Developer Update - 22 Aug 2024

[strasz]

Welcome to the Developer Update for 22 Aug 2024!

Today’s thumbnail features Aquarius by Fins, for PC Only.

Our last Developer Update was back on the 8th! Did you miss it? Go check it out here!

Announcements

Summer Music Jam Winners!

The Summer Music Festival Jam winners are here!

As a reminder, the Summer Music Festival Jam was open to world and avatar creators, encouraging both to create content that was season-appropriate, full of vibes, and accessible to our entire community.

You can find a list of all the world and avatar winners here. Alternatively, you can check out the default home world to see them, too!

Speaking of Summer Music Jam…

What’s a bunch of party worlds without a party?

We’ll be hosting a music event in one of the winning worlds featuring DJs from the VRChat dev team! You can catch the event on August 26 from 5PM PDT/8PM EDT to 8:45PM PDT/11:45PM EDT! To get into the event, you’ll have to join the Ministry group. Big thanks to them for helping us host this event!

(You’ll also be able to find it on vrc.tl – which, by the way, is an incredible resource for seeing what music events are going on in VRChat on any given day!)

VRChat Creators Roadmap is Updated for August 2024!

It’s almost autumn! Time for an updated roadmap for Avatar and World creators.

Since our May 2024 roadmap, we’ve shipped 7 out of 13 of the announced features for creators. Not bad!

Now, of course, it’s time to look to the future.

You can find the full roadmap here. Go check it out!

Avatar Size Limit Enforcement

We’ve been talking about avatar size limits for a bit! They are now enforced by the latest SDK release. If you try to upload an avatar that breaks our maximum download or uncompressed size limits, it will tell you and prevent you from uploading it!

In the next week or so, we’ll start enforcing this server side. That means that even folks on older versions of the SDK will no longer be able to upload avatars that break the limits.

The final step to this plan will roll out on November 1st. On or around that day, we will change it so avatars over the size limit will no longer load in VRChat, even if they were uploaded before the limits were in place.

There’s also Creator documentation that discusses this! You can read it here.

2023.3.1 Release!

Last week, we released 2023.3.1! If you haven’t yet, you can watch our Patch Notes video covering it here:

VRChat Video Patchnotes 2024.3.1 (Input 2.0, VRC Constraints, New Portals) #vrchat

In short, this update introduced Input 2.0 (and all the goodies that came with it), VRC Constraints, and updated portals.

It was a big release!

Likewise, we also pushed two patches last week (p1 and p2) and one this week (p3) responding to feedback and squashing bugs. If you’re still having issue with input, make sure you check out our documentation!

New Getting Started Guide

Have a friend who is just getting their start in VRChat? We now have an updated guide to help them get started! Our new guide is inclusive of all platforms – give it a look here!

VRChat Wiki is Live!

The VRChat Wiki is open! Check it out!

The wiki has been built over the past few months with a team of community contributors, maintainers, and organizers. It contains all kinds of information, from basic usage of VRChat to articles on worlds and guides on technical subjects!

Moreover, if you want to build your own content, you can! Sign in using your VRChat account and create pages in the Community space. You can write a guide, document features, share knowledge, and more. Check out the Contributor Hub before you start adding stuff, and make sure you join the Wiki Contributor Discord server!

Ensure you follow the wiki guidelines and rules – our VRChat Maintainer team has done excellent work creating a beautiful wiki with guiding principles toward a centralized information source. If you’re interested in contributing, a great space to start is at the Contributor Hub.

We’ll promote the wiki with links from VRChat, the VCC, the SDK, and more, coming soon. Keep an eye out!

Avatar Self-Destruction Changes

Particle systems in Unity have a Stop Action setting that can be used to have the game object the particle system is attached to either disable or destroy itself when the particle system finishes. Similarly, trail renderers have an auto-destruct setting that destroys the game object they’re attached to once the trail has disappeared.

In the near future, we expect to start disallowing these settings on avatars in VRChat since they can potentially cause issues for other users. Worlds will be unaffected by this change.

In summary:

• Your avatar cannot contain any particle systems that have their Stop Action set to Destroy.
• Your avatar cannot contain any trail renderers that have Autodestruct switched on.
• Your avatar cannot have a particle system on its root game object with its Stop Action set to Disable. You will still be able to use particle systems set to Disable on other game objects on your avatar, just not on the root directly.

Work in Progress

New Features in Udon

We’ve exposed some highly-requested C# features to Udon!

These include:

Array.Sort()

This function provides a variety of way to sort an Array, which will be useful for managing Players in an Udon world.

Canny: Array.Sort | World/Udon Bugs & Feature Requests | VRChat

System.Random

This version of Random provides a way to create deterministic random seeds, as well as random Bytes and Doubles, extending the possibilities for randomness in Udon Worlds beyond what UnityEngine.Random can do. We’ve exposed 4 new functions.

Canny: Expose System.Random | World/Udon Bugs & Feature Requests | VRChat

StringBuilder

The StringBuilder class provides many ways to build and reformat strings, with better performance than the existing string functions. We’ve exposed 18 new functions and properties.

Canny: Please expose StringBuilder | World/Udon Bugs & Feature Requests | VRChat

Regular Expressions

RegEx is a powerful system for searching, matching and replacing patterns within strings of text. We’ve exposed 14 new functions and properties.

