I clap and clap about clap a million clap other clap creators clap want clap to be clap able clap to mess clap with experimental clap shaders clap on platforms clap OTHER THAN PC
Like holy hecc, how much does it take to turn a toggle on to allow untrusted shaders on avatars… You already have untrusted urls… If a shader is being tested actively on alternative hardware, then its going to be in a private instance anyway.
Mobile (aka IOS and PHONES) are not well enough right now to enable them automatically, however with the quest 3 and 3s being released and having extreme graphical performance upgrades, being widely available to a consumer market… And don’t get me started on allowing deformation shaders… SDK3 is solid, dont get me wrong, but the lack of freedom with my existing hardware hurts.
So there’s a few layers here that can be answered but mostly it comes down to that a Quest is just an Android phone shoved into an HMD form factor. The simple fact is that the performance overhead is not enough for VRChat to risk stability for the sake of a few devices.
Yes the Quest 3/3s is more powerful but most people are still running around with a Quest 2. VRChat would rather the 3/3s enjoy the performance bump over killing performance and stability on the Quest 2. Not to mention there are other HMDs running Android such as the Pico 4 and HTC XR, both of these with different hardware specs from the Quest HMDs. It’s simply easier to apply the same rules to everyone than need to constantly juggle different settings for different hardware.
As for the difference in blocking Very Poor avatars, that simply comes down to potential backlash. VRChat would love to remove all Very Poors from Quest but because people would see that as a feature being removed they decided against that. However, as mobile is technically a new platform it’s an easier pill for the userbase to swallow.
Sadly the real answer is; no VRChat will not. These are limits placed on this version of VRChat because the hardware itself is very limited. PCs can be passively upgraded with new hardware over time, phones and Android based HMDs cannot.
That is quite unfortunate. Honestly hoped that as big as VRChat is as a creator-economy, that opening up the rabbit hole for the dedicated hardware that can run experimental creator shaders. I personally see the Q3/s as being a potential gateway (graphically) into opening up the environment for the creators, since Meta opened up their full OS ecosystem (which I know also comes with huge caveats) to practically become what android was at its inception as open source, while unfortunately google is pushing towards the exact opposite now in the core OS.
I and a lot of people probably know that it isn’t happening any time soon, but questies with the development knowledge on shaders should be able to at least open up an experiment for it…
Man, it really is unfortunate how unbelievably long its been and they open it up to freaking iphone/ipad users… of all platforms… Instead of investing in better shader tech/security overhead.
The Quest 3/3s isn’t that much more powerful than a higher end modern Android phone, VRChat can only do some much to optimize things. Also the userbase sure loves to use any headroom gained from optimization for even heavier avatars but that’s a completely different discussion.
Not really sure what going to iOS has nothing do to with any of that as well. It simply has a large userbase that has never had direct access to VRChat so there’s a built-in incentive to expand there.
The graphical performance is so extreme I get a decent FPS with a Quest 3S. TBF I did recently learn that the quest 3 and 3s run VRChat at the same resolution.
Personally I’ve been lightly tinkering with shaders in a world, the differences between Quest 2 and quest 3 are interesting. I found a wireframe projector, and on the Quest 2 apparently it doesnt render at all in world, but it looks fine in the camera or a mirror. On the quest 3 it shows in world, but only on the left eye.
Tried another geometry shader, completely invisible in world on both quests.