  During the Covid-19 pandemic, online meetings became common for daily
teamwork in the home office. To understand the opportunities and challenges of
meeting in virtual reality (VR) compared to video conferences, we conducted the
weekly team meetings of our human-computer interaction research lab on five
off-the-shelf online meeting platforms over four months. After each of the 12
meetings, we asked the participants (N = 32) to share their experiences,
resulting in 200 completed online questionnaires. We evaluated the ratings of
the overall meeting experience and conducted an exploratory factor analysis of
the quantitative data to compare VR meetings and video calls in terms of
meeting involvement and co-presence. In addition, a thematic analysis of the
qualitative data revealed genuine insights covering five themes: spatial
aspects, meeting atmosphere, expression of emotions, meeting productivity, and
user needs. We reflect on our findings gained under authentic working
conditions, derive lessons learned for running successful team meetings in VR
supporting different kinds of meeting formats, and discuss the team's long-term
platform choice.
