AltspaceVR

Back in the very early days of VR, I remember finding a bunch of people on Gamefaqs who ALSO had VR and convincing them all to download this program so we could all meet up and talk. (All what.. 5 of us? I forget). It didn't have much going for it back then, but it was one of the few places you could meet up in VR before you went off to play whatever game. (VR Chat wasn't a thing yet, and I hadn't yet found Rec Room) but I felt like it had some promise. Probably the worst thing about it was the lazy avatars. It looked like someone just dragged a shape tool from a modeling program around a few times and then clicked "done". Everyone had an awkward look about their avatars...almost cartoony. Did they ever fix this? I don't know. They DID attempt some high profile meet-ups though, so they had that going for them. I remember being excited to spend some time with Justin Roiland in VR (This was before all the allegations made him into the newest pariah). It was him and Reggie Watts (who I wasn't really familiar with at all) and it had all the charm of a couple of guys on stage in a small venue while some hall-monitor type woman tried to chaperone everyone to keep them from doing anything funny. Of course they tried to kill it once before and I think that's when Microsoft stepped in and took over... But by that time really everyone else passed them up. Rec Room had the games, VRChat had games, better avatars, better... well everything pretty much. And it didn't look like it was painted by 7th Graders. I only spent 5 hours in AltSpace but at the time it was still pretty magical since VR was still new. If they had only spent more time upgrading the look and feel of the place, they could have been a contender... but ultimately without some big name draw (like the Roiland/Watts meetup) there wasn't much of a reason to show up. BUT despite all of that I still think I have some fond memories of the place, and I plan on visiting it before it's killed off for good this time. If you haven't tried it, you're not really missing out on that much, but I still feel like it's a piece of VR history. Maybe someone will find a way to replicate it in a Room on VRChat or something? Press F to Pay respects:

I've been in this since the beginning, and it asks me to review it again. Just say no to marketing. Microsoft should open source it, as they did with the MRTK, just saying.

What people never understood was AltspaceVR is a social game, it's not about looking into a mirror, ERPing, it's about socializing. This was my first experience in VR on the Oculus Quest 1 Standalone. IfI had to do it again I would have stayed on here longer because the people here were constantly better then the average VRChat player that either ERP's, grooms kids, or stares at a mirror appreciating a digital avatar.

This was like the professional version of VRChat. I went to an academic talk, Joha VR, back in 2021 and met Kent Bye. Walked up to the stage and spoke with him for an hour. That was the experience that made me learn how much VR could be and add that was missing from other digital communication. It's a shame it didn't last, the XR space has consolidated so much and a lot of the possibility space is just gone.

Unfortunate that it is shutting down, it seemed to have a solid foundation for community made content, similar to rec room, though unlike rec room, it lacked things like original pve/pvp games/quests/cash shop/player market/subscription services/support for other platforms that might've helped to diversify its content to appeal to a wider range of users and help keep it running. As far as I could tell, this was purely a VR socialising app. Marketing of paid community created content had to be done mostly outside of the game? If they had adopted a subscription service where it allowed you to display and sell your creations within an in-game store, it might've been a more financially self-sufficient project, but I don't know anything about anything, who knows what microsoft will do with it (I hadn't realised they owned it!), they might integrate parts of it into something new, or butcher and sell off pieces, who knows?! Microsoft does weird things.

С марта 2023 года (что весьма недавно) "AltspaceVR больше не доступна в магазине Steam."