Microsoft Kills Off AltspaceVR Amid Major Layoffs (uploadvr.com) 30
AltspaceVR is shutting down in March as Microsoft decimated its teams working in VR & AR this week as part of a major workforce reduction across the entire company. Upload VR reports: Altspace was one of the early VR-based social networking services alongside others like Rec Room and VRChat. As an independent startup Altspace ran out of money, but in 2017 Microsoft acquired it and continued the effort. Microsoft says it is shifting "our focus to support immersive experiences powered by Microsoft Mesh." We tried out Mesh on HoloLens 2 back in 2021 and were pretty impressed by its functionality, with the company saying it'll be officially launching the service as "a new platform for connection and collaboration, starting by enabling workplaces around the world."
Microsoft posted instructions for creators on how to download content before the March 10, 2023 shutdown date, while noting "AltspaceVR Worlds are not able to be downloaded in full or ported directly to another platform because AltspaceVR is a mix of Worlds made up of a collection of assets owned by a variety of different entities." "While you cannot download them in full, you are able to download items from your Worlds data, which we call meta-data," Microsoft explains, providing people files with references noted as comma-separated values. Here's an excerpt from Microsoft's "sunset" update on altvr.com: "The decision has not been an easy one as this is a platform many have come to love, providing a place for people to explore their identities, express themselves, and find community. It has been a privilege to help unlock passions among users, from educational opportunities for personal growth to the development of unique and wonderful events, groundbreaking art, and immersive experiences -- enabling this community to achieve more. With Mesh, we aspire to build a platform that offers the widest opportunity to all involved, including creators, partners and customers."
Microsoft posted instructions for creators on how to download content before the March 10, 2023 shutdown date, while noting "AltspaceVR Worlds are not able to be downloaded in full or ported directly to another platform because AltspaceVR is a mix of Worlds made up of a collection of assets owned by a variety of different entities." "While you cannot download them in full, you are able to download items from your Worlds data, which we call meta-data," Microsoft explains, providing people files with references noted as comma-separated values. Here's an excerpt from Microsoft's "sunset" update on altvr.com: "The decision has not been an easy one as this is a platform many have come to love, providing a place for people to explore their identities, express themselves, and find community. It has been a privilege to help unlock passions among users, from educational opportunities for personal growth to the development of unique and wonderful events, groundbreaking art, and immersive experiences -- enabling this community to achieve more. With Mesh, we aspire to build a platform that offers the widest opportunity to all involved, including creators, partners and customers."
Ok.. (Score:3, Interesting)
All this idiots put money into VR software when there is no decent VR headset yet. The best one is from Varjo and that too sucks. We are about 20 years away from a decent VR headset (110 degree field of view, 75 pixels per degree, 120fps)
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"All thee people pouring money on $INFRASTRUCTURE when there is no decent $THING yet".
Replace 1st variable with "roads" or "railways" and 2ns with "cars" or "trains".
Both parts of the ecosystem work hand in hand. A few years ago, people didn't get VR because there was hardware but no content. Now we have some content AND hardware, but some whine because hardware is not good enough - which is weird, because the issue still remains mostly in the software area.
Re: Ok.. (Score:2)
Not content enough to justify buying a new computer and interface costing the same amount as the new computer. I would like the industry to step back from the appmind development frenzy and start making that environment something with purpose.
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That's why I said "the issue still remains mostly in the software area".
Re:Ok.. (Score:5, Interesting)
VR is what multimedia was 25 years ago. Ok, I need to explain it to the kids. 25 years ago, the idea of watching video on a computer was a pretty new idea. Videos and streaming content was something we watched on dedicated machines called TVs. Only that the videos came from a tape recorder and streaming was time dependent, you could only watch certain shows at certain times.
The idea that you do what we take for granted today, that you have content stored on your hard drive (that's what we called SSDs and NVMe drives back then, you can think of them as pretty much the same, only that their space was measured in MB instead of TB and that they were far slower) and watch video right from the internet, that was appealing. Wow, was it ever appealing! Imagine, any movie, at any time!
Yeah, we were a big naive.
