Facebook wants you to hold your next meeting in VR

CNN Business — For those who don’t think Zoom meetings are a good enough substitute for the real thing, Facebook has another idea: a virtual reality app that lets you and your coworkers feel like you’re sitting around a table in a conference room. A step forward — but it’s not the metaverse, yet In recent weeks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other tech industry executives have spoken with increasing fervor about visions for a “metaverse.” The term draws inspiration from a decades-old dystopian sci-fi idea for a virtual world that provides an escape from the realities of everyday life. Even with the rollout of Workrooms, Facebook continues to suffer from some of the problems plaguing VR: it must convince people to buy its headsets, use them regularly, and adapt to new methods of interaction — both with the virtual world and with others within that world — that remain far from perfect. For instance, while Quest 2 can track hands and even individual fingers — making it possible for users to do things like gesture naturally while talking or flash an okay sign in VR while using Workrooms — if you try to touch both hands together during a VR meeting, it’s likely they’ll simply overlap in an awkward way that breaks the illusion of reality and presence.