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I just spent an entire week working in virtual reality using the new Meta Quest 3. While the experience still mostly sucked, I came away with some renewed optimism for VR in the workplace.

As I took Ron’s outstretched, virtual hand for a handshake, my actual hand — in the real world — clumsily whacked into the side of my desk.

Rory
Ron from Microsoft showing how to use hand gestures to interact with the menu and other useful shortcuts in the Immersed app.

Ron started laughing, his avatar’s animated facial expressions mimicking his real face thanks to his device’s eye and facial tracking technology.

A project manager at Microsoft, Ron tells me it’s something I’ll get used to. He’s been working in the metaverse for over a year.

Days later, I meet Heather, a mother who’s been working in virtual reality for a couple of months. She likes to jump into the metaverse to work when her kids are at school and the house is quiet.

Then there was Miguel, a recruiter at Netflix, an “OG” user of the virtual reality app Immersed, who’s been using it to work for the last two years.

The big question is: Why would you want to?

Only two hours in, my eyes are burning

As impressive as it all sounds, after working in the metaverse for a week myself, I’m not sure how anyone could do it for longer.

I spent most of the seven days clocking in and out through the virtual coworking app Immersed, which can be found on the Meta Quest store but can be downloaded from other platforms, too.

Most days, I would be joined by as many as a dozen other VR users, depending on the time of day and which public workspace I chose. (The “Cafe” setting seemed to be the most popular.) 

Zoom
You can even set up a virtual web camera so you can do Zoom-style meetings with your non-VR colleagues.

Initially, I was going to spend the week using Meta’s home-grown Horizon Workrooms, but I quickly switched to Immersed after realizing Horizon Workrooms didn’t support public workspaces and also lacked important quality-of-life features, such as the ability to move and adjust screen size and distance.

The setup wasn’t too difficult in either case. When you first strap on the Meta Quest 3 headset, the device will scan your surroundings to understand where you are within your room (in my case, the office) and where certain obstacles are, such as bookshelves, desks and chairs. This is so it can warn you if you’re getting too close to a wall or obstacle when you’re immersed in VR.

Real
Virtual screens can be positioned in your real working space, allowing one to be more present in the real world.

To be able to interact with your computer in virtual reality, there’s a companion app that needs to be installed on your PC, which will then allow the app to retrieve the necessary information from your computer and beam it into your headset via cable or WiFi in the same way most remote desktop apps work.

In Immersed, your virtual screens can be rotated, resized and moved anywhere you want. You can even choose to work in mixed reality, allowing you to superimpose virtual screens among your real-life surroundings.

But it wasn’t much help. At the end of each day, I was left nursing a splitting headache and trying to rub the immense strain from my eyes. My neck always felt stiff, a side effect of being weighed down by the bulky headset.

And for what? Most days, I struggled to achieve the same level of output compared to a regular day in front of the PC.

My experience is far from unique. In 2022, researcher Dr. Jens Grubert at the Coburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany gathered 18 people to participate in a study of the effects of working in VR for a week.

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Two dropped out within the first few hours due to nausea, anxiety and migraines, while the others who managed to finish the week reported increased levels of frustration and anxiety.

They also reported a significant decrease in their own perceived productivity compared to working in the real world. All suffered eye strain, though this seemed to diminish as time went on.

Cook
How it looks to you while you are learning to cook in the mixed-reality metaverse.

In April, research firm Forrester found that, while there’s a lot of hype around the possibilities of working in VR, there’s not a lot of it happening in reality… virtual or otherwise.

Forrester’s research found that only 2% of respondents said they preferred to use a mixed-reality device for work. The hardware is still too cumbersome to use for a long stretch of time, according to J.P. Gownder, principal analyst of Forrester’s Future of Work team.

Cooking
How you look when preparing dinner in mixed reality.

OK, some bits are impressive

But despite all the annoyances, eye strain and headaches, there were also a few times I was genuinely impressed with the experience.

Working in a virtual environment next to other like-minded people turned my regular remote, isolated working existence into something that was far less lonely.

In the week I spent in VR, I sat and worked alongside a digital marketer from Canada, a software developer from the United States and a salesman for a firm offering e-commerce solutions. We chatted about sports, what we each did for work. It felt like real networking.

screens
Hanging out with additional screens.

