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Horizon Workrooms

Facebook joins the virtual office space with Horizon Workrooms

The new productivity and collaboration app combines virtual and physical elements and will test the „future fitness“ of employees.

There’s a new place for Oculus Avatars to visit: Horizon Workrooms. Facebook announced the open beta release of the product Thursday as a new way for people to collaborate at work via the Oculus Quest 2. A user can share files from her desk and brainstorm on infinite whiteboards. People can talk with colleagues in the virtual room or people who have joined via video call.

The Workrooms app uses mixed-reality desk and keyboard tracking, hand tracking, remote desktop streaming, video conferencing integration and spatial audio. According to Facebook, It’s the first time these technologies have been combined to create a different kind of productivity experience. The app works with the Oculus Quest 2 and the web.

The virtual rooms can hold 16 people and up to 34 more people can join via video call. People participating via video show up on a screen similar to a video call. Workrooms has a number of interactive features, including:

The ability to join by VR or video call.
A new hand-tracking function.
A mixed-reality experience that combines a physical desk and a virtual room.
Spatial audio technology.
The ability to use a VR controller as a pen.
The ability to pin images from your computer to the virtual room’s whiteboard.
A connection to Outlook and Google calendars.

According to Facebook, the experience was designed to use a person’s hands as the primary input, instead of the VR controller. This makes it easier to switch between physical tools like a keyboard and the controller.

The hand-tracking and spatial audio features are available now for developers to use in third-party apps. The company plans to make avatars, Passthrough, the mixed-reality desk and tracked keyboard capabilities available as well. Developers can use the Passthrough API Experimental to build and test apps that blend the real and virtual worlds. Oculus announced this news in July 2021 as part of the v31 SDK release. The API will be available for Unity developers with support for other development platforms in the future.

In a blog post, Facebook pledged not to use work conversations and materials to inform ads on its platform. Also, the „audio contents of meetings are processed on Facebook servers but not stored „unless someone records and sends a clip as part of a report.“ The company also said that Passthrough processes images and video of a user’s physical environment from device sensors locally and that Facebook and third-party apps do not view those images or use them to target ads.

In order to use the app, users need a Workrooms account, which is separate from both Facebook and Oculus accounts. Facebook has a VR code of conduct which sets expectations for behavior in the virtual world, including a ban on impersonating a Facebook employee. Workrooms is available in 22 countries.

Virtual offices could combat Zoom fatigue

Virtual offices are not as far away as you might think. In a new report about virtual offices, Forrester analysts describe Accenture’s „Nth Floor,“ a virtual space that connects the company’s 500,000 employees and customers in virtual meeting rooms and event spaces. The report, „Your Virtual Office in the Cloud,“ also describes the mixed-reality experience that Sophya’s employees enjoy at the virtual reality vendor’s office. They order food in a virtual cafeteria that is then delivered via DoorDash and charged to the company.

In the report, Forrester analysts explained that creating an office in a virtual setting could be an antidote to Zoom fatigue. Benefits could include:

Replicating in the in-person office experience.
Creating a shared experience and reinforcing corporate values.
Developing a shared culture.
Ending the open office plan vs private office debate.

VR offices face a few barriers that include both humans and hardware. The Forrester report describes one of these hurdles as the „future fitness of employees.“ This is a combination of the mental readiness and the action-oriented mindset required to adapt to this new way of working. The authors note, „Understanding the future fitness of your employees will be a key prerequisite to determining how fast and how deeply you can go.“ A company’s robotics quotient (i.e., the ability to use and drive business results from emerging technologies) is another element to consider.

Finally, there are device access limitations and a lack of security expertise among vendors, according to the report.

Quelle:

https://www-techrepublic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/article/facebook-joins-the-virtual-office-space-with-horizon-workrooms/

Foto:

A Horizon Workroom can hold 16 people in the virtual space and 34 more people can join via video conference.Image: Facebook

26. August 2021 0 comment

Examples Metaverse

5 Things Facebook Gets Right About Social VR In Horizon Workrooms

They say third time is the charm, right?

