Due to the coronavirus epidemic that has kept us all confined to our homes for the last one and a half years, video conferencing has emerged as the ultimate new alternative to face-to-face contact.
We’ve seen conferences and concerts take place online in recent months, and we’ve depended on video conferencing services like Google Hangouts and Zoom to maintain business continuity and social distance.
The Marketplace
The web-based video conferencing industry is dynamic. Zoom’s popularity increased as more individuals were confined to their homes in the earlier times of COVID. However, there were competitions from Google Meet, Hangouts, Teams, Facetimes. These platforms will have to constantly reinvent their products and solutions to retain their market position to survive.
Besides these giants, GoToMeeting, Cisco Webex, and newcomers like Neo Meet are also crawling their way up to the market share.
WFH Has Become The New Standard
Many businesses are starting to understand that the world after a pandemic will be pretty different. Twitter has already said that its workers will be able to work from home indefinitely. In contrast, Google and Facebook have stated that their employees will work from home until 2021. This is a huge step forward, and many will follow.
However, employees need the presence and agency you would find in a real-life conference room when it comes to cooperation. Face-to-face communication is a crucial motivator for collaboration and creativity to succeed; humans are energized by human contact; therefore, they need and desire it.
AR & VR Are Ushering In A New Age Of Communication
Conferences are a $62 billion sector supporting other businesses, including hotels, planes, and caterers. Aside from their economic significance, they are just optional when compared to the technologies we have today.
Companies all around the globe are now exploring new choices & realizing the possibilities of technology. So, what better time to integrate immersive technology into these settings than now?
#1. 5G
With the introduction of 5G, AR and VR technologies will probably begin to make inroads into the business. Adding additional value to the virtual meeting environment and continuously improving it has never been more critical. Trying out 3D experiences might be the next best thing.
#2. AR
People frequently become bored when they are on video conversations, particularly with the number of video calls that occur each day; it can get pretty tedious. AR, on the other hand, increases and intensifies the sense of distant presence. Using augmented reality, the person you’re talking to might appear as a hologram in your own physical location.
Just put on the AR glasses, and while linking them to your phone, you’ll see your colleagues in front of you. Also, when your colleagues join, they’ll be able to see your room through the glass. It’s basically a scanned and animated representation of yourself and your motions transmitted over the internet.
#3. VR
AR is great, but I think VR is closer to what technology we have available now. VR is actually more appealing for smaller gatherings. The whole spectrum of social signals, from posture to eye gazing to facial emotions and things like head nodding and hand gestures, all communicate essential information.
In VR, such information on social signals is unquestionably simpler to cross. Inertial sensors in the headgear and portable controllers and cameras can monitor hand and head motions in the most advanced VR.
The timing is perfect for entering this area because, as a collective society, we have never been or needed to be more linked than we are right now.
