Virtual reality is revolutionizing how we share ideas with clients and colleagues. With Microsoft Mesh now available on Meta Quest, this is the perfect time to see how immersive meetings are changing the way teams work together.
When it comes to finding the perfect meeting location, traditional methods have their limitations. We’ve all experienced the struggle to find the perfect spot for a video call, whether it’s in the quietest corner of the office, or hiding from the kids in your bedroom. Venues for in-person meetings can be just as uninspiring and, sometimes, unfit for purpose. The mundane and muted settings may be conducive to routine work, but they might fall short of inspiring your best ideas.
In mixed reality, there’s no such thing as a dull meeting. Microsoft Mesh lets you host calls with views of virtual oceans or in offices on top of mountains. Your team can draw inspiration from their surroundings like never before, and if you can’t find a space to meet your needs, you can always build one. Microsoft’s app allows users to add images and videos to immersive spaces without writing a line of code. With the Mesh toolkit, users can go even further and build fully customised 3D spaces for a more bespoke experience.
Conversations between remote employees on a video call and their colleagues in a shared physical space can feel disjointed. Drops in connection or microphones that fail to pick up audio in different parts of a room can mean that virtual attendees miss important information. In fact, they may simply stop bothering to attend certain meetings, and miss out on the cultural bonds that great teams develop.
Immersive meetings on Mesh give everyone a sense of presence that’s almost impossible to replicate on video calls. The platform uses spatial audio to add a sense of distance and direction that allows discussions to flow naturally. If avatars are spaced far enough apart, pockets of conversation can break out in the same virtual environment without colleagues talking over each other. By hosting immersive meetings on Mesh, remote employees feel just as included as those sharing a physical space and can build more productive working relationships.
No one understands the difficulties of bringing 3D ideas to life using 2D tools quite like designers. During in-person meetings and video calls, creative thinkers can struggle to share their work with wider members of the team. It takes a certain level of imagination to visualize the real-world versions of drawings on shared screens, which means that feedback and product development can suffer.
Mixed reality literally adds another dimension when sharing your work. By hosting meetings in Mesh, you can invite your colleagues and clients to immerse themselves in your ideas so they can get a better understanding of your designs at any stage in the development process. The option to make amends in real time means businesses can build better and quicker.
Sometimes, bringing our best selves to in-person meetings and video calls can be a challenge. Camera fatigue or worries about appearance can hinder people’s ability to contribute fully to discussions. For a meeting to be as productive as possible, everyone needs to feel comfortable when expressing themselves.
In immersive meetings, avatars give attendees an added sense of freedom to let their personalities shine through. In Microsoft Mesh, a diverse range of customization options ensures that all users feel represented. Avatars can be used in 2D and 3D environments to offer a break from video fatigue. Reactions allow users to respond to information in real time using body language and facial expressions – perfect for those times when you’re not ready for a camera but are keen to share your opinions.
Keeping your clients and colleagues engaged can be tricky, especially as in-person meetings and video calls allow for so many distractions. If it isn’t a knock at the door while working from home, the hunt for a useful document can waste vital time when important decisions have to be made.
Once you’re in a headset however, there’s no possibility of meeting attendees multitasking on a laptop. Mesh allows users to connect immersive environments with live data sources, too. By building important information into your VR workplace or making it part of the furniture, meetings become far more engaging. Just imagine how productive your meetings could be with access to a virtual dashboard of real-time data that your whole team can gather round simultaneously.
Microsoft Mesh is available now on Meta Quest, along with the M365 suite of productivity apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Check out the Meta Quest integrations page to learn more.