Facebook’s previous efforts in social VR haven’t fared so well. The original Oculus Rooms social framework kind of died a dark quiet death and, in 2017, Facebook Spaces became a focal point for VR’s awkwardness when CEO Mark Zuckerberg live broadcast himself as a particularly cartoonish avatar high-fiving another Facebook executive while surrounded by a 360-degree video of a hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

But gone are the limitations inherent to the Oculus Go, Gear VR and Oculus Rift headsets on which those social platforms briefly existed before they were formally shut down near the end of 2019. In their place, Facebook announced Horizon, a sprawling effort which seemed to target the holy grail of social VR — the ability to shape a world while embodied inside of it. Since announcement, the Horizon platform has rolled on quietly in limited release because, perhaps, it turns out there’s a pretty big gap between simply shaping worlds from VR and shaping worlds that people actually want to visit regularly.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s hardware teams started hitting their stride empowered by a clear long-term goal of getting as many people as possible wearing the company’s hardware. The Oculus Quest 2 is becoming a self-contained VR personal computer and it sells for an unmatchable price of $299. Next week, it goes back on sale with double the internal storage. Altogether, Facebook’s executives feel VR is reaching a tipping point and, amid the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve offered to buy every single one of the company’s 60,000+ employees a Quest 2.

So while Facebook might’ve bitten off more than it could chew with Horizon (in 2019 at least), a year and a half into a pandemic forcing employees onto an endless carousel of mind-numbing video calls seems to have honed the company’s social VR efforts into a pretty slick new offering: Horizon Workrooms.

“Workrooms is really, we think, the beginning of a unique inflection point for VR,” said Mike LeBeau, Director of FRL Work Experiences. “It’s something we’ve talked about for a long time in terms of future computing platforms and all of that. But this is a moment we think where we’re actually starting to really adapt the medium to that end.”

I recently tried out Horizon Workrooms and came away pretty impressed by what they’re doing. Here’s a look at five things that set the new effort apart.

Incredible Audio

The audio inside Horizon Workrooms is simply incredible. Facebook says they’re incorporating both directionality and reverberation into a low-latency audio pipeline. What’s that mean exactly? You can close your eyes and pinpoint exactly where someone is seated in the room without looking at them, and you can even tell whether they’re facing you or turned toward a whiteboard.

Oculus Touch Reimagined

Facebook explained up front that its teams designed Horizon Workrooms for controller-free hand-tracking first. That’s to be expected since the company has made no secret of aiming to one day ship a headset that can sell at even lower prices because it’s just a headset in a box — controllers sold separately. We use hand tracking every week for our in-VR studio broadcasts and we love how expressive it allows us to be, so it’s not really new. Still, my mind sorta blew apart in Horizon Workrooms when I realized they’d decided they could completely reimagine how you can use an Oculus Touch tracked controller. You can have a whiteboard on the surface of your desk in the software, and they suggest you pick up a Touch controller in your writing hand and hold its base exactly like a pen. After a quick calibration step with the desk, you can simply press the handle of the controller against the table and voila, you’ve got a decent writing implement.

Appointment-based

VR takes some effort to get into. Just to begin to think about meeting up with someone in VR you’ve got to make sure your headset is charged, turned on, and the headset’s fitting is just right for your particular head shape. And just right there you’ve caused plenty of missed connections. That’s why I think VR shares a lot in common with appointment-based entertainment, like waiting for a new TV show to premiere at a specific time or pre-planning a time to meet a friend for a round of mini-golf. Horizon Workrooms effectively leans into this by making it very easy to schedule meetings from a Web-based interface.

Mixed Reality’s Beginnings

You can bring your desk into Workrooms and the software can track and show the location of some Mac keyboards and the Logitech K830 bluetooth keyboard to other people in the room. You can also see a passthrough view of your fingers hovering over the keys, so if you lose your place on the keyboard you can find it again without taking the headset off. Facebook is calling this “mixed reality” and it opens the door to a lot of really fun ideas in the future. Could we one day have a cat sharing feature, for instance, so that if a pet should wander into your work area their location could be shown to the other people in the room? Or, perhaps more usefully, what about document scanning? If you place a piece of paper on your desk could you one day scan and copy it for everyone in the room, just by looking at it?

It’s Not All About VR

Horizon Workrooms supports up to 16 people in VR together and up to 50 people total when adding in those calling in over video. While those using Quest 2 need a Facebook account, those joining from a video call just need “a Workrooms account, which is separate from your Oculus or Facebook accounts,” according to the company. Put another way, they’ve created a social platform that doesn’t require a VR headset or a Facebook account to have an interaction and, once you’re there, you’ll have a front row to some of your closest contacts demonstrating exactly what you get when you take the plunge.

Quelle:

https://uploadvr.com/horizon-workrooms-social-vr/

25. August 2021 0 comment

Metaverse

Facebook Surprise-launches New VR Meeting App With Virtual Desktops and up to 50 People

Facebook today is surprise-launching a new app called Horizon Workrooms, a virtual collaboration space that connects both VR and video chat users. With the ability to bring a user’s PC or Mac desktop into the virtual room, the app takes a big step toward turning Quest 2 into a collaborative productivity device.

