Facebook launches virtual reality teleworking application, competing with Zoom

With the beta version, users of the Oculus Quest 2 headset can host an online meeting as an avatar version of themselves. Each virtual meeting room has up to 16 Oculus Quest 2 users and up to 50 participants.

Meeting participants wearing headsets can express emotions and manipulate reality, then the avatar in the virtual meeting will move accordingly. In the meeting room there is a virtual whiteboard, helping people share images or make presentations.

"The COVID-19 pandemic over the past 18 months has made us more confident in the importance of this technology," said Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's Vice President of Reality Labs. Vice President Bosworth further shared that Facebook has been using this application in internal meetings for about a year.

This is not the first time Facebook and Oculus (a subsidiary of Facebook) have tried to create interactions through VR. The company launched virtual hangout apps Oculus Rooms and Facebook Spaces in 2016 and 2017 respectively. However, the company discontinued both VR apps in October 2019.

Instead, they announced a virtual social world called Horizon, launching in 2020. Horizon is not yet widely available, and Facebook has confirmed that the app is still in private beta testing. .