Horizon Workrooms 1.3 is now available, adding a new environment, high-fives and improvements to the remote desktop capability.
A relatively minor update, the big draw of the latest update for Meta’s remote collaboration software is a beach environment that places your workspace in a tropical, relaxing seaside enclosure.
Beach day 🤝 workday
Work in VR with a new beach environment, collab next level with high-fives and more in Horizon Workrooms v1.3 🏖
— Meta Quest (@MetaQuestVR) March 15, 2022
As you can see in the video above, the environment looks very Greek in its design. If you can’t be in Santorini on holiday, I guess working in a virtual room that looks somewhat similar is the next best thing?
Besides the beach environment, you’re also now able to high-five colleagues in Workrooms — doing so will display a new effect.
Other significant changes in this update are found in Workrooms’ remote desktop functionality. Most notably, Workrooms now supports streaming desktop audio to your workspace while using remote desktop with your PC or Mac. Previously you could only stream a video feed of your desktop, without accompanying audio. This change should be useful for presenting videos and the like to a group of colleagues, depending on the latency between the video feed and the audio.
Audio streaming aside, Meta also notes that it’s made other improvements to Workrooms’ remote desktop features, particularly in relation to “discovery and connectivity, as well as general app stability.”
This update for Workrooms follows on from 1.2, which added more room customization, room themes, custom graphics for walls and a lectern for presenting to a group of people.
Still on the horizon (you decide if the pun was intended) is support for native integration of Zoom meetings into Workrooms, announced in September as part of a new partnership.
Horizon Workrooms 1.3 is available now for Quest headsets.