While the long-awaited Facebook Hozion social app has yet to launch, the company has been quietly working on another ‘Horizon’ product which is launching today for free. Horizon Workrooms is an app built for remote collaboration and team productivity.

I got to tour the app earlier this week where I sat down with Facebook’s VP of XR, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, and two of the leads on the project, alongside a handful of other journalists.

At its core, Horizon Workrooms is built around your desk. Like, your actual desk.

Before using the app, you’ll be asked to mark the surface of your desk so that Quest 2 can track it and show a virtual representation of it inside the headset. This is important because it’s the anchor for pretty much everything you can do inside of Horizon Workrooms.

Shareable Virtual Desktops

The app includes a fully functional virtual desktop, which leverages a companion app installed on your PC or Mac to stream your computer’s desktop to a virtual screen in front of you. This means you can continue to access your computer even while you’re inside the headset, and you can even share your screen with others in the room.

To make it easier to use your real keyboard that’s on the desk in front of you, Horizon Workrooms supports keyboard tracking which allows it to detect a handful of specific keyboards, and create a virtual representation of them so that you can see and type on without being ‘blinded’ by the headset.

Right now Horizon Workrooms only supports Macbook keyboards, the Apple Magic keyboard, and the Logitech K830, though the company says they’re working to support more in the future.

If you don’t happen to have one of these keyboards luckily there’s a backup option. You can enable a ‘desk passthrough’ view which cuts out a portion of the virtual desk in front of you to show your actual hands on your actual keyboard. I was surprised how well it worked. While the passthrough video quality isn’t good enough to easily make out the letters on individual keys, for proficient typists it at least makes it easy to keep your hands properly aligned and prevents blindly reaching around for your keyboard. Now if only they could support coffee mug tracking too….

While it’s nice to have your usual desktop right in front of you—and all of the productivity capabilities that confers—it’s far from a perfect replacement for your actual PC. Latency between the PC and headset is surprisingly high, making mouse movements and keyboard input much more sluggish than you’re used to (especially if you have a high refresh rate monitor). Hopefully this is something they can improve going forward.

Virtual Reality & Video Chat Together

Horizon Workrooms isn’t exclusive to VR. Non-VR users can be invited to join via a video chat. The app supports up to 16 VR users and 36 video chat users simultaneously, for a total of up to 50 people in one workroom. https://gfycat.com/ifr/importanttestyequine

The room has a handful of different arrangements focused on different types of meetings. There’s a boardroom-style table with two distinct sides, a circular table, and a presentation layout where everyone is facing in the same direction like a classroom. As more users join the space, the table size automatically increases to accommodate.

Presenting & Whiteboarding

While users sit at the table by default, anyone can stand up (like, literally stand up out of your chair), and be transported to the wall of the room next to a large virtual whiteboard. This is especially useful for the classroom-like presentation arrangement, as it gives everyone a clear view of the presenter and anything they write on the whiteboard.

Speaking of writing… Facebook has done something interesting with the whiteboard input. Instead of holding a Quest controller the usual way, the app actually expects you to flip it backwards and hold the handle like a fat marker. When you do this the controller actually turns into a marker in your hand, and then you can use it to write on the whiteboard.

You can write on the whiteboard from your desk or up at the wall | Image courtesy Facebook

It’s a neat idea but feels a little funky in practice, perhaps because of how snub the end of the controller handle is compared to what you’d expect from a writing implement. It seems that some changes to the positioning of the marker in your hand (making it stick out a bit further toward the whiteboard) could make it feel more natural.

Facebook says that each workroom gets its own whiteboard and that anything written on the whiteboard is persistent, meaning you can leave your ideas and come back to them another time. You can also export the whiteboard as an image for use elsewhere.

Web-based Interface for Teams

Horizon Workrooms also has a web-based interface built around a ‘team’ metaphor. It’s a place where room administrators can invite users to the team, allowing everyone to text chat, create notes, schedule meetings, and make new virtual workrooms. It’s also possible to upload files to the web interface which can be pulled into the VR meetings (for instance, bringing a photo from your PC to annotate on the whiteboard).

Web-based Interface for Teams

A Step Forward for Productivity on Quest

Quest is, at its core, still a gaming device. Horizon Workrooms is clearly an effort on Facebook’s part to bring collaboration and productivity capabilities to the headset. In that sense it feels like it has taken a step forward. Though it’s far from perfect, and there’s many other VR collaboration apps to choose from with features not found in Horizon Workrooms.

