Altspace has a personal toggle bubble located in your Altspace dial menu.
In the past, this was toggled and remembered as a personal preference for the most part. An update was added to make this mandatory for all users upon entry to worlds and events to re-untoggle if it’s their preference. This change causes great annoyance to existing users prior to this update who were used to the freedom prior.
How to toggle and untoggle your personal bubble #
This option can be toggled once you are in an event or world space by looking at your 3PM on your clock dial.
Why bubbles are a feature #
Although some people may argue the radius on a personal bubble being increased has caused annoyance as previously discussed. This is a feature being implemented and mostly enforced on VR platforms to protect people from having their personal space intruded upon unwantedly by another individual.
In early 2022 there was a trending news article regarding an incident on another VR platform. Altspace took steps to improve safety by making it a mandatory toggle upon world entry and by increasing the personal bubble radius.
This can be useful for instance if you loading into a heavy world or you go AFK you won’t come back to spawn with a whole heap of people around you too closely. Another useful feature of having a bubble is that it does genuinely ease crowds of people being close to each other like virtual concerts. This can prevent multiple at once from blocking your view.
For some people personal contact is a comfort thing #
People do enjoy hugging and showing emotions by touch and between two consenting parties, there is nothing wrong with that. The red line for many people is the ‘consent’ but there is also a grey line where two close friends can push those social boundaries by assuming ‘consent’. For example two friends in VR who hug each other every day wouldn’t explicitly be asking for permission to hug.
However, it is important to note you should never assume you can touch anyone for any reason, especially anything that could be considered sexually advanced or unwanted such as slapping, punching to being intimidating by being in someone else’s face.
If someone is violating your personal space you are within your right to block them, it would be proper to politely ask someone to respect your space or to stop their actions first. But depending on your personal tolerance you may choose not to give a warning and it is within your right for you to block without reason for those sorts of incidents.
