitely be related to data size (even when not technically throughput constrained, thanks to "buffer bloat").

[shafyy]

Ok, thanks, good to know. Not a networking expert :)

[weego]

It addresses no problems, other than the problem of them realising that gamers are a bad audience for data and ad capture.