Zoom launches Immersive View to unify participants in the same virtual room

Zoom has officially launched a new immersive video feature designed to help businesses create more engaging and collaborative virtual meetings.

While a growing number of fledgling startups have adopted remote-first mindsets from the get-go, the transition for larger enterprises is fraught with challenges, given that they may have hundreds of thousands of workers spread across multiple regions and time zones. Despite these hurdles, major businesses — including Salesforce, Microsoft, Shopify, VMware, Dropbox, and Fujitsu — have already confirmed a permanent shift to a remote-first or hybrid working policy. But better and more adaptable virtual collaboration tools will prove vital to the long-term success of these programs — Zoom fatigue is real, after all.

Zoom first announced its new Immersive View (then called Immersive Scenes) feature at its annual Zoomtopia event back in October, positioning the technology against Microsoft Teams’ Together Mode, which had launched a few months before. In a nutshell, video call hosts can use Immersive View to arrange participants — anyone from employees to panelists — in a single virtual environment. This deviates from the established norm of displaying participants in a grid-like format with each individual’s personal background showing.

Above: Zoom: Immersive View for webinar panelist

Immersive View supports up to 25 participants, and they can be placed in any number of environments, including a boardroom, auditorium, or a classroom, depending on the event. Hosts can manually move people around on the screen or let Zoom do it automatically.

Immersive View is available now in Zoom’s desktop client (version 5.6.3 or higher) for Windows and MacOS and is activated by default for all free and individual Pro accounts.