“The biggest benefit is the ability to interact with people all over the world very effortlessly. I work from home with no one around,” explains Pat, the digital marketer.

“With VR, you can choose whether you want to be chatting with others, or you can either mark yourself as ‘Do Not Disturb’ or grab a private room.”

Ron from Microsoft also tells me he often prefers working out of VR and takes his headset everywhere, including his home office, a client’s office, or on occasions he needs to report to the tech firm’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington.

And he points out that virtual reality is not constrained by carry-on weight or size limits, and the headset essentially allows him to take five monitors with him anywhere he goes.

Conducting meetings can also be a game-changer in virtual reality. 

There’s something very oddly natural about being able to shake hands with someone more than 10,000 miles away, even if they lack a physical form. It’s something that a Zoom meeting could never replicate.

Coworker
Having a chat with a co-worker is a benefit.

Other times, I simply admired how focused my virtual reality co-workers were, prompting me to do the same.

There was also the freedom of being able to switch my “office” environment — from a space station orbiting Earth to a cozy chalet on a snow-capped mountain, a fireplace quietly crackling in the corner.

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Maybe Zuckerberg was right?

Metaverse skeptics raised their eyebrows when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted his lofty vision for the metaverse at the 2021 Connect event.

“We’ll be able to feel present like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are,” said Zuckerberg.
Many then laughed as the tech magnate sunk tens of billions into research and development for his loss-making Reality Labs division — seemingly only to produce legless, blank-eyed monstrosities via Meta’s Horizon Worlds.

Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg launches Horizon Worlds with an “eye-gougingly ugly VR selfie.” (Facebook)

But that laughter is quietening. In September, Zuckerberg showed that the technology is far further forward than we thought.

During a face-to-face conversation with computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman, Zuckerberg showed off the latest version of Codec Avatars, one of Meta’s longest-running research projects aimed at generating photorealistic metaverse avatars.

The tech was met with awe from onlookers, including Fridman himself.

“I’m already forgetting that you’re not real.”
However, the tech requires specialized equipment and is at least three years away from being available to everyday consumers. Zuckerberg said he hopes the scanning process could eventually be done with smartphones.

Meta’s latest version of VR uses a self-contained, standalone headset that displays a stereoscopic image via LCD screens through “pancake” lenses, offering a wider field of view than its predecessors while being lighter and thinner. Motion and hand tracking are achieved through a mix of accelerometers, gyroscopes and four outward-facing cameras, while another two cameras are used to display colored “passthrough” – useful when engaging in mixed reality experiences.

Meanwhile, there’s considerable anticipation over Apple’s Vision Pro, which is set to launch in the first quarter of 2024. While it comes with eye-tracking, 4K resolution and Apple EyeSight, which may also impact the future of work, it also comes with an eye-watering $3,499 price tag.

Apple says the “spatial computing” device will allow users to “set up the perfect workspace.”

Vision pro
Apple Vision Pro has an eye-wateringly high price. (Apple)

So, is VR work ready for primetime?

As I reflect on my week in virtual reality, I’m enjoying a coffee in a very real, definitely not virtual coffee shop in Sydney’s Western suburbs.

Occasionally, I miss my VR work friends and the serenity of my cozy virtual chalet.

But until the tech gets smaller, lighter and less clunky, I’ll probably stick to Slack huddles and my trusty PC on its wooden desk.

Felix Ng

Felix Ng

Felix Ng first began writing about the blockchain industry through the lens of a gambling industry journalist and editor in 2015. He has since moved into covering the blockchain space full-time. He is most interested in innovative blockchain technology aimed at solving real-world challenges.

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

Read more:
Yet another fiscal ‘black hole’? Here’s why this one matters

Success or failure: One year of Keir in nine charts

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Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

More on Rachel Reeves

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

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Why was the chancellor crying at PMQs?

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

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Reeves is ‘totally’ up for the job

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

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OKX CEO apologizes after ‘false positives’ lock users out of accounts

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OKX CEO apologizes after ‘false positives’ lock users out of accounts

The CEO of OKX says that “false positives” are among the biggest challenges the crypto exchange faces in ensuring global compliance.

