v0.0.0 alpha developer preview, rough draft, etc etc etc

It may not be obvious from the name, but VRChat is not VR-exclusive and has a robust desktop mode. Desktop mode is a great way to get your feet wet and you should certainly try desktop a few times before spending $$$ on VR hardware.

This page is written as a crash course in navigating VRChat to join us for a hangout, with primary emphasis on doing so via desktop.

Get it on Steam, it's free. Launch the client and you'll be at the login screen.

There are two types of account in VRChat: native VRChat accounts and platform-linked accounts. Platform-linked accounts let you sign in via Steam. Typically I recommend using a native VRC account, but there's nothing wrong with platform-linked accounts and they can be merged into full native accounts later on.

It will ask for your birthday. You can enter any value you want, but make sure the value places your age as over 18. (Note: VRC supports ID-based age verification too, but that's separate and not necessary.)

VRChat are kind of yahtzees about IP addresses and email providers. Specifically they block signups from VPN IPs and they block protonmail 💢. If either of these pose a problem for you, let me know and I can hook you up with an account. Note they do not block VPNs from using VRC, it is only the signup process.

It may throw you into a tutorial. It definitely used to, but I couldn't get it to trigger while writing this guide. If it does, just go along with the tutorial, it pretty much just teaches you how to press WASD.

Hit ESC to open the menu and click on Social. At the top left, click User Search, and search for syncpulse Click on me. Make sure it's actually me, note the one with the robot photo is not me! Under Actions, click Friend Request. Now ping me on an external platform (Discord, Fedi, Bsky, etc) to let me know you sent the request. I get tons of random friend requests from YTS and yours will get lost unless you let me know. If I'm online I should have you accepted in a minute or two. Once I've accepted, proceed to . . .

Hit ESC and go back to Social again. Click on my name under Friend Locations. Now under Actions, click Join! (Note: If you don't see Join, click Request Invite instead, and then you'll get an invite in the bell icon at the top right.)

On desktop, the primary way you interact is via voice. If your microphone is quiet or messed up, you will naturally feel left out in conversations. Hit ESC, click the speaker icon at the bottom, then scroll down to Microphone. Adjust the settings as necessary to send a strong mic signal. When speaking normally, you want the bar to be reaching at least halfway up.

Then close the menu and press the V key to activate push-to-talk. You can disable PTT in mic settings and use Toggle for voice activation, but make sure background noise won't activate your mic. Feedback from speakers is also really annoying so headphones are a must.

If you're really having trouble with the mic, you can hit the Y key to use text chat and we'll help you out.

• Esc - Menu
• WASD - Move
• Left click - Interact or hold object (right click to drop)
• Left Shift - Run
• C, Z - Crouch, crawl (press C or Z again to exit crouch/crawl)
• Space - Jump
• R - Expressions menu
• V - Microphone control - push-to-talk, mic toggle
• IJKL, UO - Rotate held object
• Scroll wheel - Move held object

If you wandered away or got stuck somewhere, hit ESC and click the Respawn button.

Just follow the steps to join me again. Also typically if someone is still online but sitting in the last world, I'll shoot them an invite just in case.

ESC menu → speaker icon → decrease the World volume in the mixer

VRChat has three primary types of menu. I encourage you to explore the menus yourself, but here's a quick reference just so you know which menu we're talking about.

Brought up by hitting ESC. Contains quick functions and settings.

Brought up by opening the Quick Menu, then clicking the expanding arrow icon at the top right. This contains more functions and settings. Almost everything is in here. The “Quick Links” on the Quick Menu are just shortcuts into sub-menus here.

Brought up by pressing the R key. Avatar settings and tools can be found here.

Some of us use avatars that fall afoul of the minimum performance requirements, which may cause us to appear as error robots, crunchy pixelated versions of our real avatars (avatar impostors), or stupid shit like a stick of butter or banana (fallback avatars). To manually show someone's avatar, open the menu, go to the Here tab, click the user, then click the eye on Avatar Display. If someone's avatar is giving you grief you can also hide it from here.

Here are some non-default settings you probably want to apply for basic usage with us. You can get to these from the quick menu → big menu → gear icon at the top right.

• Comfort & Safety → Comfort → Personal Space → OFF
• Comfort & Safety → Safety → Allow Untrusted URLs → ON
• User Interface → HUD → Show Gesture Icons → ON
• User Interface → HUD Verbose Mode Settings → Show Portal Notifications → ON
• Accessibility → Display and Visual Adjustments → Bloom Intensity → 50-75%

And a few more that aren't in the big settings menu:

• Quick menu → speaker icon → Microphone → Mic Icon Visibility → Always On
• Quick menu → gear icon → Debug → Pin FPS and Ping → ON

In VRChat there are multiple ephemeral “instances” of a world. Anyone can create an instance of any world and configure who is able to join. Typically we create “Friends+” instances, which means that direct friends and friends-of-friends may join the instance.

If you click on a world and just hit Join it will throw you into a public instance. Click “New Instance” if you want to be alone. You can then either join directly, or drop a portal if you want the people around you to join as well.

Users can set a status, which is both text and a privacy level. The various privacy levels and the typical user expectations are:

• Blue (Join Me) - please join
• Green (Online) - please join
• Orange (Ask Me) - in private, you can request to join, might be accepted but probably not
• Red (Do Not Disturb) - requesting to join is not even possible

The way these interact with instance privacy levels (Public, Friends, Invite, etc) is complex and I won't explain it here. For a basic hangout you don't need to worry about it.

A few things that may be non-obvious when you're new to VRChat and especially on desktop:

• There is no collision between players, but try not to run straight through people, this is disorienting/annoying in VR
• Voice latency in VRChat is much higher than typical voice calls, so be sure to wait for a gap in conversation (you kinda just have to feel this out, you'll get used to it, don't stress over it)
• Remember that voice is positional and has a maximum range which varies from world to world. If you run off into the distance we won't be able to hear you
• VR users especially are typically locked-in and not fucking around in other apps. One of the nice things about VRC is people will actually have conversations without playing with their phone the whole time. If you are distracted and screwing around on Discord or watching videos in another window, this kind of breaks the social expectations
• In our hangout group, taking photos is almost always OK, but please ask before recording video
• You can work around desktop mode's limited fidelity of expression by doing little things like looking towards the person you are addressing, etc

Desktop mode is not too demanding. A friend of ours on an i7-3770K, 16GB RAM, and GTX 1660 2GB has acceptable performance in almost all situations on desktop. Even a modern integrated GPU should be somewhat usable with the graphics settings decreased.

For VR, you basically want the most powerful machine you can possibly get. Even on a flagship GPU you won't reach the framerate cap in many worlds. That being said, an RTX 3060 class GPU should be acceptable for basically everything.

VRAM is king. VRChat also loves big CPU caches so the AMD X3D chips are great.

Tupper's build guide is an OK reference for VR

Myself and several others are multi-year veterans and are happy to answer any questions you may have, no matter how basic, whether about getting the client set up or how to use some function of it.