Zoom rolls out Immersive View to deliver in-person meetings-like experience

Zoom has introduced a new feature called ‘Immersive View’. It is essentially a new video background feature that aims to mimic in-person meetings. The feature is now available to all users, including free and Pro. It works with meetings and webinars with up to 25 participants.

Zoom had first unveiled the Immersive View at its Zoomtopia conference in October last year. The demo then showcased the use case for a classroom or courtroom like the layout. The interface is identical to the Together Mode in Microsoft Teams.

The Immersive View aims to give a life-like background. Meeting hosts can enable the Immersive View through the menu. It is worth noting that Zoom already has Speaker View and Gallery View modes. Once you turn on the Immersive View, Zoom automatically places attendees in different virtual scenes such as an auditorium or board room. Meeting hosts can manually place the participants as well.

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The Verge points out that the new layout comes with a few limitations. For instance, calls that have more than 25 participants, remaining attendees will appear in a strip of video thumbnails at the top. There is also a difference in what you will see and others with not running the latest iteration of the video conferencing platform. According to the report, the background switches to an older setting before the Immersive View is turned on. The report also pointed out that the recordings of Immersive View meetings will appear in Zoom’s default Speaker or Gallery View.

“When Immersive View is enabled, those on Zoom desktop and mobile apps that do not support Immersive View will continue to see other meeting participants in either Gallery View or Speaker View, just with a simple black background. Others in the meeting will still view these unsupported participants in the Immersive View scene with their original backgrounds,” says Zoom in the FAQ section.

The Immersive View is not available in Breakout Rooms.