I’ll put together a Getting Started guide soon
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We have not forgotton the meetup idea, we’ve just both been distracted.
…in my case distracted with VRC!
But I’m still intending to get this put together!
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I would love to have a reason to set up my headset again, and to have the occasion to tour VR Chat worlds with people who know a bit more about the game than I do. I would be down for the meetup!
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HERE IT IS!! This is honestly maybe too thorough, but I’d definitely recommend checking out the section on Avatars at the very least. If you have a Quest, check that section for advice on setting up wireless streaming from your PC too, since that’ll unlock a bunch of PC only content.
Quick start guide for VR Chat.
You need to know two things:
- VR Chat is Free
- You don’t need VR to access every single one of its functions
That’s the most important part.
I’d recommend creating a VR Chat account on your computer before going into VR at all:
Then add me as a friend:
https://vrchat.com/home/user/usr_d6325075-e6ff-4342-b9d2-6826f59e6fc2
Then follow the appropriate Setup Guide below to get started.
Setup Guides
I have a normal wired VR Headset
You almost certainly don’t need this part of the guide. Install VR Chat on whatever platform you use (I use Steam) and launch it. It’s free!
I have an Oculus Quest (1 or 2)
If you only have a Quest and no PC, you can still run VR Chat. Unfortunately, you’re going to be locked out of many worlds, and many of the more complex avatars will just default to Some Dude for you. Them’s the breaks! It’s better than nothing and, guess what, it’s still free! Go ahead and install it.
If you also have a PC capable of running VR chat, and a wifi router that is at least decent, I’m going to highly highly highly encourage you to take some time to set up wireless streaming to your Quest headset. The option I recommend is not free (it’s $20), but it is pretty easy and is highly reliable in my experience. Here’s what to do:
- On your PC, download the Virtual Desktop Streamer App. It’s the orange button on the front page
- Install and launch the streamer app
- Make sure your PC is connected to the same network as your Quest headset - can be wireless OR wired (wired is recommended)
- In your Quest, purchase Virtual Desktop and install it
- Launch it. You should see your computer - connect to it
- Launch Steam from the Virtual Desktop menu
- Launch VR Chat from there
I want to mention that this is the only way I play VR Chat, and it works fantastically. I can’t speak for the built in wireless VR capabilities of the quest since I have not tried them, but i have read multiple times that they’re not great. But Virtual Desktop is incredible.
This also doesn’t depend on internet speed at all, just router speed. My old router actually worked just fine for this even though I couldn’t get signal throughout my whole house - I just had to be real close to it.
If you have a PC but your router is really old or bad, then it seems like you can physically connect your Quest to your PC. I’ve tried this twice now, and I had significant problems with it both times. I don’t know where the issue is, to be honest - I have not bought one of the Officially Very Nice USB-3 cables that they ask you to get, so that’s the first likely culprit.
If you want to try your luck, I found a guide: How to Connect Oculus Quest 2 to PC
I don't have a VR Headset
That’s okay!! You do not need one to access every single feature of VR Chat. Just install it on Steam and give it a shot. I’ll provide a guide below on basics of how to use some of the more esoteric features with just a mouse and keyboard below.
How to do stuff in VR Chat
VR Headset Controls
It’s a VR game so most things are pretty intuitive. But you’ll want to know how to do the following things. Controls differ by model:
- Action Menu: You might need to hold the menu button for this. This is the menu that gives you access to some in world options, like a personal mirror. It’s also what allows you to emote and do special animations, like falling over dead or clapping or whatever. These options and animations may be very different depending on the avatar.
- Main Menu: This menu lets you find worlds, friends, avatars, and change options like graphics. Seems basic but you definitely need to know this.
- Unmute: The B button on the Quest, not sure what on others. You will likely start in the world muted. You may start in Push to Talk mode, so holding will let you talk. I’d recommend going to the settings and checking “Toggle Voice” so you don’t have to hold it to talk.
Keyboard and Mouse Controls
Basically it’s WASD mouselook controls. It’s a first person chatter. Here are some easy to overlook controls though:
- R for Action Menu: This is the menu that gives you access to some in world options, like a personal mirror. It’s also what allows you to emote and do special animations, like falling over dead or clapping or whatever. These options and animations may be very different depending on the avatar.
- Esc for Main Menu: This menu lets you find worlds, friends, avatars, and change options like graphics. Seems basic but you definitely need to know this.
- V to Unmute: You will likely start in the world muted. You can hold V to talk. I would recommend turning off push to talk though, and just unmuting yourself entirely. You can do that by hitting Esc, clicking the arrow in the upper right, going to Settings, then checking “Toggle Voice”
You can use a controller too. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it but I haven’t messed with it too much
Finding a cool avatar
Having a cool/dumb/funny avatar is one of the primary joys of VR Chat. You can pick from one of the Public avatars if you don’t want to mess around with it too much - just go to the Avatars tab.
