Horizon Workrooms is set to expand, offering users the ability to customize rooms and add custom logos and graphics.
These new features won’t be available until later in the year, but will let users add some personal touches to the Workrooms, including a custom logo graphic on the wall and custom posters. Users will also be able to switch between “a wider variety of environments”, one of which is pictured below.
In its current state, Horizon Workrooms only offers one room with no customization beyond the seating arrangement. Users can only choose between conversation, boardroom table and presentation settings, which alter the direction of the seats but nothing about the room itself.
On a call earlier this week Facebook’s Product Management Lead, AV/VR for Enterprise Jill Campbell said that these new customization options are only the beginning of future personalization plans for Workrooms. “This is one step we’re going to take in that direction with lots more to come.”
The image embedded above shows a brand new environment set among city skyscrapers, while the image below shows the default countryside setting that launched with Workrooms. The images also show the custom logo and poster integration, exampled here by Zoom (whose video conferencing service is soon to receive native integration with Workrooms).
Workrooms launched earlier this year as Facebook’s remote work and collaboration solution for VR. It allows teams to meet in VR and work together with a sense of presence as if everyone is in one room. It achieves this by harnessing a combination of existing and emerging technologies, such as spatial audio, keyboard and hand tracking, passthrough, remote desktop and Oculus Avatars.
Facebook launched Horizon Workrooms back in summer, bringing to Quest a new enterprise-focused virtual collaboration platform that connects both VR and video chat users in the same place. Soon the app will let you choose from different environments which will be customizable to some degree—a prescient step on the way to Facebook’s vision of its metaverse.
“Later this year we’ll introduce customizable rooms in Workrooms, giving you the ability to choose from a wide variety of different environments to get work done, and place your own company logos or team posters in your rooms,” the company said today during its annual Connect dev conference. “This will let people adapt their virtual workspaces to match individual company styles, cultures, and branding guidelines.”
So far Horizon Workrooms has only offered a few standard boardroom spaces. That isn’t changing terribly much with the ability to do things like modify colors, decorations, and import company logos and posters, however the ostensibly conservative update coming to the app later this year is definitely another bid to make Facebook and its VR hardware more attractive to companies looking to stay distanced and distributed. You know, the ‘new normal’.
Facebook surprise-launched Horizon Workrooms back in August, which lets VR and video chat users work and physically collaborate in the same virtual space. Since then it’s included support for things like Zoom Meeting and Zoom Whiteboard for better cross-platform collaboration, and also included more intuitive whiteboards, instant Remote Desktop connection, and AR keyboard labels in its v1.1 release.
And customizable Workrooms environments aren’t the only thing on the agenda this year either, as Facebook continues to refine its expansion into enterprise VR to make it cheaper and more attractive. It’s building towards the 2023 release of dedicated ‘Work Accounts’ which will essentially let companies adopt the consumer Quest hardware instead of having to buy the more expensive Quest for Business kit for $800.
This comes on the tails of a Facebook hiring spree that will see an additional 10,000 people added to its ranks in effort to build its version of the metaverse, or what you might define as a connect platform of virtual experiences and worlds that share some level of connectivity, interoperability, and identity.
Facebook Horizon Workrooms added support for Apple’s M1 Mac computers, which should allow users to bring the latest Macbook Pro, Air and Mac Mini models into Workrooms via remote desktop software.
Facebook launched Horizon Workrooms last month, allowing Quest 2 users to work and collaborate remotely with other users in a virtual boardroom. The app supports bringing your computer into VR via remote desktop software installed on your PC or Mac, which streams your desktop view to a virtual screen at your seat in Workrooms. You can control your computer either via a cut-out of the passthrough view displaying your desk or with a tracked keyboard represented virtually on your Workrooms desk, available for select supported models.
The Oculus Remote Desktop software required for Workrooms integration launched with support for Windows and Mac computers, but did not support the latest line of Macs using Apple’s new M1 chip. This new line of Macbook Pro, Air and Mac Mini features custom silicon designed by Apple, which has underlying architectural differences from previous models.
Previously, Facebook said M1 support was being worked on and should arrive within a month or so. Now, the update is available and allows M1 Macs to be used in Facebook Workrooms via remote desktop with ease. The software download page confirms the update, encouraging M1 users experiencing difficulty running or install Oculus Remote Desktop to redownload the software and try again with the new version.
We tested out Oculus Remote Desktop on an M1 Macbook Pro earlier today and can confirm that installation went smoothly and the computer appeared in Workrooms with no hiccups. The Macbook Pro and Air keyboards can also be tracked natively by the Quest, allowing you to use a virtual representation of your keyboard in VR that matches your laptop keyboard’s position in real life.