But the technology was ... well, not exactly there. The internet was slow. Really slow. We had dialup. Smaller ISPs (yes, such a thing existed back then) could get away with having a T1 link (1.5mbit/sec. No, that's not an error of a few margins). Larger providers and backbones had T3 (about 45mbit/sec). If you're sitting on dialup that gets 56kbit, provided you have a good, stable connection to your server, in other words, that server should not be outside of this town or it gets ugly... let's be honest, anything about 2kbit was considered decent speed..., 45mbit sounds like an insane speed.
The resolution wasn't there (graphics cards could only do about 800x600, and without any 3d acceleration), the hard drives weren't there (1 gbyte was considered insanely much and these things costed a fortune and were hellish slow), the sound wasn't there (8bit soundblaster ftw!), there was nothing there.
Yes, yes, gramps gets out of the time machine... it's almost time for my afternoon nap anyway.
But to finally get to the point, and yes, I'll skip the part why I had an onion on my belt, don't worry, just like back then, today, too, there are enthusiasts and people who really want this to be. They put up with all the hardships and shortcomings, they invest fortunes into technology that at least lets them kinda-sorta-maybe do what the technology promises. Not because they're stupid or dreamers, for them, the technology may well deliver what they want.
Does this have mass appeal? Hell no. And because of this, anything a large corporation tries in this regard will crash and burn. At the level these kids play, mass appeal is required. They need their customer base to have a headcount of millions, not tens of thousands and certainly not thousands. The overhead alone that they incur for keeping this project afloat demands that.
Smaller businesses who don't have to carry about a heavy administrative elephant on their back may get away with that, and this is where the future of VR likely is. Because yes, there is a market for it. Even with the not-yet-there hardware we have today. There's people who want this.
But that's far, far away from anything you could call mainstream.
Re:Ok.. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a major difference between showing videos to people who are already typing on their keyboard and looking at text and pictures on their screen and asking them to strap a toaster to their face and move about the room in which there may or may not be other people.
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And try and not trip over the furniture or cat if using them at home.
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I remember those complaints. "Who'd put a desktop computer in their living room, there's already enough junk with that VCR and the kids' NES game system, and let's not forget, how do you plug all that into the antenna port of your TV, that's such a hassle already when the kids want to play games, now you have to unplug and replug everything every other minute when you switch from telly to this newfangled crap..."
That's not an issue anymore, is it?
I think the same will apply to VR. Some of the issues that ke
Re: (Score:3)
and move about the room
Not everything VR requires you to move around the room. Actually so far my favourite games have been played sitting in my chair.
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine, any movie, at any time!
Yeah, we were a big naive.
We're moving in that direction anyway, thanks to that one bay and archive.org.
Does this have mass appeal? Hell no.
I think it does, as a gaming platform. Sort of a roblox but better. A lot of socializing happens on gaming platforms already, so that could be its way into the mainstream. But it really has to be vastly cheaper than it is now, and also much better, and that means it's still some ways out. The tech just isn't there to do it well. I'm glad some companies are doing research now though, because it is how we get there.
Go back to the mu
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that this technology will probably become mainstream at a point, but we're at least a decade away from that point.
The key problem I see is that VR is not the "next step" on a technology we already have and embrace. It's something fairly new. Streaming and watching videos from thumb drives is essentially a more convenient version of telly and VCR. Technologies people already knew and loved. Where does VR fit in? If anything, you could say that VR is some sort of replacement for "outdoor activities".
Re: (Score:2)
Does this have mass appeal? Hell no. And because of this, anything a large corporation tries in this regard will crash and burn. At the level these kids play, mass appeal is required. They need their customer base to have a headcount of millions, not tens of thousands and certainly not thousands.
I ended up fixating on this point.
There's a bit of a danger in that cater to the masses, abandon the rest. It might be called the Radio Shack dillemma, one of the earliest companies to commit slow suicide by abandoning a big part of it's core.
But I'll fast forward to today. Let's take Best Buy or Lowe's as an example. I'll need something, so take a trip to Best Buy. There's hardly anything for the hobbyist, maybe a replacement fan or such. And a lot of these non-high volume items have to be ordered. If
Re: (Score:2)
Omg, yes!
Looked at every fucking screw box/bin but didn't have mine. Had to order online to get 6 lousy M6 screws.
Didn't have a front door handle set that had a blank for the second door in a double door. None. Ordered online and prayed it looked like the pictures.
These are not obscure items. Just didn't make their super generic buy list.
Home Depot guy didn't even understand what a door blank handle set is. Sigh.