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One year of Starmer: Nine charts that tell us whether Labour’s first year has been a success or failure

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One year of Starmer: Nine charts that tell us whether Labour's first year has been a success or failure

It might feel like it’s been even longer for the prime minister at the moment, but it’s been a whole year since Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a historic landslide, emphatically defeating Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives and securing a 174-seat majority.

Over that time, Sir Keir and his party have regularly reset or restated their list of milestones, missions, targets and pledges – things they say they will achieve while in power (so long as they can get all their policies past their own MPs).

We’ve had a look at the ones they have repeated most consistently, and how they are going so far.

Overall, it amounts to what appears to be some success on economic metrics, but limited progress at best towards many of their key policy objectives.

From healthcare to housebuilding, from crime to clean power, and from small boats to squeezed budgets, here are nine charts that show the country’s performance before and after Labour came to power, and how close the government are to achieving their goals.

Keir Starmer leaves 10 Downing Street.
Pic Reuters
Image:
Sir Keir Starmer has been in office for a year. Pic Reuters

Cost of living

On paper, the target that Labour have set themselves on improving living standards is by quite a distance the easiest to achieve of anything they have spoken about.

They have not set a specific number to aim for, and every previous parliament on record has overseen an increase in real terms disposable income.

The closest it got to not happening was the last parliament, though. From December 2019 to June 2024, disposable income per quarter rose by just £24, thanks in part to the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

By way of comparison, there was a rise of almost £600 per quarter during the five years following Thatcher’s final election victory in 1987, and over £500 between Blair’s 1997 victory and his 2001 re-election.

After the first six months of the latest government, it had risen by £144, the fastest start of any government going back to at least 1954. As of March, it had fallen to £81, but that still leaves them second at this stage, behind only Thatcher’s third term.

VERDICT: Going well, but should have been more ambitious with their target

Get inflation back to 2%

So, we have got more money to play with. But it might not always feel like that, as average prices are still rising at a historically high rate.

Inflation fell consistently during the last year and a half of Rishi Sunak’s premiership, dropping from a peak of 11.1% in October 2022 to exactly 2% – the Bank of England target – in June 2024.

It continued to fall in Labour’s first couple of months, but has steadily climbed back up since then and reached 3.4% in May.

When we include housing costs as well, prices are up by 4% in the last year. Average wages are currently rising by just over 5%, so that explains the overall improvement in living standards that we mentioned earlier.

But there are signs that the labour market is beginning to slow following the introduction of higher national insurance rates for employers in April.

If inflation remains high and wages begin to stagnate, we will see a quick reversal to the good start the government have made on disposable income.

VERDICT: Something to keep an eye on – there could be a bigger price to pay in years to come

‘Smash the gangs’

One of Starmer’s most memorable promises during the election campaign was that he would “smash the gangs”, and drastically reduce the number of people crossing the Channel to illegally enter the country.

More than 40,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats in the 12 months since Labour came to power, a rise of over 12,000 (40%) compared with the previous year.

Labour have said that better weather in the first half of this year has contributed to more favourable conditions for smugglers, but our research shows crossings have also risen on days when the weather is not so good.

VERDICT: As it stands, it looks like “the gangs” are smashing the government

Reduce NHS waits

One of Labour’s more ambitious targets, and one in which they will be relying on big improvements in years to come to achieve.

Starmer says that no more than 8% of people will wait longer than 18 weeks for NHS treatment by the time of the next election.

When they took over, it was more than five times higher than that. And it still is now, falling very slightly from 41.1% to 40.3% over the 10 months that we have data for.

So not much movement yet. Independent modelling by the Health Foundation suggests that reaching the target is “still feasible”, though they say it will demand “focus, resource, productivity improvements and a bit of luck”.

VERDICT: Early days, but current treatment isn’t curing the ailment fast enough

Halve violent crime

It’s a similar story with policing. Labour aim to achieve their goal of halving serious violent crime within 10 years by recruiting an extra 13,000 officers, PCSOs and special constables.

Recruitment is still very much ongoing, but workforce numbers have only been published up until the end of September, so we can’t tell what progress has been made on that as yet.

We do have numbers, however, on the number of violent crimes recorded by the police in the first six months of Labour’s premiership. There were a total of 1.1m, down by 14,665 on the same period last year, a decrease of just over 1%.

That’s not nearly enough to reach a halving within the decade, but Labour will hope that the reduction will accelerate once their new officers are in place.

