I started working fully remote two and half years ago. Company has a couple of meeting rooms fully set up with Zoom, which I and a few other remote people used to connect to with my laptop for standups together with the in-office people. That's not the case everywhere but quite classic.
The company also had a dedicated TV+camera+24/7 Zoom meeting setup in the open space itself, so that remote people could connect to and say hi anytime. It was surprisingly nice.
Then one day on a whim I got a wide-ish USB webcam plugged into my Xbox One†.
The difference in perception is insane: instead of having this wall of people faces, like you're on several phone calls at once, I got a portalesque window between the office and my place. Instead of connecting people, it connected places††. But it only works if both sides are sharing a space instead of a selfie angle, and I think the way sound was picked up by a fixed element in the room played a lot as well.
So I'm a bit partial about this Starline thing, as it seems to be a step forward in "definition" but also feels like a blown up selfie angle.
† There's no Zoom app on Xbox (which is really a shame) so I used Edge, for which Zoom on the web is more limited and barks on webaudio (which works! Zoom just support only Chrome so I had to dial in on a phone). Also, Xbox+Kinect truly had the potential to be something amazing beyond games. I believe the marketing was botched alright but it was also way too early for the audience.
†† Which ends up connecting people on a deeper level. At some point I caught myself intuitively wanting to hand over physical objects through the TV.
I started working fully remote two and half years ago. Company has a couple of meeting rooms fully set up with Zoom, which I and a few other remote people used to connect to with my laptop for standups together with the in-office people. That's not the case everywhere but quite classic.
The company also had a dedicated TV+camera+24/7 Zoom meeting setup in the open space itself, so that remote people could connect to and say hi anytime. It was surprisingly nice.
Then one day on a whim I got a wide-ish USB webcam plugged into my Xbox One†.
The difference in perception is insane: instead of having this wall of people faces, like you're on several phone calls at once, I got a portalesque window between the office and my place. Instead of connecting people, it connected places††. But it only works if both sides are sharing a space instead of a selfie angle, and I think the way sound was picked up by a fixed element in the room played a lot as well.
So I'm a bit partial about this Starline thing, as it seems to be a step forward in "definition" but also feels like a blown up selfie angle.
† There's no Zoom app on Xbox (which is really a shame) so I used Edge, for which Zoom on the web is more limited and barks on webaudio (which works! Zoom just support only Chrome so I had to dial in on a phone). Also, Xbox+Kinect truly had the potential to be something amazing beyond games. I believe the marketing was botched alright but it was also way too early for the audience.
†† Which ends up connecting people on a deeper level. At some point I caught myself intuitively wanting to hand over physical objects through the TV.