What are the rules in VRChat?

Please refer to our Community Guidelines.

Do I need VR to use VRChat?

No, you do not! You can play in “Desktop Mode”, which lets you use a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. It controls like many first-person games.

If you are playing VRChat on Steam, launch the application and click “Launch in Desktop (Non-VR) mode”.

If you are playing VRChat on Oculus, click the three dots on the VRChat icon in your library, and click “Launch in Desktop Mode”.

What's the difference between a Steam or Oculus account, and a VRChat accounted created on the website?

Steam and Oculus logins make it super easy to get started in VRChat. It’s probably best that you create a VRChat account when you can, though! Only VRChat accounts can use the SDK to upload content of their own.

I’ve got VRChat booted up and went through the tutorial. How do I find a world to join and hang out?

Okay, here’s the sweet deal: if you press the Quick Menu button on your controller or the Escape key on your keyboard, you’ll bring up a menu. Behold!

Click on the “Worlds” button to bring up a listing of tons of worlds. Click on one you like, click “Go”, and you’re in!

I am talking but nobody is responding. What am I being ignored?

There are three possible things that could be going on:

• You might have mic issues. Check recording devices in Windows to make sure the correct mic is set to default. If you are using a HTC Vive, check your steam VR settings and click on audio. Make sure your recording device is set correctly. Oculus users do the same under Oculus settings.

• You need to toggle your mic to on. See that little mic icon in the peripheral of your vision while in VRChat? If that has a line across it, your mic is turned off. Open the Quick Menu and click the mic icon to toggle it on. If you go into settings, you can check “mic defaults on” as well.

• The entire room could have you muted. If this is the case, you might have some self reflecting to do.

Which worlds are people currently in?

You can open the Quick Menu and click on Worlds. The second row will show “Active Worlds”, as well as the number of people who are currently in the world.

I'm trying to join a world with many people in it!

Our rooms can only support so many players at once. The Hub, for example, has a limit of 16 players. When a 17th player enters The Hub they will create a new Hub with only 1 player. If you are visiting a popular room, chances are people will be there soon. You can also wait until a spot opens up.

How do I change my avatar?

We have a wide variety of public avatars to use. Open the Quick Menu and click avatars to find the perfect look — or roam the virtual realms in search of the perfect avatar for you.

Somebody is running around screaming or harassing people. What should I do?

First off, you should Mute or Block the user. To do so, pull up your Quick Menu, then point and click on the user in question. You’ll see a bunch of buttons appear on your menu.

“Mute” will mute that user’s microphone. Keep in mind that a user might be playing sound through their avatar— muting won’t help you there.

“Block” will remove that user from your view. In addition, they will no longer be able to see you. Some interactions in the worlds (like objects you can pick up) will still be movable by that user, but you’ll no longer have to deal with them.

If a user’s avatar is being annoying but you don’t want to block them or mute them, click on “Hide Avatar”. This will turn their avatar into a gray robot. Once you’re more familiar with our menus, try changing around some of your Safety Settings to block parts of avatars you don’t want to see or hear.

What's this green icon that’s popped up next to the mic icon?

Looks like you are already busy making new friends! That green icon means someone sent you a friend request! Open up your Quick Menu and you should see a picture of their avatar with the alert, that you can select to accept (or deny) the friend request.

There are other kinds of notifications that may pop up. They’ll all explain themselves when they pop up, so keep an eye out!

I met some cool people and I think it's about time we friend up, VR style.

I see you are ready to make friends in VRChat. Open the Quick Menu and you should see little profile pictures on top. Those are the people closest to your current location. If you see the future friend on there, click their picture, then click friend. You can also enter the social tab from the Quick Menu, click on the person you want to be friends with and click friend.

Now that you are friends, you both can “join on” each other! When your friend is in a world, you can access them in the Social menu and click Join to join them, or “Req Invite” to request an invitation if they’re in an invite-only room.

I keep trying to join a room my friend is in by using the "Join Friend" in the social menu, but it won't let me join the room.

This will happen when you are trying to use the “join a friend” feature when that friend is in a private room. For the time being, the only way you can join a friend in a private room is if the room creator opens a portal to that room or your friend uses the “invite” feature to invite you into the room they are in.

Sure I can take regular pictures in VRChat, but what about 360° pictures?

VRChat has been working together with VRChive to make it possible to take 360° pictures instantly at any time. Just open your Quick Menu, click camera, and you will be presented with a panorama & VRC panorama options. Click on panorama and it will save a 360° panorama to your Pictures -> VRChat folder. Click on VRChive panorama and you will immediately upload to the VRChat VRChive page. These panoramas easily embed on Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook so feel free to share!

I am getting 45 FPS in many worlds but I have the best graphics card available!

45 FPS means that you are getting less that 90 FPS and SteamVR’s async reprojection is kicking in to smooth out your experience. Part of the async reprojection strategy is to lock you at 45 FPS.

VRChat worlds and avatars are all user created and therefore may not be as optimized for VR as possible. High poly counts, real time lights, shadows, large amounts of network traffic, networked physics objects and others can attribute to less than ideal performance in VRChat. However, performance will improve over time as we add systems to mitigate performance issues in app! Ensuring a smooth experience for our community is one of our top priorities.

I want to get involved! Where does the community reside when they aren't in VRChat?

While they’re not in VRChat, most of our community hangs out in our Discord! We also have a growing Facebook Group, and our community runs a subreddit. These are great places to connect with the community when you can’t actively be in VRChat.

I want to do an event in VRChat or get in touch for business reasons. Who do I need to talk with?

Send inquiries to hello@vrchat.com.