VR in Workspaces

People are constantly communicating with their co-workers via email, slack channels, and video conferences, especially since the pandemic. Corporations and startups have taken remote work to the forefront and have struggled in the transition. Pair programming, large screen data visualization has been challenging in remote environments.

VR stands as a great alternative to connect workspaces and fill the gaps in remote workrooms.  With the added benefit of sharing a virtual space together, socializing on VR can provide more meaningful experiences in a remote first world. There are currently available VR social media apps such as Immersed and Horizon Workspace, where users can meet in private workspaces and collaborate.

While Immersed was the first to venture into collaborative workspace domain with the ability to invite people into your room via email or invite link, Meta's work on Horizon and it's commitment to metaverse means there is enough interest in the domain to make it a viable or default option in the future. 

Immersed have been available since 2020 and allows only collaborative remote screen sharing, an Oculus app in development, Facebook Horizon Workspace is now available in Beta version, allowing users to have collaborative working experience in a shared workspace. Horizon users can meet up with colleagues, chat, draw insights, write on whiteboard, watch videos and even pair program together.

Hube, Natalie et al. “VR Collaboration in Large Companies: An Interview Study on the Role of Avatars.” 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct) (2021): 139-144.

J. K. Patel and A. Sakadasariya, "Survey on virtual reality in social network," 2018 2nd International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control (ICISC), Coimbatore, 2018, pp. 1341-1344, doi: 10.1109/ICISC.2018.8399026.

At the Facebook Connect 2021 event, Meta launched Workrooms (focused on productivity / collaboration). Facebook is prioritizing building their social platforms into the virtual reality space, and as of 2022 many other companies are intending to develop their own metaverse as well (Microsoft, Roblox, Epic Games, etc.).