Here comes Google Beam, a sleek evolution of its Project Starline, freshly commercialized with HP, promising to turn video chat into something much more lifelike, immersive, and maybe even… enjoyable?
Beam swaps out the flat rectangle for a 3D “magic window.” A six-camera array and real-time AI stitching build a volumetric model of your conversational partner, life-sized, head-tracked, and eerily realistic. It captures expressions, gestures, even subtle shifts in posture with 60fps fidelity. No glasses required. Just you and a holographic you, chatting in uncanny real time.
It’s tempting to call this the “Zoom killer,” but that misses the point. Beam isn’t competing with video chat. It’s replacing the metaphor entirely. Like the shift from physical mail to email, or email to Slack, or Slack to agents, Beam is asking: what if face-to-face didn’t need a face?
Historically, video conferencing has always made tradeoffs: visual fidelity for bandwidth, presence for practicality. Cisco tried immersive “telepresence rooms” in the 2000s, but they required custom-built conference spaces and enterprise budgets. Google’s approach is different, it’s analog in feel, digital in execution. You see the person, not an avatar. The system handles all the illusion.
And that illusion matters. Bad eye contact and stilted gestures aren’t just minor UX bugs. They create cognitive drag. Researchers have linked these gaps to Zoom fatigue, decreased trust, and higher rates of miscommunication. Beam’s pitch is that better embodiment equals better communication. If you’re going to spend four hours in meetings, why not at least feel like you’re in the room?
There’s still a long road from demo to default. Beam requires a sophisticated capture and display setup, and pricing hasn’t been announced. But the HP partnership suggests a push toward enterprise adoption, conference rooms, healthcare consults, perhaps high-end education. And Zoom’s involvement at InfoComm hints at an integration layer that could accelerate adoption.
One lingering question: how will this change the etiquette of presence? If a Beam window creates the illusion that you’re across the table, will multitasking feel more rude? Will people expect a full-body performance, not just a talking head? As with any new interface, norms will evolve, but not without friction.
First, AI transformed voice. Then it transformed writing. Now it’s changing the very shape of visual communication. If Beam delivers on its promise, the rectangle might finally disappear, not with a bang, but with a blink.
What happens when video starts feeling like reality?
