A recent video was released by Brikaro on YouTube, “Optimization and Culture in VRChat.” Instead of explaining how to optimize, Brikaro focuses on why people optimize in the first place, especially in social context. This perspective is rather important due to the culture around performance and identity in VRChat, affecting creators, communities, and the individual users—and it’s something we should talk about more often.
In a perfect world, all avatars would be optimized to a decent extent, and as Brikaro says, “if you take the time to either use or make an optimized avatar, you’re not only improving the experience of other players, but yourself as well.” Due in large to the tools VRChat provides, like the various avatar culling settings, it’s become more likely that unoptimized avatars are not shown to others. For those who see their avatar as an extension of their identity, to any extent, will find this to be rather annoying.
As a community, it’d be best to create more systems that make optimization as easy and low effort as possible since “the more effort required will naturally reduce the amount of people who will bother.” That’s not to say the community is in a bad spot. A basic example, but incredibly high quality tool, is d4rk’s avatar optimizer. Beyond that, for those who wish to do even more, Brikaro has created a list of beginner resources they found useful that you can check out. Brikaro’s video is a great new perspective and I’d encourage you to check it out because it goes into much more detail on the topic.
As the month closes, the deadline for the Candy Quest is getting ever closer. You have until November 6th, 2PM PST to get the last of your Candy Codex filled out. It might be time to find some publics and wait around to get the last pieces you need. Once complete, however, you’ll find a new punkin badge on your profile to show off!
During one of the official VRChat Twitch dev streams, it was announced that VRChat is officially on mobile! The mobile app can be installed through the Play Store and App Store, both of which are linked to in their official release page. VRChat also released an amazingly animated video as the launch trailer. As always, if you find any issues or have suggestions for the developers, you should make a new submission on the feedback page.
Miss the old PS1 style? Worry not, Rope has you covered as they’ve released a PS1 styled Lapwing. Is it really Lapwing without the face tracking though… luckily, Rope added face tracking support so you can see each individual polygon move as expected. The avatar also comes with a large selection of colors that you can use to personalize it. Check it out and any of the other awesome assets Rope has released.
VRChat is adding the ability to sign up or sign in using a Discord account. These additions were announced in their developer update and are a part of the open-beta, VRChat 2025.4.1. That doesn’t mean you have to wait, if you head to the VRChat website, click on the settings (gears on the top left or under your profile for mobile), and scroll down to “Account Linking,” you can set it up now. The only limitation currently is not being able to log in to the game since, as of release, the update is still in beta.
Over on X, MyroP showed off an amazing free shader they’ve released on GitHub in a post. The shader adds a frosted glass appearance that “uses the scene's environment reflection” to create an amazing look alongside some good performance since the shader doesn’t do anything extremely heavy. This shader also works on Quest so be creative and have fun with it!
If you wish to upload an avatar in the future, make sure the VRChat SDK is at least version 3.9.0. This announcement came from a developer update in which, at some point in the future, SDK versions under that will be blocked from uploading. Do note that this won’t affect avatars already uploaded so those can be safely edited.
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