The Next Step in Virtual Meetings

https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/20/holographic-vr-meetings-j…

Now this gets rid of all the user complaints of any experiential shortcomings that may happen in Zoom. Actual holographs in VR meetings. I can see jury trials done like this! I’d imagine that such technology is something Zoom or competitors will want to acquire down the road.

For now VR is a cool but still niche tech. I have Vive Pro, and there is now Vive Index (higher end stuff). You can get VR headsets for a few hundred dollars. But the future of virtual meetings I think.

Tinker

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The primary problem for VR-based meetings is bandwidth…consistent bandwidth.
When you are immersed in so much visual information any glitches get amplified tending to cause more disorientation more than just a window on your screen.
And with the higher bandwidth needed to send 360 degrees, the video glitches will increase.

There are techniques used at the server side to only send the portion of the 360 degrees that you are viewing (plus a little bit extra in each direction to account for head movements after transmission starts). Latency must be low for this to work.

You still needs lots more resolution than a basic video conference. And you need more powerful servers to virtually assemble all the participants into a single virtual space. All very doable and solved years ago, just more costly per conference.

Mike

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