Facebook Horizon Workrooms added support for Apple’s M1 Mac computers, which should allow users to bring the latest Macbook Pro, Air and Mac Mini models into Workrooms via remote desktop software.
Facebook launched Horizon Workrooms last month, allowing Quest 2 users to work and collaborate remotely with other users in a virtual boardroom. The app supports bringing your computer into VR via remote desktop software installed on your PC or Mac, which streams your desktop view to a virtual screen at your seat in Workrooms. You can control your computer either via a cut-out of the passthrough view displaying your desk or with a tracked keyboard represented virtually on your Workrooms desk, available for select supported models.
The Oculus Remote Desktop software required for Workrooms integration launched with support for Windows and Mac computers, but did not support the latest line of Macs using Apple’s new M1 chip. This new line of Macbook Pro, Air and Mac Mini features custom silicon designed by Apple, which has underlying architectural differences from previous models.
Previously, Facebook said M1 support was being worked on and should arrive within a month or so. Now, the update is available and allows M1 Macs to be used in Facebook Workrooms via remote desktop with ease. The software download page confirms the update, encouraging M1 users experiencing difficulty running or install Oculus Remote Desktop to redownload the software and try again with the new version.
We tested out Oculus Remote Desktop on an M1 Macbook Pro earlier today and can confirm that installation went smoothly and the computer appeared in Workrooms with no hiccups. The Macbook Pro and Air keyboards can also be tracked natively by the Quest, allowing you to use a virtual representation of your keyboard in VR that matches your laptop keyboard’s position in real life.
While the focus is on users joining using virtual reality, Workrooms also contains functionality that allows a non-VR user to join the meeting through a regular video call. However, starting next year, Workrooms will also allow VR users in the virtual boardroom to join an existing Zoom meeting and collaborate using Zoom Whiteboard. You can take a look at the announcement, which was made at Zoom’s Zoomtopia keynote speech, in the video embedded above. The Horizon Workrooms segment begins around the 34 minute mark.
Zoom Whiteboard was also announced at Zoomtopia, just before the Facebook and Zoom collaboration. It is an upcoming tool for Zoom that allows users to collaborate on a virtual whiteboard together, taking notes, making drawings, placing post-it notes and more. With Horizon Workrooms integration, VR users will be able to use Horizon’s desk whiteboard or the large standing whiteboard to alter the Zoom Whiteboard.
Zoom product manager Jordan Thiel said that they “envision” being able to save and share Zoom Whiteboards as well, which would allow you to save the end product after the meeting and send it around to those who weren’t in attendance.
Will you use the Zoom integration with Horizon Workrooms once it’s available? Let us know in the comments below.
Several weeks ago Facebook launched its vision for work-based collaboration in virtual reality (VR), Horizon Workrooms. Designed to help colleagues connect remotely, this week it has been revealed that the highly popular video conferencing service Zoom will be integrated into Horizon Workroomsnext year.
Horizon Workrooms is currently in open beta for Oculus Quest headsets, allowing anyone to test the new software. With the integration of Zoom, users will be able to join Zoom Meetings and use Zoom Whiteboard directly within VR, to create what could be a seamless experience between the two platforms.
With companies having to switch to remote working during the course of 2020, many have turned to video platforms such as Zoom to stay connected. This has helped Zoom’s popularity soar but has also meant a new term being coined in the process, “Zoom fatigue”. Whereby people find themselves in so many video meetings that it just becomes mentally draining, lacking the fluidity of being together in person. So it’s no surprise that Zoom aims to combat such an issue with initiatives like this with Facebook.
A sneak peek was shown at Zoomtopia this week, Zoom’s annual conference (taking place virtually, of course!). Inside Horizon Workrooms users will be able to dial into those video calls as they normally would, so they can sit around a virtual desk with others in VR whilst talking to even more over Zoom. And with Zoom Whiteboard on hand, brainstorming new ideas shouldn’t be too difficult either as everyone in the meeting can add their input.
Zoom and Facebook haven’t said when they plan to integrate this functionality into Horizon Workrooms during 2022 but the software has plenty of features to keep you busy. There’s the mixed-reality desk and keyboard tracking, which alongside Oculus Quest’s hand tracking means you can see your desk and keyboard to naturally type as you would outside of VR. There’s also remote desktop streaming, spatial audio, and the new Oculus Avatars for that immersive feel.
There are plenty of other ways to collaborate in VR with Horizon Workrooms joining the likes of Spatial, MeetinVR and Arthur to name a few. For continued updates in this field, keep reading VRFocus.
Spatial launched a big 5.0 update for its remote work application on Oculus Quest this week, including improved avatars, Oculus subscription support and much more.
