We were promised paperless offices decades ago and we're still nowhere close. Right now we can barely get video-conferencing done properly. Hence, I doubt VR will help us anytime soon.
I doubt it. If this was true, we'd already be there. We have teleconferencing and long distance communications already, and this doesn't really happen.
You would have to go beyond mere conferencing, and create specialized tools that can be interacted with in VR so people can produce something together that they couldn't before. There is little value in just having everyone pretend they're in an office.
In my opinion we're actually a lot closer to it than most people may realize. I think virtual-offices are going to be a reality in 3-5 years. This will be driven by a few key technologies that are coming out in that timeframe:
Oculus Rift - fully immersive digital environment
Leapmotion/Kinect - natural UI for interacting in 3D
Google Fiber - high-speed bandwidth networks
Modern GPUs - can already produce movie-level graphics in realtime.
In fact, I could see the first prototype virtual offices being released within 18 months.
I still firmly hold that VR will become mainstream and mundane once someone can create seamless virtual offices, so you can get the verisimilitude of interacting with your coworkers face to face both in meetings and down digital hallways, while living anywhere in the whole dang world.
Text is still a leading way to transfer information efficiently. Browsing websites with big goggles is not fun.
VR is still expensive. Only one provider offers a less expensive, standalone form.
For what purpose is VR to be enjoyed? As a novelty or gaming rig, it's okay. The catalog is small and Balcanized. I can't do my job, network software development, effectively in VR.
2D computer screens are still more convenient for 3D modeling than VR headsets.
Curiously, there's no video call app yet. You'd have to jump through a number of hoops on VRChat to get people into a private session.
I’m not knowledgeable enough on the current state of VR, but I’m curious as to how it will affect office setups. If VR can replicate the feeling of being in the same room, I imagine some companies will skip the office expense entirely.
I can’t foresee wanting to wear a VR helmet all day, but for an hour-long meeting? Maybe. Presumably projection tech will also progress and we might not even need to wear a helmet. Is this something that can conceivably exist in the next 10-15 years?
What makes you think that VR will deliver on the remote work dream where videoconferencing failed? I don’t think the 2D nature of videoconferencing is the problem here.
It's been 20 years and NOBODY is doing business in VR even though the tech is amazing right now. What's missing? At what point do you think normal people will prefer VR over just using video conferencing for work meetings? I don't see it and I'm willing to bet money that we won't have amazing Meta VR with 100 million users in the next 5 years.
VR won't happen until we have direct-to-visual cortex connectivity, just as smartphones weren't going to happen before the advent of capacitive multitouch input. It's pointless to try to make something happen before its time. No amount of money or manpower will ever be enough.
The smart money waits by the river until the necessary enabling technology comes floating by, just as Jobs did.
I'd like to believe that in a future where VR is affordable enough for most people, we'll have virtual reality offices that allow us to communicate with co-workers and have meetings as if we were actually there.
Also, consider the possibility that a company like Facebook moves its primary office to VR in ~10 years.
Not putting a probability on that, but we’ve never seen a teleconferencing platform with eye contact and body language before. I have no idea if that’s the limiting factor, but it seems at least plausible. FB, Google, and Apple will almost certainly all be selling $500 devices that can do those two things inside of 5 years.
Is that enough to disrupt physical offices? I don’t know.
But the probability is not 0. Personally I doubt ‘p(by 2030 one tech giant allows most workers to choose to work in VR)’ is < 0.1.
I’m going to price that into any Bay Area property valuation I make. How many people are only here because their office demands it?
Totally agreed. Our project's "secret": most people think that the future of VR is in games & entertainment, but it's actually in office work.
I never would have even purchased a VR headset had it not been for the promise to start working on a productivity environment. But before we can start building the killer VR office apps, we have to get the basic 2D apps working crisply/perfectly, IMO.
I think VR is still so early and there is still no 'viral winning app' that 100% justifies VR. There is a lot of searching and scrambling for it. Perhaps it is in business and productivity. There is limitless potential for VR, but the tech isn't quite there for many use cases. And worse yet, is there is still no single app or game that is like, this is the single reason you buy into VR.
With rising property costs in many major areas and pushes towards open offices. Think of how VR would solve the proximity problem, if you could plug into VR into a virtual office and still have 'proximity benefits' while working remotely but still have privacy/separation and cheap rent and commute.
That's actually a good point. I hated remote meetings back in the day when you had to call up a number and then enter a meeting ID, and having to put on a VR headset seems like a similar amount of hassle. I also have eye issues readjusting for some time after using one -- that doesn't seem like fun to deal with repeatedly throughout the day.
Maybe we'll have to wait until mind-integration VR becomes a thing.
Ideally, the next SV is literally Anywhere, Earth, what with the promise of remote work. Which is a dream deferred for decades.
Maybe VR/AR is the tech innovation that's required for finally making this a reality? Virtual office spaces? As dehumanizingly detached from the real world that could be, at least you'd be doing so from the comfort of your own home.
But why does the "office room" analogue even have to be there? It'll be nice to get people in on the idea just like the windows desktop was for traditional office workers. But we don't have to sit in a "room" in VR. The sky is the limit! :)
I think it's because our telecomm tech still sucks. It's not as good as real life and it has bugs.
Until we can smoothly emulate meatspace with VR, I don't think you can replace face-to-face interaction. If you can't do that, then people will still want to be close to jobs and similar businesses, so they'll continue to urbanize in a natural distribution.
And even if you had your new VR tech with enough bandwidth to run it nicely, you'd still need to be able to provide it to your offworld coloni--I mean rural exclaves.
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