VERDICT: Not time for flashing lights just yet, but progress is more “foot patrol” than “high-speed chase” so far

Build 1.5m new homes

One of Labour’s most ambitious policies was the pledge that they would build a total of 1.5m new homes in England during this parliament.

There has not yet been any new official data published on new houses since Labour came to power, but we can use alternative figures to give us a sense of how it’s going so far.

A new Energy Performance Certificate is granted each time a new home is built – so tends to closely match the official house-building figures – and we have data up to March for those.

Those numbers suggest that there have actually been fewer new properties added recently than in any year since 2015-16.

Labour still have four years to deliver on this pledge, but each year they are behind means they need to up the rate more in future years.

If the 200,000 new EPCs in the year to March 2025 matches the number of new homes they have delivered in their first year, Labour will need to add an average of 325,000 per year for the rest of their time in power to achieve their goal.

VERDICT: Struggling to lay solid foundations

Clean power by 2030

Another of the more ambitious pledges, Labour’s aim is for the UK to produce 95% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

They started strong. The ban on new onshore wind turbines was lifted within their first few days of government, and they delivered support for 131 new renewable energy projects in the most recent funding round in September.

But – understandably – it takes time for those new wind farms, solar farms and tidal plants to be built and start contributing to the grid.

In the year leading up to Starmer’s election as leader, 54% of the energy on the UK grid had been produced by renewable sources in the UK.

That has risen very slightly in the year since then, to 55%, with a rise in solar and biomass offsetting a slight fall in wind generation.

The start of this year has been unusually lacking in wind, and this analysis does not take variations in weather into account. The government target will adjust for that, but they are yet to define exactly how.

VERDICT: Not all up in smoke, but consistent effort is required before it’s all sunshine and windmills

Fastest economic growth in the G7

Labour’s plan to pay for the improvements they want to make in all the public services we have talked about above can be summarised in one word: “growth”.

The aim is for the UK’s GDP – the financial value of all the goods and services produced in the country – to grow faster than any other in the G7 group of advanced economies.

Since Labour have been in power, the economy has grown faster than European rivals Italy, France and Germany, as well as Japan, but has lagged behind the US and Canada.

The UK did grow fastest in the most recent quarter we have data for, however, from the start of the year to the end of March.

VERDICT: Good to be ahead of other similar European economies, but still a way to go to overtake the North Americans

No tax rises

Without economic growth, it will be difficult to keep to one of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ biggest promises – that there will be no more tax rises or borrowing for the duration of her government’s term.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said last month that she is a “gnat’s whisker” away from being forced to do that at the autumn budget, looking at the state of the economy at the moment.

That whisker will have been shaved even closer by the cost implications of the government’s failure to get its full welfare reform bill through parliament earlier this week.

And income tax thresholds are currently frozen until April 2028, meaning there is already a “stealth” hike scheduled for all of us every year.

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One year of Keir: A review of Starmer’s first 12 months in office

But the news from the last financial year was slightly better than expected. Total tax receipts for the year ending March 2025 were 35% of GDP.

That’s lower than the previous four years, and what was projected after Jeremy Hunt’s final Conservative budget, but higher than any of the 50 years before that.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) still projects it to rise in future years though, to a higher level than the post-WWII peak of 37.2%.

The OBR – a non-departmental public body that provides independent analysis of the public finances – has also said in the past few days that it is re-examining its methodology, because it has been too optimistic with its forecasts in the past.

If the OBR’s review leads to a more negative view of where the economy is going, Rachel Reeves could be forced to break her promise to keep the budget deficit from spiralling out of control.

VERDICT: It’s going to be difficult for the Chancellor to keep to her promise

OVERALL VERDICT: Investment and attention towards things like violent crime, the NHS and clean energy are yet to start bearing fruit, with only minuscule shifts in the right direction for each, but the government is confident that what’s happened so far is part of its plans.

Labour always said that the house-building target would be achieved with a big surge towards the back end of their term, but they won’t be encouraged by the numbers actually dropping in their first few months.

Where they are failing most dramatically, however, appears to be in reducing the number of migrants making the dangerous Channel crossing on small boats.

The economic news, particularly that rise in disposable income, looks more healthy at the moment. But with inflation still high and growth lagging behind some of our G7 rivals, that could soon start to turn.


The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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