Alone together: my weird morning in a virtual reality chatroom

Mark Zuckerberg says virtual social worlds could be the future. But what's it actually like in one? Keith Stuart visits AltSpace and finds the experience ... odd

I'm standing in front of a decorative garden talking to a guy from Germany about PC specifications. This is not really what I was hoping for from the future of online social communication.

The place I'm in is AltSpace, a virtual reality social world. It was launched in 2013 by AltSpaceVR, a small startup based in Redwood City, California. Although it's early days for virtual reality as a consumer phenomenon, there's been a lot of interest in the idea of virtual chatrooms - AltSpace VR has already attracted more than $15m (10.6m) in venture capital funding, and Mark Zuckerberg has talked about multi-user VR as the future of social media. There are alternatives to AltSpace, such as vTime and VRChat but this one is getting a lot of interest due to its multi-platform compatibility and array of features. That's why I decided to don a HTC Vive and spend an hour in the virtual world of chat.