I think they might be right in the long run but that they are pushing it too hard when it’s not ready yet.
People probably do want to collaborate in virtual rooms at work, but only when it’s better than video calls. Which it currently isn’t. And they don’t want to do it in a world controlled by zucc
I don't really think that's it, I feel like there is enough prior art (Second Life, VRChat, AltspaceVR, etc.) that we know this has potential and is feasable. Its just that their technology isn't even remotely competitive with anything. Its all just a clunky, buggy, uninspired mess.
Its everything from their corporate design story that bleeds into every world and avatar, the laughable visual programming tools to create worlds, the proprietary walled-garden approach to horizons, the privacy nightmare that is horizons, the operating system being this hacky unstable Android fork (don't ever look at logcat). Its like every single step of the way they made the wrong decisions and executed on them incompetently, no money in the world is going to fix this mess.
I still can’t see what I’d be supposed to do during a work vr “call”.
A physical meeting already has everyone looking at a whiteboard or screen, which is already solved by screensharing. Even if you could fully recreate the experience of being in a physical room, what are you supposed to gain from that?
I don't know if you've tried co working in VR, or VR meetings, but "presence". Hearing a voice coming from a low resolution tile in a Webex is very different than having some resemblance of a human sitting at the same table, where they can look at you, smile, and you see them talking and hear their voice coming from them.
I much prefer VR meetings to Webex. Webex feels like a glorified shared phone call. VR feels like an actual gathering. With working at home, I think the "gathering" part of it has value, to me. If there's a break, I just look at my computer screen right in front of me, in VR.
But, some people don't like change, so I think it's somewhat doomed, especially with the "older" crowd. I don't say or mean that in a derogatory way, because I see it in myself all the time, and it's more of a contextual optimization than a shortcoming. Some people have been doing Webex for decades, have mentally mastered that context, feel comfortable in it, and don't want to even try VR.
The dirty secret is some huge percentage of meetings are useless and so zoom is a godsend because you can “pretend to be paying attention” and actually getting work done.
People probably do want to collaborate in virtual rooms at work, but only when it’s better than video calls. Which it currently isn’t. And they don’t want to do it in a world controlled by zucc