Facebook is developing a virtual-reality chat room, which it hopes will be the most "immersive" way for people to communicate online. It is promoting the software for its Oculus Rift kit, which has struggled against competition from PlayStation VR and HTC Vive. The BBC's Chris Foxx asked Facebook's Rachel Franklin why people would prefer to make a virtual reality call, rather than a regular video call.
I'd settle for a video call where I spent less than 10% of the time shouting, "HELLO ! CAN YOU HERE ME ? YOU'RE BREAKING UP ! THE PICTURE'S TERRIBLE TODAY !"
Ultimately, VR with realistic avatars might be useful for social calls, but not yet. I can imagine this cartoony style having interesting applications for games, though.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-40726880/inside-facebook-s-virtual-reality-chat-room
I think the real killer app for teleconferencing is some way to convey the "I'd like to speak next" non-verbal cue.
ReplyDeleteSo much time wasted with people speaking over each other, then stopping, apologising, then both starting again.
If VR can do that, which it looks like it might be able to, then I'm in.
I know it can be done with a text chat running in parallel (typing 'hand' when you want to speak and the order of messages determining who speaks next) but that seems to take nerds to do, I've never had it work with muggles.
Check out appear.in - appear.in we use it at work and often have 4+ in a room with little issue.
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