You can read last week’s Dev Q&A here.
In the spirit of documenting our Dev Q&A, we’ve collected your questions submitted during stream and transcribed them, ordered by category. Enjoy! .
Note: No stream next week - we’ll be at FWA. Next stream is in two weeks!
Platform & Infrastructure
MetaOS vs Windows - Which Causes More VR Problems?
Q: Which gives more problems when doing VR - MetaOS or Windows?
A: MetaOS, no contest. Windows is our recommendation and generally just works for VR. We’ve periodically debated trying Linux internally but keep landing on it being too much hassle for VR specifically.
Short Messaging Between Friends Without Being in the Same World
Q: Can someone offer advice on how to trade short messages between friends in VRChat without requiring being in the same world?
A: Right now, invite requests and invite messages exist as workarounds. We know this isn’t the same as just sending a quick text - there’s been increasing discussion about this internally, recently at a higher and higher rate as we think about what the next big thing for VRChat is. Keep an eye out for improved ways to address this.
Instance Announcements via the API
Q: For the new instance announcement functionality coming out, will we be able to make announcements via the API?
A: We don’t document our API for public usage. Whether an endpoint for this exists or will exist - we think there might not be one yet. If you can figure it out via the undocumented API, that’s on you.
Are the Streams / Q&A Sections Archived Anywhere?
Q: Are the streams, or at least the Q&A sections, archived or uploaded somewhere? If not, they should be.
A: Twitch VODs stay on Twitch, but we haven’t archived the old ones and have actually deleted some. We’d welcome help archiving them. Separately, on Mondays we post a written transcription of each Dev Q&A to our Ask Forums - that’s the main official record. We just started these!
Will There Be More OSC Parameters in the Future?
Q: Since the beta test of OSC, will there be any future OSC parameters added?
A: Almost certainly yes. We tend to add them organically as we think of them - there’s no formal roadmap, but it’s a continuing area of development.
Shadow PC Is Still Down - Is There Any Progress?
Q: I have hundreds of hours in my PC avatar but can’t see it because Shadow PC is still down. Can you please look more into it?
A: We care and we’re trying, but our options are very limited. The situation is essentially a three-way standoff between us, EAC (Epic), and Shadow PC. People suggesting we should turn off or reduce our security software are correct that it’s technically possible - but, we’re not going to do that. Our security integrity matters. The most we can do is keep poking the other parties. Sorry.
Native Linux Support
Q: Can VRChat natively come to Linux someday?
A: Maybe. Steam Deck runs Linux, and we run on it, but through Proton. That kind of counts, right? The technical barrier is lower than Mac. No concrete plans, but more feasible than Mac.
Avatar & SDK
Animators and CPU Performance
Q: Animators - what’s the deal with them being such a performance problem?
A: Animators in Unity are a black box - we have no visibility into how they work internally and no control over how complex users make them. They’re one of the main reasons CPU usage is so high. We’re trying to chip away at the problem but it’s a hard one since we’re working around Unity internals, not fixing them directly.
Light Volumes, Curated Package Support, and UV Tile Discard
Q: What’s your opinion on VRChat light volumes? Could they be added to the curated packages with standard Social Toon Lit shader support? And could the standard shader get support for UV tile discard to merge meshes more efficiently?
A: Light volumes: cool. Adding them to curated packages or the standard shader is uncertain because light volumes are basically PC-only - they work on Quest/mobile but have a perf cost, which means it’s a hard sell. This is tougher when those platforms are roughly half our users. Putting a PC-only feature into the standard shader creates complications. UV tile discard: possible in principle but needs someone with deeper shader knowledge to evaluate, and anything touching our shaders has to survive on a six-year-old Quest 2.
Cross-World Data Persistence - Is There a Popularity Threshold?
Q: How popular does a world have to be to get access to cross-world data persistence?
A: There’s no popularity metric or trigger. It’s an extremely experimental feature we offer only in very specific, hand-selected situations - “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” It’s nowhere near ready for general deployment, and we don’t have an ETA.
Content Safety & Privacy
Improving User Privacy Options / Avatar Changes Visible in API
Q: Are there plans to improve user privacy options? Avatar changes are visible through the API even when a VRC+ photoset is active. Could profile picture features also be opened to all users?
A: Avatar changes being visible via API is partly intentional - clients need to know what avatar someone is wearing, and restricting that breaks things. The bigger issue is we’ve never formally defined what level of privacy users should expect in VRChat - we haven’t made that promise technologically or via policy, and we need to. That’s something we’re aware of and have to address. On profile pictures for all users: maybe someday?
