PatchWorld

Build, patch, play together

PatchWorld is a live creative sandbox for VR and desktop where you build musical instruments, interactive worlds, games, generative visuals and playful machines by connecting modular blocks directly in 3D. Make beats, play with sound and physics, explore, experiment, collaborate, and learn from each other.

Inspired by visual scripting languages like Max/MSP and TouchDesigner and by modular synthesis, PatchWorld brings patching off the flat screen and into a shared 3D space. Patching is programming made physical. You do it with your hands: grab blocks, connect them, see what happens, and keep building while everything is running. Patch anything to anything, and build entire universes, stories and games.

Easy to start playing, and deep enough to keep you tinkering and bringing your most impossible ideas to life.

Show up and play

You don't have to build anything on your first day. Jump into a world someone else made, play a game another patcher built, drive a strange machine, take an instrument apart to see how it works, or drop into a jam room and start making noise. Nobody minds a beginner turning up in a live session, unless you are stepping into an actual school classroom.

There is something on every week: jams, workshops, build-alongs, Share & Tell sessions, listening parties and live performances, hosted by the PatchWorld team and by patchers themselves. That is where you meet people like Pearl, Todd or Leo, who builds rideable trains, remote-controlled UFOs and funny weapons that shouldn't work but do.

When you do want to make something, you never start from an empty room. Ready-made studios (electronic music, techno, drum and bass, reggae and more), game templates (puzzle, race, shooter), devices and whole worlds are there to open, use and rebuild. You can make something that sounds good even if you have never played music, and get a game running before you understand any of the system underneath it.

Build worlds, machines and games

Build anything from strange little toys and machines to whole interactive environments and narrative experiences. Robots, remote-controlled vehicles, kinetic sculptures, smoke machines, landscape tools, working phones and computers, visual instruments and controllers.

PatchWorld is a spatial visual programming environment, and it is one language all the way down. The same patch that handles conditions, timers and states also handles synthesis and signal processing. Use math, variables, routing, timers, states and loops to build mechanics, puzzles, arcade games, physical challenges and procedural systems.

The player is part of the patch too. Control movement, scale and locomotion, react to heads, hands and bodies, and attach behaviours to objects and avatars. Import VRM avatars and build reactive costumes. An avatar can be patched like anything else.

Make music, build instruments, perform live

PatchWorld has deep roots in music, and it is still the most developed part of the platform. Underneath it is PatchWorld's own audio engine, built over almost a decade for real-time synthesis, sampling, effects and spatial audio at low latency.

Jump into a studio or a jam room and pick up synths, drum machines, samplers, sequencers and effects. Then go as deep as you want. Build your own instruments and sound systems from modular blocks, design synths, effects and custom controllers, and invent entirely new ways of playing.

Then patch sound into everything else. Your sound can drive a world, or a world can drive your sound. A sequencer can control a light rig. Physics can generate rhythm. Movement can become modulation.

Ghost recording captures movement and performance in full 6DoF, so a gesture is recorded in space rather than as audio alone. Publish the replay of a whole performance, and it stays live material that anyone can open, change and build on.

Build the instrument. Build the stage. Build the lights and visuals. Then step inside and perform the whole thing. And because your studio is virtual, you can take it anywhere and play a full audiovisual set with nothing but a headset.

Create, share and remix together

PatchWorld is multiplayer and collaborative by design. Brainstorm in conversation, prototype on the fly, publish a game, run a class, improvise a party or a live performance, or just hang out and let ideas come alive by experimenting together. It works the way a hackerspace or an artist studio works, a place to try things quickly and make strange, beautiful things that don't have anywhere else to go.
Save what you build, reuse it in other projects and share it with other patchers. Import your own sounds, images, videos and 3D objects through the web portal, or generate new assets directly inside PatchWorld with dedicated AI tools.

Connect PatchWorld to the outside world

Connect your patches to MIDI controllers, synths, DAWs and other software through MIDI, OSC and Ableton Link. Information flows both ways: physical controllers can drive a virtual world, and what happens inside PatchWorld can control external tools.

With WebBridge (beta) you can go further. Build custom web interfaces in HTML and JavaScript that talk directly to a running PatchWorld scene, bring in live data from APIs and online services, and store data that persists between sessions.

A phone can become a controller. Live data can drive sound or visuals. A web interface can control a game or installation. Hardware, software and the virtual world can all become parts of the same patch.

Build with AI, your way!

PatchWorld has its own agent that you can talk to in VR or type to in-app. Ask it how something works, learn about blocks, get help building or debugging a patch, or let it modify systems directly inside your world.

Or connect your own MCP-compatible AI agent from desktop and let it inspect, build and edit the same PatchWorld session with you.

Everything it creates stays editable. You can inspect it, change it, take it apart and keep building from there.

PCVR and desktop

PatchWorld is in Early Access on Steam for PCVR and desktop.

PCVR is the full immersive experience for spatial patching, physical interaction, building and performance. Desktop is currently in beta and already lets you explore, build, join multiplayer sessions, modify worlds, film and stream without a headset, and it is where you connect your own AI agent.

Already using PatchWorld elsewhere? Log in with your existing account and your creations, purchases and Vibz come with you.

Join the community

PatchWorld is shaped by the people using it. Musicians, producers, builders, visual artists, educators, performers, tinkerers and curious minds. If you get stuck at midnight, someone in the app or on Discord has usually been stuck on the same thing and will show you a way through.

Join the Discord to ask questions, find collaborators and see what is coming up.

PatchWorld is LGBTQ+ friendly and open to creators of different identities, abilities, experience levels and creative paths.

Build. Patch. Play. Together.