How Burning Man VR rebuilt after Microsoft shut it down

It was all just supposed to be a one-time thing. When Burning Man got canceled because of covid-19 in 2020, a number of attendees banded together to re-create the festival on the social VR platform Altspace. That virtual Burning Man experience not only attracted around 13,000 visitors, but also accolades from the Producers Guild of America.

The success led to the decision to keep the digital version of Burning Man going even when the real-life festival returned in 2021. BRCvr, named after the festival’s temporary Black Rock City settlement, became a recurring Burning Man outpost in VR. There were virtual hangouts, replicas of many of the festival’s most notable structures. That included a digital version of The Man — the large wooden structure at the center of Burning Man that is set ablaze in the Utah desert every year.

Then, BRCvr got burned itself. As part of a broader shift away from consumer VR, Microsoft shut down Altspace in early 2023. That effectively pulled the plug on the virtual Burning Man too. “When Altspace shut down, we were a little bit lost in the woods,” says Athena Demos, CEO of Big Rock Creative, the company behind BRCvr.

Eager to find a replacement, Demos and BRCvr cofounder Doug Jacobson toured over 40 social VR platforms, only to walk away disappointed time and again. “We realized: There’s no platform out there that has all the [features] we need,” Jacobson recalls, like the ability to upload huge amounts of content. That’s why the BRCvr team went to work building their own social VR app from scratch. The BurnerSphere, as it is now called, is being released in beta for both VR headsets and desktop PCs in time for next week’s Burning Man festival.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Burning Man isn’t everyone’s thing. Personally, I can imagine much more pleasant ways to spend the last week of August than having desert sand stuck in my teeth (or worse: my feet stuck in mud) while some billionaire trips out on ketamine in the tent next door.

However, Burning Man is also arguably one of the largest and longest-running annual tech-adjacent gatherings in the world. That even this community struggled to find a home in VR, and ultimately decided to go its own way, also tells you a lot about the friction that still exists in this medium, and the challenges companies need to overcome to have people buy into their vision of the metaverse.

Riding on a mutant vehicle

When you launch the BurnerSphere app on your Meta Quest headset, you’ll find yourself on a digital replica of Gate Road, the desert road leading to the festival. From there, you can watch a short VR documentary of immersive footage shot at Burning Man events in years past, or enter the festival itself through a series of interconnected portals.

Some of these portals unlock showcases for Burning Man art, complete with information about each artist. Others let you watch additional short immersive videos, or explore different camps and squares. On a recent visit, I explored some art pieces including a pair of sphinx statues, a 27-foot hollow wooden die, and an intricate staircase to nowhere. I also got to see how BRCvr blends digital artifacts with real-life immersive video: When I entered a tent, its interior got overlaid with 360-degree footage of people hanging out in the real-life version of that tent, making it seem like I was in the middle of the action.

The whole place was pretty deserted pre-festival, but is supposed to feature live broadcasts from the 2025 Burning Man next week. The BRCvr team will also capture additional immersive footage and Gaussian splats at the festival, with plans to add new content every other week and host regular events starting in September. “We wanted to combine social VR and a documentary together,” says Jacobson, who tells me that a lot of work has gone into upgrading the graphics quality of assets used in the prior Altspace version.

Despite that work, one shouldn’t expect high-end video game graphics. The avatars and other elements still look a lot like Altspace or other early metaverse platforms. Jacobson acknowledges that a lot of it is still a work in progress. “We’re very nascent. We’re a tiny team.”

So why then do all this work yourself, as opposed to piggybacking on an existing platform like VRChat, or maybe even Meta’s Horizon Worlds? A lot comes down to the team’s previous experience with Altspace. “We have this nervousness and anxiety over building on somebody else’s platform,” Demos says. Case in point: out of the 40 or so platforms they considered to replace Altspace, a handful have since shut down.

A permanent home for burners

Another issue is what Demos and Jacobson described as misaligned incentives. The duo wanted to capture Burning Man’s spirit, which includes a ban on commercial activity. “Once you go into the bubble of Burning Man, there’s no hot dog vendors and T-shirt vendors,” Jacobson says. “It’s a non-commercial space. It’s a gift society.”

BRCvr tries to adhere to the same principles that guide Burning Man, which precludes it from selling avatars or using corporate sponsors — things that are often out of your control on another company’s platform. At the same time, there are significant costs associated with running BurnerSphere, which is why some content and experiences are reserved for members who pay an annual $48 “camp fee.”

The plan, according to Demos, is to offer the more than 100,000 “burners” who attend Burning Man events every year a permanent digital home. A space they can gather year-round, and a way for “burner-curious” people to explore the festival, no matter where they are — all without the commercial pressure that comes with building a venture-funded metaverse. “This is not designed to be a massive free platform that hockey sticks,” Jacobson says.

Will a Burning Man-specific social VR platform that relies on member dues work? Demos and Jacobson openly admit it’s a gamble. “We’re at the beginning,” Jacobson says. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. But if the platform goes under, at least, we’ll make it go under, not some corporation.”

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a column on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.