How to Use the Altspace Web Projector

Want to play music or video in Altspace? Share slides? A great way to do that is to use the Web Projector if you have a PC or Mac. The official documentation for Web Projector is pretty detailed so I’ll be keeping it simple and more visual.

What You’ll Need

• Either a PC or Mac to stream from — streaming from phones and tablets is supported yet. Your computer doesn’t have to be super powerful.
• Decent upload speeds — if you can stream to Youtube or Twitch you’re probably good to go
• Microsoft Edge Browser — the browser extension only works for Edge right now
• Your Altspace email and password: If you don’t know your email, Sign in with Microsoft. After signing in you’ll see your email at the top right (If you see a profile photo, click on that and your email will be shown on your profile page). If you don’t know your password, go to your profile page and click Sign out and get a new password. Note: Your Altspace password is not the same as your Microsoft Account password.

Installing Edge and the Extension

Download the latest version from here.

Clicking Accept will start the download. Extract all the contents from the .zip file. Next, run Edge and open your Extensions:

Enable Developer Mode:

Click Load Unpacked and find the folder you just extracted and click Select:

Now it should be installed:

You should now see the Web Project icon in the top right:

Success!

Start Streaming

Click on the extension and sign in with your Altspace email and password. If you don’t know what those are, check out the “What You’ll Need” section above.

After you’re signed in you’ll see the controls:

Click Start Streaming. While you’re streaming there will be a blinking red dot. In Altspace (signed in with the same account) use the World Editor to place a Web Projector (Altspace > Basics > Web Projector).

You’ll want to step back a bit because the default size is huge:

Click Connect in the top right corner to connect your stream. When it’s connected you’ll see a green indicator.

Click Broadcast to start sharing the stream with everyone else in the World. Note that until you broadcast, only you can see the stream. This gives you a chance to verify things before you go live.

Success!

Congrats, you’re streaming into the Metaverse! Now spawn a Mirror (World Editor > Altspace > Basics > Projector Mirror) for the people in the back of the club.

What can I customize?

In Altspace:

• Spatial Audio — have the volume drop off as you get farther away
• Volume — overall volume. In addition, you can also tell people lower their personal volume in Menu > Settings > Audio > Environment Volume.

Stream:

• Source — whether you want to stream only the Edge tab or your entire desktop
• Video Quality — 480p is recommended but if you’re showing slides you may want to go up to 720p and go down to 360p if the stream isn’t stable. Unless your whole audience is on PC with fast connections, I wouldn’t use 1080p.

FAQ

• How do I lower the volume? You can lower the volume for everybody by clicking on settings in the top right. You can also make it spatialized so that users can simply walk away from the screen if it’s too loud. Finally, you can tell people to lower their personal volume in Menu > Settings > Audio > Environment Volume.
• I see pink / magenta / green and not what I want? Try restarting both the stream on your PC/Mac and also the Web Projector in Altspace. Also try reentering the World.
• When I click Connect nothing happens? Are you signed with the same account? Check the exact username. Is your work or school blocking some network ports? Check the ports in the documentation.
• When I click Broadcast nothing happens? Try lowering the “Source” to 360p. Also, try restarting everything.
• When I choose Desktop Application as the Source I’m not seeing the stream? Make sure you’re using the latest version, 1.0.8 (as of September 2021). When you’re choosing a Screen, make sure you check Share system audio. There seems to be a bug where the stream doesn’t work if audio is not being shared as well. If you hear an echo turn off Altspace audio (on PC, mute Altspace in Volume Mixer).
• How does it work? The Edge extension streams the audio and video from your browser tab or desktop to Altspace and we broadcast that signal to all users in the World like Youtube Live or Twitch. It requires a lot of bandwidth because video is high bandwidth. So if you have issues, try lowering the quality to 360p.
• When should I use this and not the Multimedia Console or something else? Web Projector is very flexible because it’ll stream whatever you want from your computer. This is useful for music, videos, slides, etc. and also webcams and screen sharing. The main drawbacks are higher network bandwidth usage and higher performance requirements in Altspace.