AltspaceVR bags $10.3 million... for virtual D&D

Startup AltspaceVR has made a mission of building shared spaces where people can meet virtually, and that seems to be paying off for the company: it's raised $10.3 million in a new round of funding, TechCrunch reports, bringing its total funding to $15.7 million.

Alongside this, the company has launched an early version of "V20," a virtual roleplaying space that contains a meeting room and an interactive map system that allows players to conduct Dungeons & Dragons sessions in virtual reality (pictured above).

"We’re looking for apps that are going to be unique in the way they are implemented in VR," Bruce Wooden, Altspace’s head of developer and community relations, told Fast Company. "You could do ‘theater of the mind,’ but this actually allows you to show that."

The company tells TechCrunch that average session length for its VR experiences are already 25 minutes, with some players going for 3.5 hours straight -- pretty impressive numbers given the early nature of the tech. The company already has "thousands" of users, also, which is not bad given the fact that the big commercial VR packages (the Oculus Rift, and Valve and HTC's Vive) have yet to be released to consumers.