The pandemic has ushered in a new era of working from home with video calling and conferencing apps like Zoom leading the race. Since then, several new features have been rolled out to make the experience more natural and realistic. While using backgrounds helps users hide their messy homes and look stylish, Zoom wants to take it one step further with its new Immersive View feature.
Hosts in a video call can place participants in a straight line with a virtual background. This will make it feel like everyone is sitting together in the same room. Basically, everyone is using the same virtual background as the attendees lined up in a meeting room, classroom, or any virtual environment.
Let’s find out how Zoom’s new Immersive View feature works, the requirements, how it looks, and what else you can do with it.
Prerequisites for Zoom’s Immersive View
The new feature is only available in the Zoom app for Windows and macOS platform. Although there are special Zoom applications for smartphones, they do not support immersive view for now.
Desktop users should install or update the Zoom app to version 5.6.3 or later to enjoy the Immersive View feature.
Zoom has it enabled by default for all Free and Single Pro account users. Others will need to enable it manually. We will discover how later in the guide.
How to Enable Immersive View on Zoom
If you are a user:
Stage 1: Sign in to your Zoom account in the web app in your favorite browser.
Step 2: Select Settings in the left sidebar and click the Meetings tab.
Stage 3: Towards the end of the page you will find the Immersive View option. Open.
The steps to enable Immersive View in Zoom for group and account by admin will be slightly different.
How to Use Immersive View in Zoom
Stage 1: Launch Zoom’s desktop client and click the New Meeting icon to start a meeting.
Step 2: Click the View button in the upper right corner of the screen and select Immersive view.
Stage 3: In the popup that follows, you will view all the participants in a photo frame with different immersive looks to choose from below. Choose the one you like the most. Each view is indicated by the number of attendees it is designed to sit on. You can also choose to edit them Manually or Automatically. As you may have noticed, you cannot use the immersive view for more than 25 participants. This is the maximum seating capacity. We choose a fireside view that can accommodate 2 participants.
Step 4: After choosing a skin, you should see the scene load in the preview section above in a few moments. Click the + icon to select your scene, if available. Click the Start button when you’re ready to begin.
Step 5: After starting the meeting in Immersive View, you can access all the other normal features in Zoom from the bottom bar as usual.
Step 6: The host can move participants from one slot to another by simply dragging and dropping them.
Note that attendees who arrive late or if there are more attendees than the immersive viewing scene can accommodate in predefined locations/slots will be moved closer to the top of the screen. The host can move the video to one of the virtual seats by removing the sitting participant. A participant who arrives late or does not have a seat can move anywhere on the stage.
You can resize any participant’s video feed. Just select the video and drag it to one of the corners as you would any other application or window.
Immersive View is easy to finish. Click the View button again and choose another view such as Gallery or Speaker.
Extended view is automatically disabled when the host starts screen sharing. It will be replaced with the shared screen, and an immersive view will be provided again when the screen sharing ends.
Video Calls Can Be Fun
Zoom is quietly trying to recreate the office-like virtual meeting structure for everyone. Very soon, you’ll be able to enter a virtual meeting room from your home office and sit at a desk by wearing an Occulus headset. It would be so nice.
Zoom’s Immersive View feature adds an interesting way to interact with friends and peers. We look forward to seeing Zoom and third-party apps/sites offer new scenes. Maybe in a future update Zoom will also make it possible to change angles? That is, instead of sitting in a straight line, will the participants sit/stand in a circle or at different angles in different parts of the stage?
The future looks more distant and virtual for the world of technology and we are excited to follow this journey with our readers.
Next: Zoom isn’t the only video calling and conferencing app on the market. Here are 7 alternatives that will spice up your virtual meetings in new ways.
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