The updates arrives just a week after Facebook announced its own free remote work solution and Spatial competitor, Horizon Workrooms.
Spatial 5.0 is here!!! 
Featuring: PORTALS Multi-level environments New Space Picker & EXPLORE tab 3D Model Animations New Subdock New Avatars Webcam Bubbles Oculus Subscriptions & A New Pricing Tier
The new avatar bodies include “improved movement, greater fashion detail, [and] improved engine performance,” which the company says should make them feel a bit more natural and real than before. Users who join outside of VR, through the Spatial web app, will now have preset animations for their avatars, along with floating webcam bubbles above their avatar, so you can still see a live view of the user’s face and expressions.
There’s also been UI improvements, particularly to the Spaces window, allowing you to find, join and switch between Spaces quicker and easier than before. There will also be a new explore tab, which will let you find and join public rooms.
Likewise, the new Portals feature lets you create ‘portals’ between rooms that let you and others move between two virtual areas with ease. It’s not quite as glamorous as you might hope — you won’t be walking through a Doctor Strange-style sling ring portal — but it will let you create a small portal token that you or others can click on to quickly travel to the portal’s assigned destination.
When it comes to teleportation, you’ll have an easier time getting around in Spatial 5.0 — multiple levels are now supported in custom environments, giving more freedom to those who create their own areas to work in.
Spatial is also changing its pricing tiers and model. Previously handled externally, Spatial is now moving over to Oculus Subscriptions, which wasn’t available when the app launched last year. This means users can handle their subscription completely within VR and don’t need to take off their headset to sort out payment plans.
Additionally, the pricing tiers have changed and now consist of a free tier, a $25/month pro tier, a $25/user/month Team tier (with 20% off 5 users or more) and an Enterprise tier that can be scaled appropriately and organized by contacting the Spatial sales team.
Facebook is moving to power remote work with a collaborative platform called Horizon Workrooms.
The new service launches as an open beta testing release today free to use on the Web over video call or embodied in Oculus Quest 2, with the latter being the only entry point requiring a Facebook account at launch. The software supports up to 16 people in VR together and up to 50 people total when adding in those calling in over video.
Horizon Workrooms Built For Hand Tracking
Horizon Workrooms is Facebook’s first software built from the ground up for controller-free hand tracking, and it is also the first released to headset owners to use their physical surroundings for added functionality. For example, the creators of the service include a whiteboard writing feature that flips an Oculus Touch controller around, so holding the base like a pen turns it into a writing instrument when pressed against a physical desk. Facebook calls this “mixed reality,” with the desk’s physical surface and keyboard either visible in a passthrough view from the headset’s cameras or re-skinned with virtual content.
At launch, some Mac keyboards and the Logitech K830 bluetooth keyboard can be tracked and their placement shown in VR. Facebook’s new Oculus Remote Desktop application runs on PC or Mac to show one monitor at a time to the user. Assuming your keyboard can be tracked (Facebook says it is working on adding more) other people in the virtual room can see the location of your keyboard but they can’t see your screen unless you cast it onto a wall for everyone to see.
Workrooms also pushes Quest 2 to its computational limits in new ways with the passthrough features presented alongside the latest version of Oculus avatars driven by impressive spatial audio that incorporates reverberation. For example, you can pinpoint exactly where someone is seated in the room without looking at them, and you can even tell whether they’re facing you or a whiteboard.
“This is going to be free, we’re going to put this out there for people to use for free. We want to see what people do with it, ” said Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, VP of Facebook Reality Labs. “We are very confident it’ll be useful for meetings because we already use it for meetings. But I also think it will be useful for people beyond just meetings.”
People using Workrooms are required to adhere to Facebook’s “Conduct in VR Policy” that prohibits “bullying” and other behavior. Company representatives prepared a document explaining that “Workrooms will not use your work conversations and materials to inform ads on Facebook. Additionally, Passthrough processes images and videos of your physical environment from the device sensors locally. Facebook and third-party apps do not access, view or use these images or videos to target ads. Finally, other people are not able to see your computer screen in Workrooms unless you choose to share it, and the permissions you grant for the Oculus Remote Desktop app are only used for the purposes of allowing streaming from your computer to your headset.”
Rooms can be set up in different seating arrangements to focus around collaboration, conversation, or presentation and the Workrooms web app offers a place to “capture notes and action items while you’re in a meeting, share links and files, and chat with your team. You can also sync your Outlook or Google Calendar to make it easier to schedule meetings and send invites.”
The software, or future versions of it, may represent an existential threat to a number of startups and indie developers ranging from work-focused Spatial and Immersed to Virtual Desktop and Bigscreen.
“This is not as good as being physically together, but it might be the next best thing,” Bosworth said.
