Just like the age of the internet, we’re living in right now, a brand-new era of the Metaverse dawns upon us and before we know it, we’ll be living it.
Five months ago, Zuckerberg shared his vision for the Metaverse at the Connect 2021 conference and since then it has surfaced to become the hottest topic for debate across the internet.
The company has promised investments of millions of dollars on building hardware and software that fulfills Zuckerberg's grand vision of creating an interconnected digital space that will enhance how we interact online today.
Global Director, Business Engineering, Reality Labs at Meta, Ziad Traboulsi tells us how the metaverse will help improve social connections. “While wearing a virtual headset or glasses, with the help of mixed technologies people will be able to experience proximity while not necessarily being in the same physical space as others. They will be able to create new online experiences,” he says.
In the image above: Global Director, Business Engineering, Reality Labs at Meta, Ziad Traboulsi
We’ve already discussed the Metaverse and what it means, but what kind of experiences can we expect in the Metaverse? While the whole definition of this cyberspace is still in the future, glimmers of what it could feel like can be experienced today. Virtual reality is already letting us create immersive experiences that deepen our sense of presence online.
Working in the Metaverse
With the evolution of work culture and ethics, businesses across the world are increasingly adopting hybrid work techniques. Horizon has also embedded the ‘workrooms’ as its special feature for a virtual workspace. With this model, Meta lays emphasis on how the ability to effectively collaborate, will be crucial to ensuring workplaces can be genuinely inclusive, especially when some people will be working from offices and the others won’t.
In the Metaverse businesses won’t have to rely on access to expensive tools, vast workshops, or precious materials, in order to train,, study or make digital art, games, or experiences for their people to enjoy,” explains Traboulsi. “The metaverse will change how we work – we think sophisticated home office technology is here to stay, so distributed teams can work smarter without sacrificing quality, even as some companies return to traditional office space,” he adds.
As you all must have guessed by now, Horizon Workrooms is a virtual meeting space where colleagues can work together from anywhere. You can join a meeting in VR as an avatar and even bring your physical desk and compatible keyboard to the virtual room.
“It also enables you to interact with very interesting applications that almost make the experience like reality, for example, your body language like when you lean onto the table or write an idea on the board. These cannot be experienced in 2D video conferencing applications today but are all possible in Horizon Workrooms,” explains Traboulsi.
