Are videocalls outdated? A comparison with Virtual Reality meetings as a future perspective

The rise of remote collaboration tools is transforming team collaboration. Despite its current limitations, Virtual Reality (VR) technology has the potential to overcome the challenges of traditional video calls and enhance remote meetings in the future. This study compares the effectiveness of VR and video calls (MS Teams) on team collaboration. A total of N = 90 participants were performing a problem-solving task, and N = 127 were conducting a creative task in both conditions (VR and video call). Measures of meeting evaluation, engagement, performance, and fatigue were assessed. The results reveal that video call collaboration is superior to enhancing performance. In comparison, VR offers significant benefits regarding comfort, social interaction, and engagement, particularly with creativity tasks. However, at the current stage of technical development, using VR, regardless of the task, is exhausting and causes fatigue. This research highlights the potential of VR as an effective tool for remote collaboration, emphasizing the importance of selecting the right platform based on the specific needs of the collaborative context.