[wkat4242]

This is why I love meetings in VR so much. Even though the avatars don't look realistic, the feeling of being together is so much stronger.

It's just so hard to convince others before them having tried it. You can't tell someone what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.

[Philpax]

+1. I’m looking forward to it becoming more commonplace as Apple get Vision into more hands - communicating in XR is way less fatiguing for me as there’s more spatial cues and body language. You can look at the speaker, it’s easier to tell when you can butt in, you can split off easily, etc. It’s much closer to the feeling in chatting in person.

I just hope Zuck doesn’t continue to make it look unpalatable - that’s why I’m hoping Apple will build a consumer-acceptable solution that will force Meta to get their act together.

[wkat4242]

It's not just Zuck who makes it unpalatable. It's also the users who have tried a 30 second rollercoaster video on a google cardboard years ago and go like "I tried that virtual reality thing and it was useless". As someone who deploys this in enterprise environments I get this far too much.

I've done some pilots with serious VR meeting software like Arthur and Spatial (before they reinvented themselves as a "generic" metaverse tool). It's not for every call, no. But for the more proactive brainstorming / whiteboard session it's great. Especially as devices start having more sensor for body, face, eye tracking. You really feel like you're with the others. Really great option to replace a long flight you were going to make for a half-day workshop. So much more better than a zoom call. The detractors often point at the poor legless avatars but in my opinion that's something that gets forgotten quickly as you actually start communicating.

It's really hard to actually make people start using it though. And yes Zuck is burning way too much money on the wrong things. After all those billions Horizons still looks worse than VRChat, I mean really, how much did they spend? Can't be more than a few million.

[thunky]

> the feeling of being together is so much stronger

I hope there will be a way to convert voice into a realistic behaving VR avatar, no equipment needed other than a mic.

For example if I say "ok John, I like that idea", my avatar automatically faces John and locks eyes.

For most of the meeting I'm not speaking anyway so my avatar could just look at whoever is speaking and look interested.

[wkat4242]

Well if you are in VR you already will lock eyes with whomever you're looking at. Especially if your headset has eye tracking. You will not talk to someone behind you ("Soap opera talking") as it feels just as weird as in real life. Also your hands are mirrored in the virtual world and you can easily flip the bird, clap your hands and more friendly gestures too :)

Or perhaps you mean the boring MS Teams avatars you can use to replace video, they are indeed pretty bored looking all the time and not responding to your voice activity at all but I heard at Ignite that they are getting some upgrades.

[thunky]

> Especially if your headset

What I'm suggesting is that I wouldn't be wearing a headset at all, but everyone else in the meeting wouldn't realize this. My VR self (I'm calling that my avatar) would be on auto-pilot, driven only by my voice and reacting to others voices and virtual positions.

Most of the time it would just need to face whoever is speaking and appear to be engaged, and throw in some random movements, so I don't have to physically do that myself.

I could continue to play guitar or take my dog outside while those with VR headsets on are stuck going through the expected motions.

[wkat4242]

Hmyeah but if you do that you might as well just join by call of course.

And they will notice anyway. A real avatar with full body tracking is quite emotive.