Zoom today announced a new feature rolling out to the video conferencing service called Immersive View that places meeting participants or webinar panelists inside virtual backgrounds. The firm says that the feature aims to make meetings “more engaging” and places users in virtual “scenes” to “connect and collaborate in a cohesive virtual meeting space”. The feature undoubtedly rivals the likes of Microsoft Teams’ Together Mode, which has been around for a while now.
Currently, Immersive View accommodates up to 25 participants and allows hosts to choose from preset backgrounds, upload their own virtual background as a scene, or choose their video feed as the background. The feature also lets hosts manually place participants, move them around, and resize them in the scenes. Furthermore, it allows for switching into the gallery or speaker views and back during the meeting. As for webinars, Immersive View can be used for the hosts and panelists that can be viewed by attendees.
The firm first unveiled Immersive View during its Zoomtopia conference last year. The feature is now rolling out to Free and single Pro users running version 5.6.3 or newer on Windows and macOS clients, and on the web for all other account types. The new capability is enabled by default for Free and single Pro accounts.
The feature is currently not supported in Breakout Rooms and will also not show up on meeting recordings. Additionally, there is no word on support for Immersive View for the mobile versions of Zoom. You can head to the dedicated support article here for more details about the feature.
With virtual meetings becoming the norm in the past year, video conferencing solutions have constantly been adding features and bringing in enhancements to suit the various needs of users. The addition of virtual scenes for meetings further improves the user experience for Zoom users, including those on the web.