Discovery & Social
Reviews for Events
Q: I would like reviews for events so I know what I can improve on.
A: We’d love reviews for everything in VRChat - events, worlds, avatars, especially purchasable ones. One concern is the potential for abuse. Despite that, reviews for content would be genuinely useful and it’s something we’d want to build.
VRChat as a Platform
Competitors and Non-Profit Platforms
Q: What’s your opinion on competitors like Overte that are established by non-profit foundations? Do you fear that VRChat might suffer the Microsoft Encarta fate or any demise similar to Rec Room?
A: We genuinely want more competitors and are sad when others don’t succeed. We’re disappointed Rec Room hasn’t found the success we’d hoped for, that Horizon Worlds didn’t pan out, and we’re glad Resonite is still around. Friendly competition keeps everyone sharp. Being the only platform left in this space is not a goal - it’s a bad outcome. We also want to look into “Overte,” which we weren’t familiar with.
Stop Killing Games - Would VRChat Have an End-of-Life Plan?
Q: The Stop Killing Games movement has been gaining momentum, even in EU Parliament. Do you have plans, or would you be willing to make plans, to let VRChat be playable after shutdown or end-of-support?
A: We’re familiar with the movement. Applying it to VRChat feels like a different case from the games it originally covered. VRChat is fundamentally built on Unity, so the content is highly portable. Worlds can be pulled into other environments, and our proprietary layer (Udon, etc.) is relatively thin. No formal end-of-life plans exist. Whether we’d make them is above our pay grade. But the content portability argument is a meaningful distinction from games that lock everything in a proprietary binary – your avatars and worlds are just Unity projects, after all.
Community / Off-Topic
Do You Speak Any Other Languages?
Q: Do any of you speak other languages? Can you try speaking them?
A: Tupper knows Python and R (joke), and self-describes as just barely knowing English. One team member is learning ASL, one is learning Japanese, one speaks two dialects of Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) and knows some Spanish and can read a little Italian. Talox noted that technically they speak a non-native language every time they speak English.
What MMO / Fantasy Class Would Each Team Member Be?
Q: Me and my friends were talking about what fantasy class / MMO-like job roles notable team members are. What do you think of each other’s alignment?
A: Consensus emerged through some good-natured arguing. Flare: Bard (strong consensus) or Life Domain Cleric / Holy Priest. Strasz: Warlock (everyone agreed, Strasz included). Ali: Druid (overruled an early Artificer suggestion). Talox: Artificer or Engineer. Tupper: Depends on who you ask - anything from a Warforged, to a Peco Knight (Ragnarok Online), to a Shadow Priest, etc.
Will I Ever Be Able to Hold More Than Two Plushies?
Q: I wanted to hold many plushies. Will I ever be able to hold more than two?
A: If you believe in yourself - yes. If you don’t believe in yourself - never.
Who From VRChat Is Going to FWA?
Q: I’m excited to see the devs at FWA. Who is going to be there?
A: Some of us are going, like Tupper and Flare. We’ll be hanging out with friends of the team and attending a meetup with a lot of attendees. Tupper is planning to find someone with a ProtoAvali-head fursuit to try on, and is fully prepared for the experience of not being able to see anything.
What VRChat Community Creation Keeps You Inspired?
Q: What is something created by the VRChat community that keeps you inspired?
A: Hard to narrow down. One specific answer: educational museum worlds, especially ones about space, aeronautics, and air shows. Another, more philosophical: the intangible thing that keeps the platform alive - people openly sharing creative energy and knowledge with others so they can build things too. The community members who foster spaces for new creators and make VRChat feel like more than just seeing someone screaming in a Freddy Fazbear avatar and portaling to the worst world on the list.
Reminiscing About Early VRChat
Q: Quick, everyone role-play like you’re reminiscing about VRChat in the nursing home!
A: The unanimous take: nostalgia for early VRChat is really nostalgia for the people, not the app. The app in 2017-2018 crashed constantly, had no mitigations, had horrible UI, ran terribly with more than 30 people, and the SDK was primitive (ex: you had to chain set-parameter calls just to invoke a function on another object - no function calls at all). Nobody truly wants to go back to that. But the people from that era, the friends made, the particular community attitudes - those are genuinely missed. The way the community is structured has changed a lot in nearly 10 years, and some of what’s lost is the easy spontaneity of making a new friend in a random public instance. That part is real.