Facebook today is surprise-launching a new app called Horizon Workrooms, a virtual collaboration space that connects both VR and video chat users. With the ability to bring a user’s PC or Mac desktop into the virtual room, the app takes a big step toward turning Quest 2 into a collaborative productivity device.
While the long-awaited Facebook Hozion social app has yet to launch, the company has been quietly working on another ‘Horizon’ product which is launching today for free. Horizon Workrooms is an app built for remote collaboration and team productivity.
I got to tour the app earlier this week where I sat down with Facebook’s VP of XR, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, and two of the leads on the project, alongside a handful of other journalists.
Image courtesy Facebook
At its core, Horizon Workrooms is built around your desk. Like, your actual desk.
Before using the app, you’ll be asked to mark the surface of your desk so that Quest 2 can track it and show a virtual representation of it inside the headset. This is important because it’s the anchor for pretty much everything you can do inside of Horizon Workrooms.
Shareable Virtual Desktops
Image courtesy Facebook
The app includes a fully functional virtual desktop, which leverages a companion app installed on your PC or Mac to stream your computer’s desktop to a virtual screen in front of you. This means you can continue to access your computer even while you’re inside the headset, and you can even share your screen with others in the room.
To make it easier to use your real keyboard that’s on the desk in front of you, Horizon Workrooms supports keyboard tracking which allows it to detect a handful of specific keyboards, and create a virtual representation of them so that you can see and type on without being ‘blinded’ by the headset.
Image courtesy Facebook
Right now Horizon Workrooms only supports Macbook keyboards, the Apple Magic keyboard, and the Logitech K830, though the company says they’re working to support more in the future.
If you don’t happen to have one of these keyboards luckily there’s a backup option. You can enable a ‘desk passthrough’ view which cuts out a portion of the virtual desk in front of you to show your actual hands on your actual keyboard. I was surprised how well it worked. While the passthrough video quality isn’t good enough to easily make out the letters on individual keys, for proficient typists it at least makes it easy to keep your hands properly aligned and prevents blindly reaching around for your keyboard. Now if only they could support coffee mug tracking too….
While it’s nice to have your usual desktop right in front of you—and all of the productivity capabilities that confers—it’s far from a perfect replacement for your actual PC. Latency between the PC and headset is surprisingly high, making mouse movements and keyboard input much more sluggish than you’re used to (especially if you have a high refresh rate monitor). Hopefully this is something they can improve going forward.
Virtual Reality & Video Chat Together
Image courtesy Facebook
Horizon Workrooms isn’t exclusive to VR. Non-VR users can be invited to join via a video chat. The app supports up to 16 VR users and 36 video chat users simultaneously, for a total of up to 50 people in one workroom.
The room has a handful of different arrangements focused on different types of meetings. There’s a boardroom-style table with two distinct sides, a circular table, and a presentation layout where everyone is facing in the same direction like a classroom. As more users join the space, the table size automatically increases to accommodate.
Presenting & Whiteboarding
While users sit at the table by default, anyone can stand up (like, literally stand up out of your chair), and be transported to the wall of the room next to a large virtual whiteboard. This is especially useful for the classroom-like presentation arrangement, as it gives everyone a clear view of the presenter and anything they write on the whiteboard.
Speaking of writing… Facebook has done something interesting with the whiteboard input. Instead of holding a Quest controller the usual way, the app actually expects you to flip it backwards and hold the handle like a fat marker. When you do this the controller actually turns into a marker in your hand, and then you can use it to write on the whiteboard.
You can write on the whiteboard from your desk or up at the wall | Image courtesy Facebook
It’s a neat idea but feels a little funky in practice, perhaps because of how snub the end of the controller handle is compared to what you’d expect from a writing implement. It seems that some changes to the positioning of the marker in your hand (making it stick out a bit further toward the whiteboard) could make it feel more natural.
Facebook says that each workroom gets its own whiteboard and that anything written on the whiteboard is persistent, meaning you can leave your ideas and come back to them another time. You can also export the whiteboard as an image for use elsewhere.
Web-based Interface for Teams
Image courtesy Facebook
Horizon Workrooms also has a web-based interface built around a ‘team’ metaphor. It’s a place where room administrators can invite users to the team, allowing everyone to text chat, create notes, schedule meetings, and make new virtual workrooms. It’s also possible to upload files to the web interface which can be pulled into the VR meetings (for instance, bringing a photo from your PC to annotate on the whiteboard).
PORTALS
Multi-level environments 
New Space Picker & EXPLORE tab
3D Model Animations
New Subdock
New Avatars
Webcam Bubbles 
Oculus Subscriptions & A New Pricing Tier
