VRChat is a social VR platform that allows players to upload their own content. Almost everything you come into contact with, inside of VRChat, will be community created content. This goes for every avatar you see and every world you visit. VRChat gives their players a lot of freedom to make whatever they want, meaning a lot of content is sure to be low performant and unoptimized. This is why the game may seem laggy to some people. If you are in an environment with low performative avatars, you are sure to lose frames. If you are in a world that isn’t optimized properly, it may be unpleasant to be there. The other factor that goes into your game running smoothly is your hardware. Can your system run VRChat?

VRChat Requirements Specs

There are multiple ways to play VRChat. You can play on desktop mode, use a PC VR headset, or you can play using a a standalone Quest headset. The Quest 2 is the best standalone VR headset to use for VRChat. If you plan to use your PC you should follow the recommended System Requirements listed on the Steam Store. Its recommended you have a minimum of 4GB Ram, an Intel i5-4590, and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 equivalent or higher. If you plan on using a VR headset with your PC, you may want to have even higher specs than that. Follow the recommended system requirements for the headset you plan to use. Usually the spec requirements can be found on the VR  headsets company websites.

What Makes a Laggy Avatar?

A lot goes into making an avatar and there is a ton that can attribute to a low performative one. Things like number of bones, polygon count, and particles, can all add to lowering the performance of an avatar. Luckily VRChat gives creators tools to help decipher whether or not an avatar is optimized.

Inside of VRChat, avatars are ranked based on their performance. You should try to use avatars that are good or medium performance. By clicking on other players, you can see what performance rank their avatars are, by clicking “view avatar details”. If you are in a world with a lot of low performance avatars, then their is a chance you may experience some lag.

What Makes a Laggy World?

Just like avatars, there are a ton of factors that can attribute to a world being laggy. Some things that could contribute to lag are: the amount of polygons, the amount of pick up (rigid body) objects, real time lights, certain shaders, particles, the amount of materials, and the programming happening behind the scenes. If someone builds a world without the understanding of how to optimize the space, then their is a chance you may experience lag.

If you join a world by yourself and you experience lag, then its probable that the world is not optimized. The biggest culprit for lag in a world is caused by real time lights. World creators should always bake their lights when possible.

How to Use Safety Settings to Increase Frames

Its easy to control what worlds you visit, but its not easy to control what avatars people choose to wear. You can use safety settings in VRChat to make sure your game runs smoothly, despite players avatars. If you go to safety settings, you can choose to block certain features on players avatars.

By hitting “performance options” on the top right, you can choose to block avatars that are above a certain performance rank and you can block avatars that have a large download size. In this menu, you can also choose other graphic options like disabling dynamic bones. All of these options can help prevent lag and keep your game running smoothly.