Microsoft Teams is coming to Meta Quest HMDs
Microsoft and Meta are partnering to bring the former's workspace organization and communication software to Quest line of virtual reality products.
It looks like Meta and Microsoft are coming together to bring a number of business and gaming services to Meta’s virtual reality ecosystem. That reportedly includes bringing a new form of Microsoft Teams to virtual reality platforms. Meta and Microsoft announced that Teams will be coming to Meta Quest platforms and Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse experience will also feature new functionality for streamlined access and launching of Teams.
Meta and Microsoft revealed their partnership and the development of Microsoft Teams for Quest HMDs via the Meta Connect 2022 Keynote livestream on October 11, 2022. It was during the livestream that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in talking about the services that will be launching on Quest platforms with Microsoft’s support. A VR version of Teams will allow businesses to organize and plan their work with staff via Quest VR headsets. The service isn’t ready yet, but Zuckerberg and Nadella promised updates on the development and launch of Microsoft Teams on Meta Quest will be coming in the near future.
Source: Meta
More than just allowing players to access a VR version of Microsoft Teams, Meta and Microsoft are working to integrate Teams into further functions of the Meta VR ecosystem. Once Teams is available on Meta Quest, users will reportedly be able to access and use Teams easily from the Horizon Worlds metaverse experience, easily launching meetings, presentations, or other organizational tools of Teams in Meta’s signature social VR experience.
Horizon Worlds was also announced to be getting a non-VR version on PCs and mobile devices. With Teams expanding to the Quest HMD ecosystem, Meta and Microsoft are also partnering up in other ways, such as gaming. Stay tuned for more Meta Connect 2022 coverage and further updates on Meta and Microsoft’s partnership and services.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Microsoft Teams is coming to Meta Quest HMDs
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Having attended meetings for both professional and personal reasons over video and in VR, I'll take the VR meeting over a video screen any day. It is much easier to pick up on social cues, and little things like spatial audio go a long way to providing a sense of presence that you literally cannot get with a webcam. There is a whole body of research backing up how much more effective immersive interactions are then video or audio based ones as well.
That said, not every meeting will be or needs to be in vr. But for stuff like design, product reviews, or collaboration among international teams, I think a lot of folks will start to prefer VR.
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45/ WOAH, the next generation of Codec avatars have gone WAY past the uncanny valley.
"Instant Avatars" are also -- to my eye -- pretty indistinguishable from video or volumetric capture.
Pretty mind-blowing speculative design that "may not end up in their products"
https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1579899930327789568-
My biggest concern with the new avatars is privacy, especially after seeing how strongly people come to identify with their avatars in social spaces, even when those avatars aren't photorealistic at all. The ability to easily steal someone's avatar is actually one of the reasons that VR Chat implemented EAC recently, because it was far too easy to steal something that someone may have spent hundreds of hours on. One of the folks I spoke with after the keynote was a K12 educator and he mentioned that one of his concerns was adults using child avatars and vice versa, and the dangers that could pose.
I did have a chat with someone from Meta in the courtyard after the keynote that made me feel somewhat more confident about that, though. He sounded middle-aged like most of us and mentioned that he had been in the tech industry for quite some time, and when I mentioned my concerns with the privacy he told me he wouldn't have come to Meta to work on these projects if he didn't believe that the company was taking privacy seriously after their mistakes. That said, he also agreed with me that that is what every company says and that only time will tell.
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Lawd help us
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Darkest timeline
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