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Tired of zooming into work via webcam and staring at colleagues’ faces? This mixed-reality application for Microsoft’s Teams collaboration platform is a step toward the metaverse promised land, at least for desk-bound knowledge workers. Strap on a HoloLens 2 headset and pop into a meeting as an avatar that sounds and (sort of) looks like you. Mesh for Teams—part of Microsoft’s broader metaverse platform still under development—also includes pre-built meeting spaces and is accessible from smartphones and laptops as well. A goal, says Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft Collaborative Apps and Platforms, is to make online meetings “more personal, engaging, and fun.” People can go “beyond the current binary choice of video or no video.”
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