If Horizon Workrooms is to truly succeed, it will need to respond aggressively to feedback to build on the ways that people actually work, while continuing to make the app as easy to use as possible so that people see true utility and not just novelty. It’s also going to need to tighten up the virtual desktop functionality so that it doesn’t feel like a compromise compared to using your actual computer.

At the same time, Horizon Workrooms feels like it’s not addressing a more fundamental issue. It’s great that Facebook is allowing people to form teams, invite members to those teams, and then schedule virtual meetings for everyone to show up to at the same time. But Quest is still missing casual VR meeting functionality intended for general use-cases and not purely business—it feels a lot like having a smartphone that can make business calls but not personal calls.

Even though it’s free and technically anyone can use it, Horizon Workrooms has too much administrative overhead to address the regular, everyday users who just want a way to easily invite a friend to a shared virtual space to hang out and chat. Building up from those simple, personal meetings to more high-level business meetings seems like it would have addressed a much wider range of needs. At the same time, I can appreciate that Horizon Workrooms is focusing on a very specific use-case.

Quelle:

Facebook Surprise-launches New VR Meeting App With Virtual Desktops and up to 50 People

24. August 2021 0 comment

Examples Metaverse

Facebook’s ‘Horizon Workrooms’ Is VR Coworking At Its Finest

The open beta for Facebook’s remote collaboration platform is available now on Oculus Quest 2 headsets.

Facebook today unveiled Horizon Workrooms, a robust VR coworking platform bursting at the seams with game-changing features that could set the groundwork for a new generation of remote collaboration. The company’s mixed reality office can accommodate everyone from smaller independent teams to larger groups using a suite of impressive abilities.

Available now in open beta, Horizon Workrooms allows you to communicate and collaborate with your coworkers from anywhere around the world while maintaining the same sense of intimacy you’d feel during an in-person meeting. This is achieved using a variety of unique features exclusive to the Oculus Quest 2, such as Oculus desk, keyboard, and hand tracking technology.

Horizon Workrooms includes a variety of useful features, including mixed reality desk and keyboard tracking, video conferencing, wireless desktop streaming, hand tracking, and spatial audio just to name a few. You can take notes using a personal and public whiteboard, conduct presentations, even import text, images, and video files using the Horizon Workrooms companion app.

I had the chance to participate in a virtual meeting earlier this week alongside a handful of other users located across the globe, and while our conference was short, I already find myself craving more of this multifaceted platform.

Getting Started

Setup was surprisingly easy. In addition to the Oculus Quest app, Horizon Workrooms features a dedicated pairing app available free on Windows PC and Mac. Once installed, you’re then required to make a free Horizon Workrooms account. This web-based app serves as the central hub of Horizon Workrooms. Here you can chat with coworkers, create and join private rooms, upload files, and record notes of the meeting in real-time.

Upon logging into the press meeting, I found myself surrounded by other users tuning in from across the globe, each of whom brought to life via Facebook’s new Oculus avatars.

Interactions with other users felt incredibly natural thanks to key improvements to character animations and lip-synching; not to mention the excellent use of spatial audio. After just five minutes, I felt completely at home in Facebook’s virtual meeting spaces. I say “meeting spaces” plural because Horizon Workrooms features several different rooms designed to meet a variety of needs. Whether you’re looking to converse, collaborate, or present, Horizon Workrooms has a seating arrangement for you.

In addition to selecting a layout manually, these spaces will automatically configure themselves based on the number of people in the room. According to Facebook, Horizon Workrooms features support for up to 16 people in VR. Those without a VR headset can also join via a standard video call using the Horizon Workrooms web app. All in all, a total of 50 participants can join a single room at one time.

Regardless of which layout you choose, you’ll have access to your own personal workspace. Arguably the most impressive aspect of the platform, this dedicated work area employs a variety of Oculus technologies to deliver a seamless productivity experience unlike anything available at the moment. You can access your desktop remotely and share your screen with other users, change your personal settings, even draw and take notes by flipping the Touch controller around and using the end as a makeshift stylus. Most of this can be controlled using the Touch controllers or—for a more immersive experience—Oculus hand tracking.

Thanks to Oculus passthrough technology, you can now type in VR without having to take your headset off. This works for any keyboard you may be using. For those with a Macbook, Apple Magic Keyboard, or Logitech K830 US version, you can actually access a 3D model of your real-world keyboard in VR. Not only is seeing my MacBook in VR a cool visual experience, but it also made typing significantly easier, something another user without a compatible keyboard was quick to comment on.