Yep, I think it's what bean counters think is popular, or has a higher profit margin. Those M6 screws are low profit items. And your door blank set probably has them wondering what it is as well. It isn't on their radar, because they don't think like that.
While yes - that low profit stuff might be low profit, but people need that stuff as well. And it's damn irritating to go one place, then travel to another to find what you need. So rather than look at the place as a resource, you remember them as an irr
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These specialized shops still exist, but they moved online. Simple reason, and here's the point where the people with the "offtopic" mod points should reconsider, it's the same reason as for the VR shops: The number of potential customers don't warrant having a shop on every street.
Flashback 50 years ago and these shops had a reason to exist. Every guy either knew how to fix his TV set or at least knew someone who could. And fixing that TV set was not only possible, it was also very sensible. TVs cost a for
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No. Multimedia 30 years ago was revolutionary, despite its crappiness because it was computers doing what seemingly was impossible.
Full screen video - something computers had promised for decades was finally possible. Sure the video was poor and the sound less than awesome, but compared to where computers were before and after multimedia, it was revolutionary.
Video games were the first to support the new media for obvious reasons - suddenly your games went from PC speaker bleeps and bloops to music and real
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VR isn't that different from multimedia, actually. Unlike 3D which was really just a technology looking for a reason to exist, at best some sort of gimmick with its own shock value and little beyond that, VR, or, more precisely, AR, could very well be what people would want.
People spend a lot of time waiting for something. The bus, an appointment, dinner in a restaurant, anything. Having some distraction for that time would be great. If we can get VR to be something that can be picked up and used, then stor
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All this idiots put money into VR software when there is no decent VR headset yet. The best one is from Varjo and that too sucks. We are about 20 years away from a decent VR headset (110 degree field of view, 75 pixels per degree, 120fps)
Although no one not under NDA has seen Apple's (now postponed) headset; so, who knows how close it comes to those goals? My guess is that it exceeds them; which is why they are having some difficulties with it.
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That would mean it has an 8k display per eye. An 8k display of that size doesn't exist. Note, contrary to what many people think, the GPU or CPU requirement, using foveated rendering, already exists. A VR display only needs to render at high resolution the small part of the 8K display you are looking at at any given time .. so the GPU power needed is very little compared to a desktop. The biggest blocker therefore is that that the mass manufacturing tech doesn't exist for small 8K displays. Apple would have
Re: (Score:2)
That would mean it has an 8k display per eye. An 8k display of that size doesn't exist.
That you know of.
Apple has reportedly been developing their own Display Division.
https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]
Re: (Score:2)
We are about 20 years away from a decent VR headset
No, we're only 20 years away from what your specific definition of decent means. VR is quite functional right now, actually was quite functional in the previous gen as well.
You're like the person looking at the 3dfx Voodoo's release and saying "gaming is dead until we can raytrace everything in realtime".
This is why you don't create with MS (Score:2)
If you're building "stuff" for a new technology that doesn't have any relevant market penetration yet, you DO NOT go with large corporations, not MS and most certainly not the Metastasis, that spin up something like that because they want a foot in the door of the technology just in case it takes off. Because if it doesn't, they just pack that shit right up again and leave. A business that is only built on having this as their only revenue stream will ride this out much, much longer because they can't just
Obligatory (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
So MS is counting its pennies is it? (Score:2)
How does this belt tightening and staff sacking dovetail with the absurd $69 billion they want to spend on Activision then?
If you don't need the people then be upfront MS, but please, don't pretend you're hard up.
Re: (Score:2)
How does this belt tightening and staff sacking dovetail with the absurd $69 billion they want to spend on Activision then?
If you don't need the people then be upfront MS, but please, don't pretend you're hard up.
Well, a few things here...
1.) VR has been in a bit of a rut for most of its life. You can see it in the thread here that there are known issues that inch forward, but it's yet to hit critical mass. MS investing in it is risky, and shareholders aren't exactly in a "high risk / high reward" market right now.
2.) Activision has cash cows. From Call of Duty and Diabolo to Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch, the company has mature products that have already proven steady income. Maybe it's not the sort
Re: So MS is counting its pennies is it? (Score:2)
Your argument would be perfectly valid if they were only sacking staff from their VR teams, but its across the board. $69B is the GDB of a small country, no games company is worth that. Actions speak louder than words.