But if you want some really weirdo shit, you can generally find these by going to different VR Chat worlds tagged as “Avatar” worlds. There are tons of Avatar worlds out there. You can find them in the “Avatars” part of the main menu under “Avatar Worlds”. Randomly browsing these is a lot of fun!!
Alternately, I have collected some of my favorite avatar worlds in a playlist. If you already friended me, then you can find them by going to the “Social” tab, finding me under offline friends, then clicking on the Playlists button. There’s an Avatars playlist that has some pretty cool worlds in it. See?
Honest to god, K-Mart is one of the best avatar worlds I’ve been to. 100 Avatars is lots of fun too - they’re goofy and simple.
The Avatar Museum has a bunch of paid avatars, but almost all of them have samples that aren’t obviously samples, y’know? Plus nobody cares if you have the word sample on your forehead. If anything, that’s funnier.
Once you find an avatar you like, make sure you favorite it! Go to the Menu, click Avatars, then the favorite button below your current avatar. You can favorite up to 25 of these with a free account so I recommend grabbing any that you even remotely like. You can always unfav them later.
Other things to know
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The menus in VR Chat are kind of confusing, but most of the important stuff is under Worlds or Avatars. I’d also recommend poking at the Settings at least once.
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If you want to explore a world solo, make sure you click “New Instance” before you click Go. That will let you set up a private instance instead of actually joining one with 17 screaming children.
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You can also drop portals to worlds that people can enter and follow you around. Alternately, if you didn’t set up the instance to be totally private, friends can join you from the “Social” tab.
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There’s a camera in the menu that you can use to take pictures OR selfies. It’s very versatile - mess with it a bit! (This only appears to be in VR, not in PC mode)
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You will almost certainly join a world muted, so either use push to talk or unmute yourself. Don’t be like me and just scream into the void.
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If you’re sitting in real life, make sure to change the “Sit/Stand” setting to Sit. This will ensure you’re not always crouching.
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Alternately, if you’re sitting in real life and want to crouch, you can change that setting to Stand.
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I also have a playlist for cool hangout worlds, so those are a good place to start if you just wanna get a feel for how things work in general.
Okay there’s a ton of stuff in there, but the most important parts are for folks who have an Oculus Quest + A PC, so check that out. And then finding a cool avatar - that’s important!! Otherwise…just fuck around and you’ll figure it out, I promise.
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where we dropping girls
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omg I’m so glad you know about this
holy shit I love this
yesssss love the pact so much
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This gets more nuts when you learn this almost certainly works with just shader code.
Also sorry I’ve been quiet in this thread, I’d say ‘life got in the way’, but that implies big serious problems as opposed to things honestly being pretty good, and just taking a lot of my time, and that has mostly included stuff like weekends which I’m assuming would be the logical time for a meetup in VR. 
So how does 2022-09-28T01:00:00Z sound? And by sound I mean: this is when I’m going to do this at this time assuming a non zero number of folks show up (I can go earlier or stay later too, but I’m pretty firm on the date itself)
Sound off on how this sounds:
- I can do this!
- No this would work for me
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Even if it’s just one or two folks I’ll show you around some stuff. I hope this works for y’all!
Well I fucked up the poll because it doesn’t show any participants. ^.^;
Lemme do that again:
Can you attend a VRC meetup on 2022-09-28T01:00:00Z
- Yeah, I can do that!
- No, it doesn’t work for me
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Just bumping this! If you have any requests or questions beforehand please let me know.
what am i going to wear 
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I had something come up which means I probably can’t do Tuesday after all :(((((
Please do a second one and I’ll come to that!
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I may be sleepy as I have a 1am job interview that day and then a full day of work
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Did I mess up by downloading on Steam before making a VRChat account? I wandered around, flipped through some avatars, and spent some time finding fun places—there’s this aquarium lounge that has this whole “find hidden keys and crabs and shells” minigame to open up secret components, and one of these enormous landscapes designed for live dj performances, but it’s got a tool for flying and another that’s a laser pointer to instantly teleport to any surface you point it at, no matter how far away. This stuff is fascinating. I’m real bummed you have to use Unity to build custom content; don’t really have the time or the space to mess with a Unity install right now.
No! You can merge them. It’s only a problem if you fave a bunch of stuff on both. If you’ve only used the steam one than it’ll be fine when you merge, it should all just transfer over.
The unity stuff is one of those things where it’s been far less intimidating to mess with than I expected but also it only has been because someone walked me through how stuff works and what parts of the interface I can ignore.
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trying on avatars earlier today, hear a familiar tune in my periphery
REESE’S PUFFS REESE’S PUFFS EAT EM UP EAT EM UP EAT EM UP EAT EM UP
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i got VR working on my new computer so i am ready to go! i found an avatar that’s gonna piss off at least one person also
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