AltspaceVR was the platform that turned me into a VR world builder.
I spent more than two years there building worlds, learning Unity, writing tutorials and becoming part of a community of creators who were figuring out social VR together.
It wasn't always easy. In fact, one of the reasons I started writing AltspaceVR tutorials was because finding good information about world building could be frustratingly difficult.
But that frustration ended up changing the direction of my work.
The guides I originally wrote to document what I was learning started helping other creators. Some of those creators became far better builders than me. Some eventually turned those skills into professional work and businesses of their own.
Then, on March 10, 2023, AltspaceVR disappeared.
I moved on to VRChat, Spatial and other platforms. I kept working with Unity and kept documenting what I learned.
But a surprising amount of what I do today can still be traced back to AltspaceVR.
This is the story of the platform, the years I spent inside it, and how one of social VR's earliest major communities came to an end.
Before I arrived
AltspaceVR began in 2013, founded by Eric Romo during an era when modern consumer virtual reality barely existed.
Its public launch followed in 2015.
The idea behind AltspaceVR was remarkably close to what technology companies would spend the following decade describing as the "metaverse": people represented by avatars, sharing persistent virtual spaces and attending activities together from around the world.
But AltspaceVR wasn't just demonstrating the idea.
People were actually using it.
There were comedy clubs, churches, meditation sessions, conferences, classrooms, concerts, open mic nights, LGBTQ+ meetups, Burning Man communities, talk shows and countless community-run events.
Eventually there were also Worlds.
That changed AltspaceVR from somewhere people could visit into somewhere people could build.
The first AltspaceVR shutdown
The shutdown most people remember happened in 2023.
But AltspaceVR almost disappeared six years earlier.
In July 2017, AltspaceVR announced that it was running out of money after a funding deal fell through. The company said it could no longer afford to continue operating and announced that the service would close.
It appeared AltspaceVR was finished.
Then the shutdown was unexpectedly postponed after assistance arrived from an unnamed third party.
On October 3, 2017, that third party was revealed.
Microsoft had acquired AltspaceVR.
The acquisition gave the platform another five years of life and placed one of social VR's earliest communities inside one of the world's largest technology companies.
It was during those Microsoft years that I eventually arrived.
Discovering AltspaceVR
When I first started using AltspaceVR, I wasn't thinking about where it would lead me.
I was exploring VR.
Then I discovered world building.
That was when Altspace became much more interesting to me.
People weren't limited to Microsoft's environments. Creators could use Unity and AltspaceVR's tools to construct their own spaces, upload them and invite other people inside.
Naturally, I wanted to know how it worked.
And then came the difficult part.
The documentation wasn't good enough.
There were experienced builders in the community who were incredibly helpful, but finding clear documentation for many parts of the workflow could be painful.
Something that should have taken a few minutes to understand could turn into hours of searching, experimenting and asking other creators.
Eventually I started documenting the answers myself.
Those guides became part of AussieGuy92.com.
At first, I was effectively writing the documentation I wished I'd had when I started.
How do I configure this?
How do I upload that?
Why isn't this working?
Which Unity setting am I supposed to use?
Then other people started finding the guides.
That became one of the most rewarding parts of my time in AltspaceVR.
People used them to start building their own worlds. Some of those people eventually became much more capable builders than I was, and some went on to turn those skills into professional work.
The wider AltspaceVR creator community deserves enormous credit for that culture. Builders constantly shared information, answered questions and helped each other solve problems.
By late 2021, Microsoft's official creator documentation had improved considerably.
But by then, AltspaceVR had already pushed me into doing something I would continue long after the platform disappeared:
documenting VR development for other creators.
The Great Big Upgrade
One of the largest technical changes during my time in Altspace arrived in 2021.
Microsoft called it the Great Big Upgrade.
World builders were warned that existing content needed to be updated before September 15, 2021 or their worlds, templates and kit items could stop working correctly.
For creators, this was a substantial migration.
AltspaceVR moved towards Unity 2020, Universal Render Pipeline (URP), Linear Colour Space, Single Pass Instancing and a new generation of its Unity uploader.
Uploader 2 introduced batch uploading, migration tools, shader conversion, improved stability and better management of uploaded content.
URP brought AltspaceVR's rendering workflow closer to modern Unity development and opened the door to tools including Shader Graph.
For ordinary AltspaceVR users, most of this was invisible.
You clicked on a World and entered it.
For builders, there was an entire technical ecosystem behind that button: Unity projects, textures, materials, lighting, optimisation, templates, kits, uploaders and plenty of troubleshooting.
That was the AltspaceVR I spent much of my time inside.
AltspaceVR was built around events
World building was what pulled me deeper into AltspaceVR, but events were arguably what held the wider platform together.
You didn't necessarily need to know what you wanted to do before putting on a headset.
You could look through the event listings and find something happening.
A comedy show.
A meetup.
A concert.
A meditation session.
A developer talk.
A community gathering.
Or something completely strange that you clicked on simply because you wanted to know what it was.
The emails AltspaceVR sent during these years show just how important events had become to the platform.
In December 2020, AltspaceVR introduced new event-hosting features including Main Events, event metrics and the ability to recover deleted events.
The company described events as being at the heart of the AltspaceVR experience.
That was accurate.
Altspace wasn't simply a collection of 3D environments. The event system gave people reasons to keep moving between them.