If you need to share your thoughts with the group, you can move from a seated position to the front of the group where you can share your computer screen, access individual files uploaded to the Horizon Workrooms web app, and take notes on a virtual whiteboard. Similar to desk tracking, you can customize the position of the whiteboard to better fit your physical space. I, for instance, have mine situated directly behind my real-world desk; all I have to do is pick up my controllers, turn around, and boom! I’m now presenting in front of a multifunctional VR whiteboard viewable to everyone in the room. Any notes or drawings you make on the whiteboard will remain there until they’re deleted. You can even export your whiteboard out of VR and into the Workrooms web app for later use.

Whereas past VR coworking solutions have fallen short in providing a seamless remote collaboration experience due to a variety of limitations, Horizon Workrooms makes excellent use of existing Oculus Quest technology to deliver what could be considered the most robust VR coworking solution on the Oculus Quest 2.

According to Facebook, the company has been utilizing Horizon Workrooms internally for about six months. The company says that Horizon Workrooms is just the start of a much larger “metaverse” composed of various applications and experiences.

“We hope that developers are excited to use many of the same features seen in Workrooms in their own apps, and we’re working hard to bring them to our platform as well,” said the company in an official blog post. “You can already start by using our hand tracking and spatial audio features in your own apps today. And we’re working to bring avatars, Passthrough, mixed-reality desk, and tracked keyboard capabilities to the platform too. We’re excited to continue growing the VR for work ecosystem, and we hope that Workrooms serves as inspiration for how these features can work together.

Horizon Workrooms is available now in open beta on Oculus Quest 2 headsets. For more information on how to get started visit here.

Quelle:

Facebook’s ‘Horizon Workrooms’ Is VR Coworking At Its Finest

Feature Image Credit: Facebook

24. August 2021 0 comment

Metaverse Research

Das VR-ZOOM? – Facebook startet die “Horizon Workrooms”- Beta – Remote Collaboration Reimagined

Der geglaubt hat Facebook meint es mit dem virtuellen Arbeitsplatz nicht ernst, der sollte die neue Beta von „Horizon Workrooms“ ansehen. Meetings, Klassenraum-Situationen oder kreative Workshops werden nun möglich. Interessant ist die Einbindung der externen Hardware. Mein Schreibtisch, mein PC oder eine externe Tastatur werden virtuell in den Arbeitsprozess eingebunden. Alles wird mit der VR verbunden und sichtbar gemacht. Über Passthrough-Ansichten werden die Tastatur eingeblendet oder mein „virtuelles“ Whiteboard auf meinem echten Schreibtisch – unglaublich. Dann drehe ich einfach die Controller und schon habe ich zwei Stifte mit denen ich zeichnen kann in der Hand.

Ein großes Whiteboard platziere im realen Raum und kann mit den Anderen Meeting-/Workshop-Teilnehmer Ideen oder Konzepte visualisieren. Bilder oder Dokumente kann ich von meinem Rechner vorbereiten und in den Workroom hochladen und am virtuellen Whiteboard sichtbar machen.

Es können auch externe Teilnehmer als Video-Stream integriert werden.

Horizon Worksrooms ist ein Puzzelteil von Horizon und damit auch mit dem kürzlich angekündigten Metaverse-Ansatz von Facebook. Es verdeutlich schon einmal schön die Verschmelzung der realen und der virtuellen Welt. Das Ankoppeln der bestehenden IT-Devices und die vorhandenen Dokumente. Als Grundlage werden die neuen Avatare von Oculus verwendet. Diese sollen die soziale Kommunikation unterstützen. Durch verschiedene Sitzordnungen können unterschiedliche Szenarien abgebildet werden. Meetings, Workshops oder Lernsituationen.

Zukunft der virtuellen Arbeit und vielleicht auch des virtuellen Lernens könnte so aussehen? Gerne eure Meinung. Ich bin ehrlich gesagt positiv überrascht und ehrlich neugierig, wie ich diese Möglichkeiten in meine Aktivitäten einbinden kann. Versuchen werde ich dies bestimmt, der erste Eindruck ist gut und überrascht an der ein oder anderen Stelle mit wieder einmal guten Interaktionsdesgins. Darauf lässt sich aufbauen, die Hoffnung ist, dass zur Facebook Connect am 28.10.2021 noch mehr Funktionen da sind und weitere Ideen umgesetzt wurden. Wenn das monatliche Tempo analog den Betriebsversionen gehalten wird, kann hier vieles entstehen. VR Collaboration geht in die nächste Stufe und verbindet die reale mit der virtuellen Welt. Danke.

Mein Avatar in den Meeting-Einstellungen

Mein virtuelles Whiteboard auf meinem echten Schreibtisch

Quelle:

Autor Torsten Fell

19. August 2021 0 comment