Meta Horizon Workrooms “lean back” move is the most immersive thing

This might seem like a minor thing, but when we’re screen sharing in presentation mode in Meta Horizon Workrooms (a VR workspace), sometimes someone starts talking and it makes me “lean back” to establish eye contact. We’re lined up classroom style, and the room is set up to allow everyone to see a large shared screen. The spatial audio cue combined with having to physically move to see someone’s avatar is what makes it believable that we’re in the same space.

In this screenshot triptych, Josh Gladstone and I had to move to see each other, and when we established eye contact, he gave me a thumbs up. It caused a “real memory” moment–I remember it as something that happened instead of something I watched.

For a year, I worked with a remote team spread across California, Pennsylvania, and England. We saw each other 90%+ of the time as avatars in Workrooms VR, and I still think of Keith Martin (the one I have never met in person) mostly as his avatar. But it’s interesting–I can’t remember Keith’s avatar in detail even though I have visceral memories of our dozens of VR meetings over a year, but I do remember details of his real-life face even though I saw him on video chat far less often. I imagine that once VR headset resolution increases and avatars become more detailed, the gap will start to close, at least, in terms of the fidelity and longevity of memories made in shared VR experiences.

Disclaimer: I work on VR stuff at Meta Reality Labs