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Marke'l Spellman
Marke'l Spellman

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Turning my Kitchen Table into an Office Suite using Virtual Reality

Across the entire workforce and across all of the world we are adjusting to new lifestyles. Before this year working from home was a rarity. We all expected to be in the office for almost a full week every week and could rely on our homes as an escape for relaxation from a long week of commuting to work, but the pandemic changed all this and its been a struggle to work in the few places that can be quiet and peaceful in a one bedroom apartment or a even house full of family. This was a problem for me in particular because I have a one bedroom apartment which has no space for an "office" so i'm working at my kitchen table.

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Working from home was becoming overbearing for me. My "office" felt cramped, but i was making the best of it. I bought an iPad and set that up as a second screen using sidecar as an initial solution and while this helped with productivity by increasing my screen space, it did nothing for the hustle and bustle going on in my house. I could still see my dog begging me for treats and attention, I could still see the TV just across the room on the wall, and I could still see my girlfriend walking back and forth to the kitchen, bathroom, front door etc... this was when I had a thought ... Could I use my Oculus Go to make this better?

That’s when I started down the VR road. I found an app that works for most all Oculus headsets. (Im sure others as well i've only tested oculus headsets thought) It also works with Mac, Windows, and Linux machines so I gave it a shot with my Oculus Go from over 2-3 years ago. I downloaded Immersed on both my Mac and Go and started it up, after a few minutes I was in a full on virtual environment with up to 4 HUGE virtual displays. Now not only did I have my additional monitors but I was also working in an environment of my choice completely away from all the distractions in my room.

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This is an example and not my actual workspace but all this is available in immersed

Now I have a huge office in the small space of just my desk. After working for about a week with the a Go I decided to purchase the new Quest 2 which has a hand tracking feature which the Immersed team has used to track your keyboard into your virtual environment! There are a ton of features that make quality of life while working better like: private rooms for screen sharing/white boarding/collaboration, virtual webcam so you can join zoom meetings with your Oculus characters, up to 4 additional VIRTUAL displays (without the need for physical displays), and they are continuously adding much more.

Here are some blog post from the immersed team!:

https://blog.immersed.team/working-in-vr-8-hrs-day-e8308b6791f0

https://uploadvr.com/immersed-real-keyboard-support/

Here is also a link to the Immersed website as well:
https://immersedvr.com/

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