Zoom has launched a new immersive video feature that lets you create virtual meetings in which, on screen, it appears that all participants in a video call are in the same room. Zoom had announced the Immersive Scenes feature, now renamed Immersive View, last October at its annual Zoomtopia event. Now the market launch is official.
The new Immersive View allows up to 25 participants. The common spaces where these virtual participants can “live together” can be a boardroom, an auditorium or a classroom, which is chosen depending on the meeting. There are also more informal spaces such as a kitchen or even each participant being the protagonist of a painting in a museum. Hosts can manually move people on the screen or let Zoom do it automatically.
Immersive View is now available in Zoom’s desktop client (version 5.6.3 or higher) for Windows and MacOS and is enabled by default for all free and individual Pro accounts.
Video calling is booming. We’ve known that since the pandemic has dictated new ways of socializing, working and meeting. And for Zoom, 2020 has been a very successful year after the confinement we experienced in the spring. The app has announced many new features to convince more users, as have competing companies.
Notably, this new Zoom Immersive View feature closely resembles the Together mode of Microsoft Teams, which the Redmond company introduced in July 2020.
Members of video calls in Microsoft Teams can also choose a virtual room where they all appear as if they were in the same space. At the time of its launch, the Redmond firm announced that up to 49 participants could enter one of these meetings in “Together Mode”.
