Starlink makes the game lock up and even crash

Game started to lock up every minute and stay locked until I wait for like 30 seconds, and it keeps doing it until my patience crashes too.

This all started ever since we moved to Starlink as our internet provider, due to currently living in a small town in the middle of nowehere.
It works well on everything, EXCEPT for VRChat.

I can confirm it’s the internet because I tried with my Windows 10 PC, then fully formatted it and tested it on Windows 11 AND Linux Mint. I even tried it on my older brother’s PC, and same issues…

Any tips to fix this?

I don’t know what could cause that, but it seem clear that’s due to to the change of internet providers.

Does it happend every day, or maybe when you tested, connexion wasn’t stable ?

Happens everytime, ever since we switched to Starlink.
Very consistently too. Maybe it’s something I have to change from the settings of the internet, but I dunno…

i just switched to starlink wifi couple days ago and i can say i’m also having weird issues with vr chat. when i first load it up it takes a sec to even show anything which has never happened until i switched, also video/music players in worlds no longer work, they just load and load and nothing happens. if you find some fix let me know.

I just got Starlink and im having the same issue, never had a crash or a freeze up but Friends locations are buggy, Portals load in blank, switching avatars/worlds takes a minute and so do the video players.

One thing I found out that VRC draws so little internet that it bores Starlink and wont even ramp up to speed… being on a traffic demanding website helped, so did steam updating games.

Did you find any solution? Something more solid than wasting bandwith.
@tupper fix this shit :3

so for me i figured out whenever i’m on ethernet is when i get all the weird issues, whenever my pc is connected to wifi all the weird issues goes away. not too sure why but that’s how i fixed it. also i play on quest 2 using steam link wirelessly to play vrc.

I dunno what’s going on here, I know of many folks on Starlink who don’t run into these issues. I don’t have Starlink myself, and I don’t believe any team members use it either, so this will be very hard for us to test.

I know Starlink has intermittent, short outages due to satellite swaps, but those shouldn’t interrupt VRChat long enough to cause an issue (~5 seconds as the antenna swaps). I also know that Starlink has gone to great measures to ensure that IPs don’t change wildly when satellites swap ground stations.

As such, I’d wager this is probably an issue with Starlink’s local router that they give you.

This further solidifies my guess that it’s weird behavior in the Starlink router.

Does anyone here use an external router? A network setup that looks like this:

Internet -> Starlink -> Starlink Router -> Home Router -> Computer

Doing this would drop out Starlink’s router from the equation, assuming that it’s set up properly.

I got some further updates. Turns out one of our team members has run VRChat full-time on Starlink at various points! They had no issues.

They recommend changing your DNS to Google DNS (8.8.8.8 ) or Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1 ) / Cloudflare WARP. Like many ISPs, the Starlink default DNS servers are often slow or incorrect.

If you continue to have issues, contact us at https://vrch.at/support with some output logs. That should help us track down things and help you out a little better.

1 Like

Adding a “me too” here. I have forwarded the logs as requested.

I am on wired ethernet, my housemate is on wifi. We both connect via a switch to the same starlink router. I have the problem, my housemate does not. So it appears that it only affects wired connections, as other commenters have suggested.

Adding a “me too” here as well. I have been running Starlink since July and have been having this issue as well. I am on an ethernet connection and when I try to play VR Chat the game sits at the splash screen for several minutes before finally loading in, avis and videos also take a long time to load in. Sometimes rebooting the router fixes these issues but lately the issues comeback within a few minutes of running VR Chat. I am able to confirm that the issues go away when I play via Wi-Fi. I’d prefer to not play entirely over Wi-Fi though since the router is located at the other end of the house and the experience over VR is particularly laggy.

Tomorrow I will be trying a new router via bypass mode and hopefully that fixes the issue on it’s own, I will report back if it doesn’t. For now though I’m writing up a support ticket with output logs while I’m still on the base Starlink Gen 3 router.

Edit: I also wanna add that this issue has only been affecting VR Chat and no other game that I play. I’ve also gone through the steps of trying google and cloudflare DNS while on Ethernet, neither made a difference.

1 Like

Day one of testing VR Chat with Starlink Bypass mode. By default my new router which is a TPLINK AX3000 has the default DNS as 1.1.1.1 and the backup as 8.8.8.8. I am running ethernet and so far I am able to report that VR Chat connects immediately, video players work, and avatars load almost instantly. I still need to test introducing my Quest 3 to the network and playing in VR. I will report back if I encounter any issues.

So now my internet goes like this.
Internet → Starlink → Starlink Router (bypass mode) → TPLINK AX3000 → Computer.

Like @tupper said earlier it seems to be weird behavior with the Starlink Router itself.

1 Like

Two days later and I haven’t been having any issues with VR Chat. Hopefully I don’t jinx it. I recommend picking up a quality third party router and putting Starlink in bypass mode.

One last note, I’ve been having good luck forcing the primary DNS as 1.1.1.1 and the secondary as 8.8.8.8 on the router.

1 Like