Welcome to the Developer Update for January 16 – the first Developer Update of the year!
Today’s featured world is 消えたあなたと‚ 止まっている春が-Spring and you by AREN _ (with the space!)
Announcements
The Next Jam
We’ll be announcing our new World Jam on February 24!
Want to discuss your excitement or plans for the next Jam? Join our Discord and check out the #vrchat-jams channel!
Open Applications for the Creator Showcase
We’re looking for VRChat creators to feature as a part of our “Creator Showcase” series!
You can watch all of last year’s shorts here.
We’re looking for World Creators, Avatar Creators, Groups, Communities… you name it!
If you do something cool in VRChat and want us to feature you, please apply here.
Age Verification Update
We’ve been receiving a lot of questions about when Age Verification will be expanding!
Well… we don’t have any information just yet, but it should be sooner rather than later. We’ll provide another update in the next Dev Update, though.
User Research Surveys
We recently (as of Dec 2024) have begun sending out emails from ur@vrchat.com (through SurveyMonkey). These are real emails!
If you received one and are still suspicious of the validity of the contents, feel free to file a support ticket with us to review it.
We’re Testing… Things
In the near future, users might notice features or changes on any or all platforms that are… different. Sometimes, these will be unreported. In other words, you won’t see them listed in the patch notes, and you won’t see them discussed here (or anywhere else).
Not to worry! This is because we are (and will be, for the forseeable future) running a series of tests across all platforms.
The results of these tests might lead to new features or changes, and if they are rolled out to everyone, we’ll then talk about them.
But – in general! – if you see something strange, don’t worry!
Like always, if you feel like you’ve encountered a bug, feel free to report it.
SDK2 New Upload Deprecation
VRChat has had a few SDKs, and our last one before Udon was SDK2. It used a system called triggers to allow users to create dynamic experiences and worlds—and some folks used it to great effect, creating amazing and memorable experiences like The Devouring and Treehouse in the Shade.
However, maintaining SDK2 has a significant cost, both in dev time to support it and in the code running inside of VRChat required to support it. We need to spin it down to make room for new features and improvements, improve compatibility, and improve performance across VRChat.
As such, we will deprecate new SDK2 uploads starting on February 18, 2025. This means you will no longer be able to upload new SDK2 worlds or avatars after this date.
SDK2 worlds and avatars will continue to work in VRChat after this date, but you will not be able to upload new ones. For those with existing SDK2 worlds or avatars, you will still be able to upload new versions of them. However, at a future date (we don’t have a solid date for this yet), we will turn off these existing content updates, too.
As such, please migrate any SDK2 content you wish to continue updating or working on to SDK3. For avatars, you can use the powerful Avatars 3.0 system. For worlds, you will gain access to Udon, a powerful new system for creating interactive worlds.
There are many ways to use SDK3 and Udon to create dynamic worlds:
- Udon Graphs: Udon Graphs are a visual scripting system that allows you to create interactive worlds without writing code. You can use Udon Graphs to create interactive objects, NPCs, and more. Learn more about the Udon Graph system here.
- UdonSharp: UdonSharp is a C# scripting system that allows you to write code to create interactive worlds. If you are a programmer, you can use UdonSharp to create complex interactions and systems. Learn more about UdonSharp here.
- CyanTrigger (Community Created): If you are a fan of the Triggers and Actions from SDK2, and would like to use a similar system in SDK3, check out CyanLaser’s CyanTrigger system. It uses Udon in the background, and you’ll find yourself in a familiar environment.
Upcoming Changes to Logging
We’re planning to change how VRChat writes its log files in the near future.
This won’t be particularly relevant to most of you, but we’re aware of many community made tools that work by parsing our client’s log files, so we’re giving you some advance notice of what’s coming.
These are the differences we’re expecting compared to how logging behaves now:
- Our current log files include two empty lines after every log statement. The coming changes will remove these empty lines, so every log statement will immediately follow the previous one.
- If you enable logging on a non-PC device, like the Quest 2 or any mobile phone, VRChat currently disables it again automatically the next time it runs on that device. This behavior is planned to be disabled, so logging will instead stay enabled once you’ve turned it on until you turn it off again, similar to how PC already works.
We’ve made sure that the format of each log statement is still the same as it was before. There will be no changes to how logging is done from Udon logic in worlds - you can continue to use Debug.Log() and its variants to write log statements.
If you’re interested in what’s happening internally, we’re changing how logs are written by VRChat to try and reduce memory allocation, which may help to improve microstutters on mobile devices by reducing the amount of memory VRChat needs to clean up periodically.
Conclusion
That’s it for this update! We’ll see you again on January 30!
