It was a delight to see that Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel appeared to Meta Quest during the Christmas break. Of course I needed to try it out a bit – here are my first impressions about Microsoft 365 Apps on Meta Quest Pro. These apps are available to 2 and 3 as well. You can find these apps at Meta Quest Store.
PowerPoint and Word were my obvious choices for testing this one out. First thing you notice, is that these are Office web apps. This means there isn’t an UI that would support 3D or gestures naturally. Your controllers and hands (if using without controllers) are just a replacement for mouse. It doesn’t make things any easier. What is good is that you can open several apps within the Meta Quest Browser, you can create various different docs on tabs – and you can mix and match Word, PowerPoint and Excel easily there. You also see your latest documents on home page, that opens automatically.
You can use dictation within Word and PowerPoint. And I do assume it also works in Excel, despite I didn’t test it. Word was the obvious choice for testing dictation with Meta Quest Pro and I have to say it works really well. Word’s dictation is a great tool, that understands on top of English a ton of other languages. Even Finnish is there – and it does work pretty nicely. So, it would be possible to create content using VR headset and Microsoft Office dictation.
I think the missing VR supporting UI is an issue here. It makes editing content even on PowerPoint very difficult, nearly impossible. With Word it is a bit better, but selecting text and doing something to it – it is slow and not very intuitive. Overall performance requirements seemed to be quite high, there was waiting times and delays when using Meta Quest Pro. Perhaps this has been improved on Quest 3.
What I would love to see, is a natural VR UI that would be intuitive to use. I can envision it would be fun and innovative to generate documents. Other thing that is missing (since it is not available for consumer accounts, at least not yet) is Microsoft Copilot for Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Using that with dictation / voice commands it will step up UI big time. I am sure it will come there, but first we will need to be able to log in with Microsoft 365 accounts..
Overall at this moment: These apps are just web versions of Microsoft Apps that don’t take advantage of 3D, VR or touch. You can view multiple documents at the same time – like you had a very large display (or multiple displays). And on top, no one else can eavesdrop what you are reading in VR. This adds to privacy and security in that way. In addition, there is something about 3D and what makes these apps special. So don’t stop reading just yet.
What is cool, is that you can spread out three of these apps side by side. You can then move that canvas with hand gestures or controller, of which the latter (controller) is much better on manipulating the content. Scrolling works on both ways. So on viewing this isn’t that bad at all. This way you can compare document content together.
I didn’t find a way to make that area larger, so the only way to enlarge content is to bring the area closer to you. That is easy if you are using controllers. I found myself moving these apps from sides to center, if I want to to focus on one and look it in better detail and see it clearly. On side slots documents tend to lose resolution and sharpness, but you can just lean towards them to make them look more clear.
Leaning towards the document (looking closer) is intuitive and natural in the UI. That way comparing information between docs is another thing that is not so easily achieved on desktop apps and with just a single display (such as laptop).
You can also view PowerPoints in presentation mode. Too bad you can do this only to one PowerPoint deck at a time. Here it is possible to notice something Microsoft developer for VR: you can view 3D presentations with this. And that is something what will be different than on 2D world. 3D content will make the use of headset a good idea. I didn’t try with 3D objects on slides, yet. But I will.
It is also possible to use 180 or 360 views for presentation. This means you can create presentations that support these experience modes. Normal presentations don’t work in 180/360 views, but it was expected. Adding a 360 picture on to presentation and experiencing it in a new way.. Another for using VR with Office.
I am glad to see Microsoft apps are coming to VR. This hopefully means that they are getting closer appearing to Microsoft Mesh as well – that is where these apps, even with these capabilities, would make much sense. Using 3D with 2D apps doesn’t make them more productive if you think working on docs like you work normally. Quite the opposite on productivity. But once we have a smooth dictation support for content and voice commands we can use to utilize menus, this will start to change.
And Copilot is there as well. It doesn’t work seamless at this point – there are delays and difficulties compared to normal web version of PowerPoint, for example. But the mic icon at Copilot is really handy – it can be used to talk with the document or create /edit content.
Using Copilot in Microsoft Word for content creation isn’t that easy.
Drafting content with Copilot doesn’t have mic support (like the Copilot on the side does) and if you activate Dictate it starts to write document content right away. But even with just support for Copilot on the side, this can be used to work with document. I look forward seeing Word, PowerPoint and Excel in Microsoft Mesh with this feature. Fingers crossed it is out sooner than later.
I do see that this is the way apps will evolve. Being able to talk with your content and see the results – work with multiple documents, and possibly combining information from all those: it will give room for innovation.
Pros:
Utilize the larger area of the virtual monitor
No one else can see your document contents
View 3D PowerPoint slides and presentations
Using your hand gestures to scroll documents and switch your focus between open document content. Especially if you don’t have a large or multiple displays.
Dictation makes producing text content possible
Cons:
No natural 3D / VR UI
Editing content isn’t that easy
Performance on Meta Quest Pro could be better – again something that could be addressed if apps were made to VR apps.
No co-op editing or viewing: you just view these alone
Not in Microsoft Mesh (where the previous issue would be fixed right away)
