[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.