Canny: Expose System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace | World/Udon Bugs & Feature Requests | VRChat

Type

The type class is used to interact with data types, and can be useful to advanced creators who want to validate object types at runtime. We’ve exposed 67 new functions and properties.

Canny: Expose System.Type.IsSubclassOf(), .IsInstanceOfType(), .IsSubclassOf(), and .baseType | World/Udon Bugs & Feature Requests | VRChat

Thanks for upvoting these items on Canny so we know how important they are!

Automatic Unity Avatar Optimizer

We’re working on a build-in SDK tool to help users automatically optimize their triangles and materials on their avatars.

…that’s pretty exciting!

We don’t have any specific details to share at this time (outside of the fact that we’re working on it), but we did want to shout it out, as progress is being made internally.

See Ya!

…and that’s all for this week! Check back on September 5th for the next Developer Update

[Patroll]

@strasz

VRChat Wiki is Live!

Remember to pet the cat

[docteh]

@strasz

The final step to this plan will roll out on November 1st. On or around that day, we will change it so avatars over the size limit will no longer load in VRChat, even if they were uploaded before the limits were in place.

As a PC/PCVR player is there a way for me to get information on the quest versions of avatars? Also if these avatars will no longer load, will the platform indicator be updated accordingly?

I’d like to nag gently remind friends where appropriate.

[Spokeek]

Wiki Wiki Wiki Wuuuuuuu !

drops the DJ mic

[Yin]

Good updates I’m excited for persistence

[Nekotaku]

What about removing the controllers showing up when you open the main menu? Surely it can’t be intentional! Regardless I don’t want it, it should be tied to tool tips if anything.

[ZenithVal]

@strasz

this update introduced Input 2.0

Still a lot of growing pains with this update. Physbone interaction is still a challenge on Vive. And there’s a couple of other tracked cannies~ really hope we see fixes soon.

@strasz

VRChat Wiki

K N O W L E D G E ~ love to see this.

@strasz

We’re working on a build-in SDK tool to help users automatically optimize their triangles and materials on their avatars.

For “triangles?” So like, decimation? Or are you implying more mesh related stuff? I’d love to see an approach similar to D4rk’s or Euan’s optimizers. D4rk’s optimizer is really intelligent, merging meshes and automatically creating UV Discard shader toggles for people that make clothing toggles by toggling skinned meshes. (And a lot more)

[Zekk]

@strasz

Automatic Unity Avatar Optimizer

We’re working on a build-in SDK tool to help users automatically optimize their triangles and materials on their avatars.

…that’s pretty exciting!

We don’t have any specific details to share at this time (outside of the fact that we’re working on it), but we did want to shout it out, as progress is being made internally.

Excited for this!

Hopefully this will enable a lot more people to make optimized versions of their avatars! The required Blender skills for optimizing is a big ask for a lot of people.

[Savi]

Awww, was hoping to hear more about the camera update teased in the last developer update.

[moonorama]

@strasz

Automatic Unity Avatar Optimizer

We’re working on a build-in SDK tool to help users automatically optimize their triangles and materials on their avatars.

…that’s pretty exciting!

We don’t have any specific details to share at this time (outside of the fact that we’re working on it), but we did want to shout it out, as progress is being made internally.

Can’t wait to see where this goes! Some parts of optimizing are really not fun to do. I hope this tool can automate those parts and make optimizing easier.

[hoshizukiyo]

@strasz

Automatic Unity Avatar Optimizer

We’re working on a build-in SDK tool to help users automatically optimize their triangles and materials on their avatars.

While this is a good thing to have and something I’m excited to see more support from officially, this is the sort of area that has, until now, been left to community tools.

As such, it will really need to be highly interoperable with community tools or it will only cause controversy and complaints. My excitement for such a feature is already tempered by visions of thousands of complaints on twitter about broken avatars.

Please consider making this feature a non-destructive build time optimization and provide code support integrating with the popular non-destructive community frameworks NDMF and VRCFury.

[kawashirov]

Still waiting for udon persistence…

[moonorama]

persistence is currently in closed beta VRChat Creators Roadmap (August 2024)

[uoppoH]

Nice updates! The next Developer Update is on my birthday, could there be a cake graphic for the next update post?

[Aydanfox]

STILL waiting for Camera node system update. During the implementation of EAC you said it was going to be worked on. No mention of it anywhere.

[DAG-XR]

It has been a pleasure working om the VRChat Wiki with everybody. I’m REALLY excited about a built-in optimizer for the SDK.

[Merlin]

(And has been in closed beta for several months) I hope it’s released sooner than later but I’ll point out that Steam Audio has been in closed beta for more than 3 years so it’s not exactly the strongest indicator of when something will release.

[flyingblooper]

If you don’t have a quest, your second best option is vrchat android. Though very poor avis are forced off no matter what on mobile.

[dark]

@strasz

It’s almost autumn! Time for an updated roadmap for Avatar and World creators.

Still advocating for a trello-style kanban! It’d be way easier to share and find than a forum post, and be easier to see the current state of things!

@strasz

We’ve exposed some highly-requested C# features to Udon!

Awesome! Where’s Udon 2?

@strasz

We’re working on a build-in SDK tool to help users automatically optimize their triangles and materials on their avatars.

That’s quite exciting. Though I wonder if this will be swept under the rug like so many features have that were announced a year or two ago.

[docteh]

If I can’t see them, likely can’t see the performance information.