Our Journey Into AltspaceVR

I joined Altspace even before I got my Oculus Quest. It seemed like a hub of professional individuals experimenting and meeting in VR, and I was anticipating visiting in more than 2-D. Finally, when I got my Quest I was able to explore on my own, with fully functioning hand motions, submenus, and the ability to teleport to various beta worlds.

Although they have been around for a number of years (it was founded in 2013 and acquired by Microsoft in 2017), the space is still rather glitchy. For example, they have prefabricated screening rooms in which you can hypothetically screen films to a live, avatar audience. However, we’ve attempted to hold two screenings and each time ran into terminal issues.

The first time the screening capability had been disabled entirely. After leaving our admittedly small audience without a film to watch, I attended a virtual forum where I was able to troubleshoot with the very nice Altspace staff. They gave me a work around (use Streamlabs OBS in tandem with Mixer.com to stream the movie from my laptop). However, the second attempt, which saw our attendance had grown by orders of magnitude to about two dozen roaming, portal-ing avatar explorers, also had issues. For about ten minutes I watched the film with the captive live audience in pure bliss, enjoying the film with a sense of satisfaction that it had worked. Then someone turned to me and asked when the movie was going to start. It turns out I was the only one able to see or hear the film, and everyone else was staring at a blank screen waiting for the opening credits.

Aside from these problems, I really enjoy the space, and it’s the only platform in which I’ve met like-minded professionals eager to create in VR. The Altspace staff are very engaging and friendly, and I’ve met people from has far as Brazil and Moscow, the latter of which I traveled through a portal to his simple yet impressive Old West world. I’m sure that Altspace will continue to solve their glitches, and I will continue to inhabit the user-generated worlds and prefab worlds alike.

Here are some of my observations:

STYLE: I’m now becoming accustomed to the space, and starting to notice little details. For instance, this event took place on the top of the Vista space again, just like the first time you enter Altspace, except they had set up bleachers for avatars to sit in. The space is designed like an Incredibles set, which is to say Mid Century modernism by way of Unity. The design is simplistic and stylish, the buildings are off kilter in a cartoony way, and the font used is a throwback to a bygone era, but with a modern twist. My assumption would be that they are trying to create a cool, hip, ‘retro’ place that we can meet in VR, which suits me just fine. I think this is a nice launching off point, and I’m looking foward to taking this a step further— wouldn’t it be cool to have a meeting in an orbiting satellite, or an underwater hotel lobby, or a retro 80s inspired rec room? These are some of the ideas we’re toying with in our development of Simulation Nation.

AVATARS: The avatars in Altspace are quite limited in scope. However, I’ve noticed that there are three main ‘types’ that people cobble together here. First is the generic robot with no real personal stamp on the avatar, just a robotic drone that glides through the environment, providing maximum anonymity. Second is the ‘realistic’ type of people that have some semblance to reality, and have hats, glasses, and hair (or lack thereof) that could be assumed to be similar to the person IRL, or at least a version of a real person. And thirdly, are the ‘cyberpunk’ styles, the ones with out there, avatar-only capabilities, such as purple skin and hair, leopard print pants, etc. These are the avatar styles that can only be expressed in VR. If you are looking for more freedom of expression, it’s best to go elsewhere, such as VRChat, in which I spent a Saturday morning sitting around a campfire in a floating world with a frog, a garden gnome, a talking cube, and a 10-foot tall anime woman wearing a brassiere, but I’ll save that for another post. 

The area that needs most improvement, probably across all of VR, is the avatar. In Altspace you’re these bobbleheads with disembodied hands. The hands often go limp, cross each other in unnatural ways, and even fall off at times. More realistic avatars, and more optionality, not to mention expressivity, will definitely help mainstream adoption. The best example of this so far can be found in Spatial, which has really impressive lifelike avatars that resemble a photo-real version of the user.

ETIQUETTE: I’m curious about the etiquette from sending friend requests in VR. I’ve received some— my name is optimusprime, and frodo has friended me, so he must’ve felt a pop culture kinship, which works for me. Others I have not engaged with, but out of curiosity, have accepted as friends. I can always remove them at any time, but am curious how this will evolve. There is also the etiquette of getting in someone’s face— in EchoVR I had my face humped, which was rather shocking and strange, but in Altspace the worst that happened in a meetup was what sounded like a 10 year old kid trying to make out with anything that moved. Luckily they can be booted if need be, and blocked if worse comes to worse.

SOUND: I do like the directionality of the sound, which I assume is an attempt to create a sense of ‘presence’. When you’re facing someone you can hear them, when you turn away, their voice fades. Perhaps other things that could be done in this regard would be to give avatars gravity, meaning that you couldn’t step through another avatar. I wonder if you could also have the changing of daylight and seasons, so that you actually cycle through an hour, a day, a month, and a year. That would be costly I’m sure, but something to strive for. 

QUESTION: I noticed individuals on top of the roof behind the stage. How did he get up there? Did he have ‘Host’ access? Curious about that, as I’ve hosted events but have not yet found a way to enter ‘host only’ areas of the worlds.

Those are a few of my initial thoughts. I’ve already made some great acquaintances in Altspace, and it’s head and shoulders above all other communities in terms of quality individuals. I look forward to continue exploring, and of course, to delve into the creation side of the platform.!

Unplugging for now.

Graham