Microsoft Teams Enters Metaverse Race with 3D Avatars

Microsoft on Wednesday announced its participation in the race to build a metaverse inside Teams, just days after Facebook rebranded to Meta in a push to build virtual spaces for both consumers and businesses, reports media.

The tech giant is all set to bring Mesh, a collaborative platform for virtual experiences, directly into Microsoft Teams next year.

With Mesh, Microsoft Teams will get new 3D avatars in a push toward a metaverse environment, and there will be no need to put a VR headset on to use them, the company said in an announcement on its website.

The new initiative comes to make meetings more interactive, after months of people working from home and adjusting to hybrid work.

These avatars can literally represent you both in 2D and 3D meetings, so you can choose to have an animated version of yourself if a participant is not feeling like turning your webcam on.

“It’s not binary, so I can choose how I want to show up, whether it’s video or an avatar, and there’s a variety of customized options to choose how you want to be present in a meeting,” says Katie Kelly, principal product manager for Microsoft Mesh.

Microsoft will use AI to listen to your voice and then animate the avatar.

These virtual environments will obviously work best with a VR or AR headset, but they’ll be open to anyone across multiple devices thanks to the animated avatar work.

Microsoft is even building in translation and transcription support, so you might be able to meet in a virtual Teams space with a co-worker from across the world with fewer language barriers.

“The goal is that by the first half of next year, you’ll be able to go into an immersive space and then be able to collaborate and use Microsoft’s tools,” says Kelly.

Businesses will be able to build their own virtual spaces, or metaverses, inside Teams. That’s something that Accenture has been experimenting with after creating its own virtual campus for employees before the pandemic.

This virtual space soon became useful, as the company has used it to onboard new hires during the pandemic.

Microsoft’s push for a metaverse inside Teams comes just days after Facebook rebranded to Meta as its company name. Meta is working on very similar concepts to Microsoft, led by the idea of a digital avatar that represents you in virtual spaces.

Microsoft and Meta will clearly compete heavily in the metaverse era. It’s an area Microsoft has spent years investing in.

Meta has billions of daily users across Facebook and Instagram and Microsoft has the millions of daily Teams users.  The metaverse battle for your digital avatars is only just beginning.