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Microsoft today introduced Mesh, a new mixed reality platform for Microsoft Teams meetings that could one day take your coworkers off the screen and into your home. With headphones like the company’s HoloLens 2, the digital representations of the participants appear in the space around you, creating the feeling that they are with you even when geographically distributed. Participants can walk around and interact with shared 3D objects to, for example, collaborate on product design.
Mesh was demonstrated today at Microsoft’s Ignite conference using HoloLens 2, but Microsoft says the product will work on most VR headsets, tablets, smartphones, and PCs. Mixed reality glasses like the HoloLens will provide the best sense of real presence as users view and can interact with digital objects superimposed in their field of vision. A preview of the Mesh app is available for HoloLens 2 starting today.
Transport me – Initially, Mesh will feature digital representations of people using virtual avatars from the social virtual reality platform AltspaceVR. Although the virtual avatars communicating body movements provide a certain level of intimacy, it is still a mock of being there with another person. To that end, Microsoft says Mesh will eventually use “holoport” technology to transport people into other people’s spaces and allow them to appear as photorealistic versions of themselves. We will move from Zoom meetings in 2020 to Star Wars in 2021.
That is how The edge described his experience testing Mesh:
During my hour-long meeting at Microsoft Mesh, I constantly felt that this could be a future version of Microsoft Teams. Kipman appeared next to me as an avatar and began handing me virtual jellyfish and sharks. I could reshape the animals, pass them back, or just place them in front of me. Although we weren’t working on a big design or 3D model, it felt a lot more immersive than the Zoom video calls that I have to attend almost daily.
Mesh’s preview video looks a lot better than the demo, but if Mesh works the way it’s supposed to, it’ll certainly be a pretty incredible feat. Products like AltspaceVR already provide an experience that tricks the brain into thinking it is in a virtual world.
But practically speaking, for those of us who are too self-conscious to leave our cameras on during Zoom calls, having our entire bodies transported to a co-worker’s house sounds a bit awful.
Business Applications – Microsoft’s Alex Kipman, the inventor of the HoloLens (and Kinect before that), envisions Mesh as a way to enable hybrid work as corporations rethink their footprints in the office. That corporate focus will likely be important at first, as a HoloLens 2 headset costs $ 3,500. Companies might be willing to put down that much money if Mesh can cut down on unnecessary executive travel when a virtual meeting might suffice.
Even then, Mesh will need to offer use cases that are a real improvement over the teleconferencing we are all used to. Just because you can teleport into someone else’s space doesn’t mean you should. To that end, Microsoft recruited big names like filmmaker James Cameron and Pokemon go developer Niantic to demonstrate its potential at Ignite’s keynote address today.
Games and concerts – A proof-of-concept version of Pokemon go and virtual concerts are two ideas that Microsoft thinks demonstrate how Mesh could help people connect virtually. If corporations continue to embrace remote work to the extent that they are today, AR could help maintain the cohesion and empathy of the team that some leaders fear will be lost with remote work.
Anyone who has tried AR products like Snapchat’s clothing glasses that allow users to “try on” 3D shoes will know that superimposing digital objects in the real world can communicate ideas better than looking at images on screens. Many tech companies, including Facebook and Snap, are hoping to get involved in the AR / VR movement as it promises to be the next major platform for personal computing after the smartphone.
