Microsoft Mesh overview

Article
04/10/2024

Introducing Microsoft Mesh

We're reimagining the way employees come together with Microsoft Mesh, powering several immersive experiences across the devices you use every day.

Microsoft Mesh enables your distributed workforce to connect in 3D immersive experiences using Microsoft Teams, a PC, or a Meta headset, helping you feel that virtual meetings and events are more like face-to-face connections.

Why immersive?

Immersive experiences have unique attributes, including spatial interaction, co-presence, and immersion, that create a perception of being physically together in a 3D digital space. Digital engagement is evolving from audio to video and now to spatial interaction.

Spatial awareness through directionality and distance enables multiple small group discussions in the same place, adding familiar human elements to digital connections. Spending time with others in the same 3D environment also creates a powerful sense of togetherness, or co-presence, even when you're not actively speaking.

Co-presence can lead to spontaneous moments of conversation or even just the deepened connection of a shared experience. Mesh allows you to focus on what matters: people, conversations, and a unique shared space.

Immersive spaces in Teams or custom immersive experiences?

Immersive spaces in Teams	Custom immersive experiences in Mesh
For small meetings, up-to 16 people can quickly join an immersive space directly in a Teams meeting. Host casual team bonding get-togethers, weekly scrums or standups with your team, or brainstorming sessions with breakout groups.	For medium-to-large events, up-to 200 people can join from the Mesh application after Mesh is set up for your organization. Host large immersive employee experiences such as all-hands, town halls, and new-hire onboarding with Mesh
Key benefits: Lower effort to set up for and have users get familiar with immersive experiences. Integrated into Microsoft Teams – a tool you use every day – bringing co-presence to hybrid or remote teams. Provides Icebreakers and activities, ready for you to enjoy and share with your teams.	Key benefits: Create custom experiences using the Mesh toolkit, leveraging physics, scripting, and web content. Interact with engaging and dynamic environments synchronized across all attendees simultaneously. Customize and create events that tell stories by adding objects that can be used in your events.

Immersive spaces in Microsoft Teams

GIF of selecting view then immersive space in teams

Use immersive spaces in Teams for small meetings of up to 16 coworkers. Hop into stunning pre-made virtual environments, offering icebreakers and activities with two clicks of a button, right from a Teams meeting.

Getting started is easy! From the View menu in a Teams meeting, select the Immersive space (3D) option. With just few a clicks, transform your two-dimensional (2D) meeting into a 3D immersive experience.

What can you do in immersive spaces in Teams?

Connect with colleagues in new ways right from your pre-existing Teams meeting. Experience the benefits of spatial audio and 3D interaction.
Play as a team with ready-to-use icebreakers and activities like prompt bubbles, marshmallow roasting, and bean bag toss.
Join right from Microsoft Teams— a tool you use every day—bringing co-presence to hybrid or remote teams.

Custom immersive experiences in Mesh

Use Microsoft Mesh for medium-to-large events with up to 200 people. Create custom experiences that are tailored to your specific business needs, such as employee events, training, guided tours, or internal product showcases.

Deliver dazzling immersive experiences that can be experienced across on PC or Meta headsets. You can start with ready-to-use environments or develop your own custom environments using Unity and the Mesh toolkit. You can then use no-code customization to enhance your events with images, videos, or screen shares.

What can you do in custom immersive experiences?

Create and customize events that tell stories by adding objects that can be used in your events with no-code in-experience tools like screen shares, images, and videos.
Use Mesh on the web to create or manage events, create event templates to be reused in the future, and manage all your uploaded environments. See how collections are used to manage your uploaded environments.
Integrate with M365 using a secure immersive app that's performant and highly customizable.

Develop custom immersive experiences in Mesh

Import 3D models that will be used in an interactable and navigable environment.
Rapidly create compelling 3D experiences using Unity and the Mesh toolkit. Start fast with out-of-the-box capabilities like physics, scripting, and web content sharing and create custom immersive experiences that are tailored to your unique needs.

Mesh does the heavy lifting to enable multi-user engagement in 3D environments, managing the customizable avatar system, Spatial Audio, and multi-user synchronization, and provides orchestration tools for delivering dynamic meetings and events. This frees you to enrich your business solutions and experiences with engaging environments, interactive content, and business data—all with functionality enabled through the Mesh toolkit.
Add complex logic to scenes and integrate live backend data from business or public sources with cloud scripting, harnessing the power and reliability of the .NET infrastructure.