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Altspace VR to Shut Down Following Microsoft Layoffs

XR Today - Virtual Reality

Last Friday, Microsoft-owned immersive social platform Altspace VR (virtual reality) announced the closure of its service effective March 10, 2023. The decision comes following recent lay offs at Microsoft. The entire division faces an uncertain future following Microsoft laying off 11,000 workers this month.

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Altspace VR to Shutdown Following Microsoft Lay Offs

XR Today - Virtual Reality

Last Friday, Microsoft-owned immersive social platform Altspace VR (virtual reality) announced the closure of its service effective March 10, 2023. The decision comes following recent lay offs at Microsoft. The entire division faces an uncertain future following Microsoft laying off 11,000 workers this month.

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Microsoft is sunsetting social VR pioneer AltspaceVR

TechCrunch VR

After announcing that it would close up shop in 2017 , Microsoft intervened and the company came under the tech giant’s wing. Now, Microsoft is sunsetting AltspaceVR’s virtual reality platform, a web of immersive social spaces that invited people to hang out with friends or colleagues as 3D avatars.

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A Farewell to AltspaceVR

ARPost

Much of the post waxes nostalgic about the platform, which launched in 2015 and was purchased by Microsoft in 2017. Why, Microsoft? The team writes that they are closing AltspaceVR to “shift our focus to support immersive experiences powered by Microsoft Mesh.” It has been a privilege to help unlock passions among users.”

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Google Glass Retires, but is New AR Hardware Coming?

XR Today - Augmented Reality tag

Google will also drop official support for its enterprise-grade immersive hardware on September 15, 2023. Google first introduced the Glass device in 2015. Following the rise of Chat GPT this year and Microsoft’s eventual purchase of platform developers OpenAI. However, Google will not release any future updates.

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HoloLens Optics Chief Joins Google Amid Reported Push for Upcoming Google AR Headset

Road to VR

Bernard Kress, principal optical architect on Microsoft’s HoloLens team, has left the company to take on the role of Director of XR Engineering at the recently formed Google Labs. And there’s no doubts about it: Kress says he’s focusing on creating consumer AR hardware at Google.

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Big XR News Microsoft, VITURE, Meta, Ready Player Me, and House of Blueberry

XR Today - Big XR News tag

Constantly with the help of new emerging technologies such as conversational AI, the world is figuring out how best to improve their daily lives and work routines with software and hardware solutions. Yesterday, Microsoft debuted CoPilot, an integrated 365 tool enabling users to streamline work documentation creation.