Tried out Meta's Horizons Workrooms with @futuremeetings and I'll grudgingly admit... not bad!
Workrooms lets you join either in #VR or video conferencing and sit around a table, share screens, and chalkboard. It doesn't let you do anything else: you are in that chair and you will STAY THERE. There's no free movement.
But it performs well at that limited scope. Directional audio is perfect, you can port your computer screen into the VR space, and there's passthrough to see your keyboard.
Although the lack of free movement in Horizons Workrooms takes away one of the biggest advantages of #VR, it did feel substantially more immersive than a zoom call and very similar to an in-person discussion.
It did annoy the hell out of me by demanding I had my guardian set. (While a safely feature, I have a small apartment and normally just play on a rug whose boundaries I can feel with my feet.)
It also required you to be seated at a real desk (but that could be faked!).
@elizabethtasker
(Speaking of rugs - I cheekily got the antique rug that marks my VR space into a major VR game. It's especially surreal to line things up with the game and reality - total foot/eye immersion...)
@grant_h VR gives you a lot of the body language as your hands, head and position are tracked. For facial expressions, yes! I largely go via tone of voice and body language instead. Although facial tracking is in development (even some headsets have it already), so give it another year.
@EverydayMoggie Virtual reality requires real time 360 degree rendering as you move/look around (unlike a computer game, where you can control direction and preload a lot of content, as you know in advance what is there). The standalone Quest headset is very good value, but ultimately has the power of a smartphone.
You could do better graphics if you demanded everyone linked to a PC with a high-end graphics card, but that would heavily restrict access.
@EverydayMoggie It doesn't bother me at all 🤷♀️ . I enjoy being with my friends a lot in VR, from work to gaming. We can do a lot of things we can't do in person (like visit Mars!) and we're not in the same country, so meeting up regularly in-person isn't an option
@elizabethtasker@EverydayMoggie Let’s not do this with Facebook, though. Honestly, this is old tech. My friends and I were flying the Enterprise in Star Trek Bridge Crew (at that point an old VR game) throughout the pandemic, and the game loads you into a seat at a conference room table, where we would chat for a bit before the game. Graphics and design were much better. And I’ve heard the media touting Meta’s safety features, but Altspace launched with better in 2015.
@holly@EverydayMoggie I miss AltSpace! It's functionality and features for running events was pretty good and reliable. I didn't expect to be impressed by Workrooms and perhaps "impressed" is going a bit too far, but for this one task (working around a virtual table) I grudgingly found it better than anything else I've tried recently, such as spatial or glue.
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