Microsoft shutting down VR platform AltspaceVR

Microsoft has announced that its social virtual reality platform AltspaceVR will be shut down on Mar. 10, News18 reports.

AltspaceVR, which Microsoft acquired in 2017, provided immersive social spaces in which users could interact with friends and colleagues as 3D avatars.

Eric Romo founded the company in 2013, and the first product was released in 2015. It piqued the interest of large corporations, including Microsoft, which completed its acquisition in 2017.

Microsoft, however, has recently decided to pivot its focus to support immersive experiences powered by Microsoft Mesh.

The Switch to Mesh
Microsoft Mesh is a platform that enables presence and shared experiences from anywhere on any device through mixed-reality applications.

“With Mesh, we aspire to build a platform that offers the widest opportunity to all involved, including creators, partners, and customers,” Microsoft said in a blog post.

The company is optimistic about the future and is looking forward to launching Microsoft Mesh, a new platform for connection and collaboration that will start by making workplaces worldwide more connected.

Read Also: Google’s Fuchsia and Area 120 Suffer Immensely From the Firm’s Massive Layoffs

The removal of AltspaceVR marks the end of an era for the virtual reality platform, which had a large user base and provided a unique social interaction experience.

The shift to Microsoft Mesh, on the other hand, demonstrates the company’s commitment to investing in new technologies that provide more opportunities for creators, partners, and customers.

Shutting Down AltspaceVR
In the near run, Microsoft will concentrate its VR efforts on workplace experiences, learning from and alongside its early customers and partners and ensuring that a foundation that enables security, trust, and compliance is delivered.

The decision to shut down AltspaceVR follows the company’s recent confirmation of laying off 10,000 employees through the end of March.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attributed the significant cuts to economic uncertainty and the slowdown from the early pandemic’s tech boom.

What’s Next?
Microsoft provided creators with instructions on how to download content before the Mar. 10 shutdown date, noting that “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 can download items from your Worlds data, which we call meta-data,” Microsoft explains, providing people with files containing references noted as comma-separated values.

In Other News
The Fuchsia operating system (OS) and Area 120 incubator teams, amongst many others, have been hit particularly hard by Google’s massive layoffs.

On Friday morning, Jan. 20, Google started laying off employees, ultimately affecting 12,000 people. Even though not all of the repercussions of the decision have been made clear, more and more information is becoming accessible.

In the following weeks, Google may lay off many more people outside the US since the sacking has only affected the company’s American workers thus far. TechTimes