Microsoft integration
Microsoft's influence became increasingly visible during the final years of AltspaceVR.
In early 2021, Microsoft Account integration began rolling out.
Initially it was optional.
AltspaceVR was also experimenting with increasingly ambitious immersive events. Holoportation became a major focus, allowing performers captured in the physical world to appear inside virtual experiences.
Altspace promoted hybrid events that combined physical performances with audiences inside VR.
At the same time, the platform's creator ecosystem continued expanding.
Worlds became more sophisticated. Community events became increasingly diverse. Creators developed recognisable styles, communities and businesses around what they were building.
AltspaceVR had evolved considerably from the experimental social VR application Microsoft had acquired in 2017.
Altspace changes direction
During 2022, the direction of the platform began changing.
In February, Microsoft announced measures intended to improve safety and moderation while describing AltspaceVR as a leading, event-based community.
A community Town Hall hosted by Microsoft's Alex Kipman followed.
Then came a much larger change.
From May 31, 2022, users were required to use a personal Microsoft Account to access AltspaceVR.
People still using classic AltspaceVR accounts had to link them to Microsoft accounts if they wanted to retain their profiles, avatars and friends lists.
Microsoft also introduced expanded reporting systems and age-gating controls. Event creators could identify mature events, display warnings before entry and prevent underage users from joining.
The longstanding Community Helper programme was also paused.
Meanwhile, Microsoft continued promoting the creator community.
The AltspaceVRtists campaign highlighted individual creators.
In July came AltspaceVR Worlds Showcase, designed specifically to highlight impressive environments created by the community.
Curiously, Microsoft was still officially describing Worlds as a Beta feature.
Six months later, the entire platform would be scheduled for shutdown.
January 20, 2023
On January 20, 2023, the email arrived.
AltspaceVR was shutting down.
Microsoft announced that the platform would permanently close on March 10, 2023, with the company shifting its attention towards Microsoft Mesh.
For users, that meant losing a social platform.
For world builders, there was another immediate question:
What happens to everything we've built?
I received both the general shutdown announcement and another email specifically addressed to AltspaceVR's power users.
That second email was much more significant from a creator's perspective.
Microsoft thanked the people who had spent years building worlds, organising events and creating communities.
It also confirmed that there was no way to completely export an AltspaceVR World into another application.
The reason was partly technical and partly related to the complexity of asset ownership.
Microsoft instead provided preservation tools.
World builders could export lists containing the objects in their Worlds along with Position, Rotation and Scale information.
Users were also given a bulk photo downloader.
Those tools could preserve information about a world.
They couldn't preserve the world itself.
Seven weeks to save what we could
The shutdown announcement gave the community seven weeks.
There was no dramatic technical failure and no slow decline into an unusable service.
There was simply a date after which AltspaceVR would no longer exist.
People began saving photos and content.
Communities organised final gatherings.
Long-running events scheduled their last sessions.
Creators returned to old worlds.
On March 2, AltspaceVR sent another email announcing its final weekend and reminding everyone that the shutdown would begin at 10am PST on March 10.
The remaining calendar included events with names that suddenly meant exactly what they said:
End of the World.
Final Improv Night.
Final Farewell Party.
There wasn't going to be another update after this one.
March 10, 2023
On March 10, Microsoft shut AltspaceVR down.
Users were still together inside the platform during its final moments.
Then the service they had been using for years simply stopped existing.
The final AltspaceVR email was much shorter than the announcements that had preceded it.
There were no new features.
No upcoming events.
No Worlds Showcase.
No Unity upgrade.
Just a final thank you to the community and the hope that the friendships and experiences created there would continue elsewhere.
For AltspaceVR itself, that was the end.
What happened next
I didn't stop building when AltspaceVR closed.
I couldn't.
By that point, Altspace had already taught me Unity, world-building workflows, troubleshooting, optimisation and, perhaps most importantly, how valuable good creator documentation could be.
So I took those skills elsewhere.
I moved into platforms including VRChat and Spatial.
The tutorials continued.
The world building continued.
Eventually, that work expanded into VRCreators.net, where the same basic idea that started with my AltspaceVR guides remains: make it easier for somebody else to figure out what I had to figure out the hard way.
That's the most tangible legacy AltspaceVR left me.
Not a screenshot or an old avatar.
A career direction.
I joined AltspaceVR as someone interested in virtual reality.
I left as a VR world builder.
Looking back
AltspaceVR lasted roughly eight years as a public social VR platform.
It survived one announced shutdown in 2017, was acquired by Microsoft, expanded its creator tools, hosted enormous virtual events, experimented with technologies such as holoportation and developed a community that built thousands of its own spaces.
Then Microsoft closed it in 2023.
Its replacement was not another AltspaceVR.
Microsoft's attention moved towards Mesh and enterprise collaboration, while AltspaceVR's existing communities dispersed across other platforms.
That distinction matters when looking back at its history.
AltspaceVR wasn't merely an early prototype for technology that came later.
For the people using it, it was already a functioning social VR platform.
People were already building worlds.
They were already running businesses.
They were already holding conferences and concerts.
They were already teaching classes and organising communities.
And creators like me were already learning how to build the virtual spaces those communities occupied.
When Microsoft switched the servers off on March 10, 2023, the software disappeared.
The skills I learned building for it didn't.
More than three years later, I'm still using them.