Frequently Asked Questions:

Are there any avatars available other than laptops?

No, right now there are only Laptops. We would have to think about getting a new name for the whole project once we take that idea seriously, so it's not planned for the immediate future.

Does it support VR?

We do not support VR, and we probably never will. We feel that (current) VR headsets take away the possiblity to look each other in the eye. We think that is pretty valuable and a lot better than replacing each other with 3d-emoji-avatars.

Why laptops and not ... ?

The laptop (or computer) is the medium we use to interact online. We took that medium and placed it in a virtual world where we can talk screen to screen. Trying to make the medium go away completely doesn't work anyway so we wanted to embrace it fully. Plus it feels oddly nice to steer through space as a laptop.

Why in space and not in ... ?

We wanted to have an abstract setting that does not distract too much from other participants. So the environment is mostly black. And of course it adds a bit to the surreal feel of the whole thing, which we like.

Is this secure?

We don't want to claim things we cannot keep (looking at you, zoom), but we are pretty security aware and can say that: Everything runs over encrypted channels between you our servers and back. This is called transport layer security. It's pretty good, but you have to have a certain trust in us that we don't manipulate your data on our servers. We can just ask you to take our word for it: We don't mess with any video or audio data on our servers, it is just forwarded to the people who are in the same room as you so that you can talk to each other. The service itself is built on top of WebRTC standards which is the same underlying technology that for example jitsi is using. This standard already enforces some security mechanisms out of the box, so we of course keep them as well.

Where are your servers?

All of our servers are located in Germany.

Can we use this for ... ?

Probably! And of course we are super happy to hear about it! Find us on instagram or twitter @laptopsinspace and mention us in your space endeavours.