Facebook Launches Horizon Workrooms for Virtual Work Collaboration

Bradley Rhodes -

Facebook launched a beta version of the Horizon Workrooms app that lets people gather together for meetings and discussions in the same virtual room regardless of the actual physical distance between them.

Horizon Workrooms is available for free in countries that support Oculus Quest 2. The app offers custom avatars, hand tracking, mixed-reality tracking capabilities, video conferencing options, remote desktop streaming, spatial audio, and whiteboards for collaborative projects.

Horizon Workrooms is a virtual meeting space that you can connect to with a VR headset or from your regular computer via a video call.

Quest hand-tracking cameras and front-facing cameras allow you to work in the app with a virtual copy of the physical keyboard. It will enable you to type in the Facebook web application, take notes, and sync with your calendar to automatically send invitations. You can pin images from your computer on a board and write something in real-time. Whiteboards can be saved and exported as images to a computer.

The application lets 16 people be in the virtual room, and 34 more people can join them via video call without using a VR headset. The app also features a chat.

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How to use Horizon Workrooms?

To use Workrooms, you need to create a separate Workrooms account (not linked to Facebook or Oculus accounts) and have an Oculus Quest 2 headset.

To use the app, you need to create a new Workrooms team at workrooms.com. Once the account is created, you need to download the Horizon Workrooms app from the Oculus Store, install it on your VR headset, connect the headset to your account, and get started.

If your colleagues or friends are already using Workrooms, they can send you an email link to let you join their existing room.

Facebook says the company has been using Horizon Workrooms for meetings for about six months. The social media giant said it would not store and use information from work conversations for advertising. Other participants will not be able to see the user's screen until they allow it.