Hello VRChatters!
Things have been getting busy over at VRChat, with the community growing fast than ever these past few months. In order to accommodate the needs of this rapid growth, we have been focusing heavily on expanding the community moderation tools available to our users. A lot of what we are bringing with this patch will give our community more control over how they want to experience VRChat.
True Friends Only Instances
Due to overwhelming community demand you can now create a new instance called “Friends”. In Friends instances, only friends of the instance creator can join the room. We still have Friends of Friends instances, which are now called Friends of Guests, which you’ll see displayed in some locations as “Friends+”. In Friends+ instances, if you have a friend in the instance, you can join it.
The Public Ban
We’ve added a new moderation feature we are calling “The Public Ban”. We feel that some behavior, while not appropriate for Public or Friends+ instances, doesn’t always warrant a timed or permanent ban. This will allow us to remove users from Public or Friends+ instances temporarily but still allow them to remain in VRChat and use Friends & Invite only instances.
Further bad behavior will result in a review including a full ban. Those that are public banned will be taken to a public ban world to watch a video and learn more about what a public ban means. From there they can still connect with friends until the public ban period has expired.
Website Features
- You will now be able to change your email and password from your VRChat homepage.
- Send invite-only links to instances from the website. No longer do you need to be online for your friends to join your invite only instances!
- Need to search for another user? You can now do it from our website.
Features
Note: For a full technical breakdown see the VRChat 0.12.0p3 Release Notes.
- Performance tweaks all around making for a smoother experience.
- We've added different notification icons. No more guessing whether you got a friends request, and invite, or a vote to kick.
- We have fixed that pesky issue causing your avatars & worlds to get overwritten with other ones. Feel safe now that you are indeed the avatar you uploaded!
- Sticky Votekicks in worlds
- More control over your instances! Instance owners can now kick, warn, and turn off other users' mics.
- Even more control over worlds you build and bring into the app! If you are a world creator you can warn, kick, & mute others' mics from any instance of that world you are in.
- It's now easier than ever to use moderation tools. Instance owners & authors can easily use actions from their quick menu.
- Tired of getting portal trolled? Worry no more! You now will not be able to accidentally back into a portal.
- Portals also now show the name of the person who created the portal.
- Audio sources will now be automatically spatial on avatars. You won't have to worry anymore if your avatar audio is too loud or too far reaching. The falloff in addition to the volume is capped.
- Ban messages will now display the reason and length of the ban.
- Blending between IK and locomotion has been greatly improved. This results in increased immersion by ensuring your virtual head position always matches your real head position. This is an ongoing process and will continue to improve over time.
- Users who get stuck in an infinite loop will now be brought to an error world with helpful tips on how to fix the problem.
- If you experienced issues loading into really big worlds such as the MMD Dance Club, we have fixed that problem. While it may take a bit to load, you should be able to enter large worlds now.
- There's now a desktop tutorial.
- Video playlists are working properly now. You will no longer see a white screen when joining mid video. Multiple video players no longer cause performance hitches either!
New SDK
For those working on worlds and/or avatars, we also have a new SDK available now on our website.Going Forward
We are working away on the next exciting release which will give creators the ability to add much more functionality and interactivity to their worlds using Playmaker. This will be a major update to VRChat! Get Playmaker Here We are also starting our Playmaker beta very soon. If you haven't already, join our Discord and you can find the scripting application pinned in our #scripting channel. One more thing. We've got something quite special coming this New Years to VRChat. Stay tuned! Thanks and Enjoy! The VRChat team