Comment by retrochameleon
9 hours ago
VRChat has intriguing possibilities, but I always got the impression the underlying architecture and programming is too shoddy to really support the breadth of custom experiences people want to make. I tried various mini games or special worlds, and it was always incredibly jank and barely functional. It seemed more like problems stemming from instability or jankiness of the engine and API they were working with than anything else.
Granted, the last time I touched it was a few years ago. Unless they've done a major rewrite of the game I don't expect it to have improved all that much. Maybe I'm wrong.
There are two things holding back mini games and special worlds, inexperience and Udon.
The more technically impressive worlds don't just use the VRChat provided object syncing or interactions, they create their own systems tailored to the world, but Udon, the world scripting language, is sluggishly slow, 200X-1000X slower (according to VRC themselves and I know is true from experience), compared to ordinary scripting inside Unity, which means the only ones able to make their own systems are not only good at coding, they are really good at optimizing, on a generally amateur creation platform like VRC those people are very few.
They are trying to recreate Udon to be more performant, but small company and their first attempt was discarded after the sole employee working on it was let go.
Network delay could be considered another thing holding back mini game creation, but even if the network stack was better, you have people all over the world, latency will always be an issue.
The one thing I can add is that the VRC players I've played with don't care about it. They just want to be in a world and do things with their friends, even if it's janky or has bugs. It's already persistently novel, and if ones novel threshold ever dips too low or the bugs are too high, there's another world with different people just a tap away.
Yeah you describe it very well.
VRChat is not perfect, it has a lot of rough edges. But it's buzzing with activity. People enjoy themselves. Do sometimes weird stuff but not bother anyone. It's like the real world.
Horizons is a boring moderated infantile playground. I guess they're super worried some conservative senator's grandchild hears the F word there and is scarred for life. But in mitigating this they have eliminated any attraction to the whole product. Us adults, we need a little gritty. It's why we don't watch Kung Fu Panda when we're not with kids.
For example I found a few rooms where people go to sleep around others when they're lonely. Complete with a calming environment. I haven't seen anything like that in horizons. Just some attempts at mildly boring games and funhouses.
Also the furries have a home there which works fine. I've never seen anyone with 'anatomically correct' avatars in the wrong space. It works and they have fun. That's what it's all about, human connection.
>I haven't seen anything like that in horizons.
I found a world like that when I searched for one a couple years ago in horizons.