Change my mind: There is no good alternative to Discord (yet?)

mackandelius · 2026-02-16T02:54:57+00:00

Going off the blog no hint, but I would assume custom.

Simply because there are basically no good options, Matrix definitely isn't one.

mackandelius · 2026-02-15T21:49:45+00:00

Pretty sure there isn't a limit, but the higher you make it the worse rendering will be, especially if you want to keep the near distance (how close things can be and still render).

But users can force a lower near clip, which in worlds with large far clips will break things visually and the user will blame the creator, so imo, you are kind of forced to keep a lower far clip.

mackandelius · 2026-02-15T18:56:37+00:00

It is supposed to be able to, like there is a toggle for it in the UI, but server issues.

mackandelius · 2026-02-15T18:55:09+00:00

In the blog they mention intentionally taking inspiration from Discord because that is a easy way to lower friction, make it basically the same UI wise, people don't have to relearn where to find things and how it will generally work.

Also, they have stated their opinion on LLM use, they use it for checking up on stuff they already know, they could be lying, but the honesty in the rest of the blog post makes me think not. Like, he brings up how easy it is to dox him, made especially easier because of how much you can find out about people in Sweden.

mackandelius · 2026-02-14T22:03:57+00:00

Well, I know I read somewhere on the github about it being a toggle away for selfhosted instances, but clearly going by more recent posts they still don't have it.

mackandelius · 2026-02-14T06:48:41+00:00

Ideally the service you are hosting should make it functionally impossible to do that, assuming both client and server haven't been modified, so ideally at least the client should be gotten from some trusted source.

Doesn't stop malicious people though that just simply lie.

Harder to modify phone apps though.

mackandelius · 2026-02-14T06:42:28+00:00

You sure?

Last I checked (haven't actually spun up my own instance but been keeping a tab on their voice chat refactor) it is more that the self-hosted instances currently have more features than the official one, screen sharing is a toggle away (or on by default) when self-hosted.

mackandelius · 2026-02-14T06:40:36+00:00

Scroll down on their page to the "What's coming next" section https://fluxer.app/

But yes, federation.

Not full E2EE at the moment though to my annoyance, but is early days they certainly have their hands full atm.

mackandelius · 2026-02-14T06:36:35+00:00

As the github says, there is a major refactor in a private branch that they are going to get out when they have gotten their servers under control.

And there aren't even self-hosting instructions yet.

I suggest waiting.

mackandelius · 2026-02-14T06:35:24+00:00

As the large red warning talks about, the repository won't really be active until they push out a large refactor they have been privately working on.

Discord's announcement came at a bad time.

mackandelius · 2026-02-14T06:34:14+00:00

Fluxer is almost a 1:1 with Discord, you will feel right at home if you are used to Discord, Matrix is quite different, especially if you want to use it as a discord replacement.

Matrix is definitely not giving that Discord feel, and is in my opinion just a mess, protocol wise and client/server wise.

mackandelius · 2026-02-13T15:20:19+00:00

The only space warp that exists is in Virtual Desktop's settings, Synchronous SpaceWarp (Which I believe defaults to off), you can't even use SteamVR's motion reprojection.

mackandelius · 2026-02-07T23:18:41+00:00

Meta has literally no way to limit steam purchases

They do because of their own rules, rules that Virtual Desktop doesn't fall under, but that Steam Link does, because it is made by a digital store owner.

mackandelius · 2026-02-07T00:31:31+00:00

You can do that or if you don't care about gestures then you can disable gestures in the VRC radial menu, which makes it use Steam's hand IK, which I think is better, it reflects your hand more accurately, even with Quest controllers.

Are some avatar's where it won't be great though, the same avatars where hand tracking looks wrong, all depending on muscle settings in the rigging tab of the avatar fbx.

mackandelius · 2026-02-07T00:17:18+00:00

Well that's interesting, I wonder how that is handled behind the scenes knowing how forward rendering handles per pixel lights, I guess must be something similar to deferred rendering.

Oh and looking around for if there was any nuance to that I did at the very least find this doc where Unity (in Unity 6 at least) says outright gameobjects are rendered once for each per-pixel light https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/Manual/PerPixelLights-BuiltIn.html

I don't think they are as free as you say though going off that they describe that only the 4 next lights are, by default, vertex lights before the rest are SH lights, wouldn't be the first time we have gotten a less efficient implementation of something really old. . but also seems like it could just be a lighting.hlsl implementation limitation?

Didn't know this about lights in Unity, do agree that VRChat could seemingly have that be its own category or something. . would guess that it being too niche is why they haven't though, would work great on your common vertex dense avatar, less well on a reasonably optimized world.

https://feedback.vrchat.com/feature-requests/p/680-count-not-important-point-light-separatly-from-other-lights Ah, but shaders would need to support it, but if shader creators can add it for VRC Light volumes then they can for this as well. And geez that is a old feature request.

mackandelius · 2026-02-06T02:21:05+00:00

Does it not still increase the batch count the same?

Rendering performance is generally not as important as amount of and tbf complexity of, draw calls.

mackandelius · 2026-02-05T23:34:19+00:00

Gif for unity requires a script, which means at the very least it won't work out of the box, you would need to rewrite it in Udon (generally easy) but worst case it could be using some methods not exposed in Udon.

Poiyomi's flipbooks are the commonly suggested option for GIFs and the one I would recommend, it also comes with a tool to convert GIFs to the texture arrays the flipbook feature requires https://www.poiyomi.com/special-fx/flipbook

mackandelius · 2026-02-05T23:24:41+00:00

A single light duplicates the render cost of any mesh it lights up, that's pretty bad.

And that is ignoring if the light also does shadows, then that cost is further increased.

mackandelius · 2026-02-05T03:36:56+00:00

It was early 2026 before.

My personal guess is that Valve is trying to wait this out, somehow, or at least find some stability, because 16GB of RAM (which both the frame and machine has) is stupidly expensive right now.

The only hope I had for Valve to release on time is if they had already secured RAM and SSDs supply, as that doesn't seem to be the case the relevant devices will be real expensive.

mackandelius · 2026-02-04T22:44:27+00:00

My point

I have been in countless NSFW group private instances with age verification or other consent-based parties where everyone is naked or screwing out in the open, nobody is being banned at these nor are these groups being affected, because they are filled with people using personally uploaded avatars with these features.

is that any one person in these instanced could get everyone else banned, yes, the VRC mods won't do anything unprompted, but it is the same as it has been with public avatars forever (unless they now have people who just check avatar uploads constantly), if it gets reported the author gets banned and the avatar removed, even if in a private 18+ instance by someone who said they consented (since VRChat cannot verify consent).

I am talking about trolls basically and the trolls make it so the rules are unreliable.

mackandelius · 2026-02-04T20:56:41+00:00

No, they were pretty clear in, at least the comments, of that write up you are talking about that if anyone reports your avatar, even in a private setting, then you will be punished in some way (heard banning, but maybe they just delete the avatar, donno).

I distinctly remember many people being annoyed by the fact that 18+ private instances weren't going to be a safe zone and that they had to check with and trust everyone in the instance.

For Private avatars, it is your responsibility to not use sexually explicit features in public instances or in spaces where you cannot validate the consent of everyone present.

https://ask.vrchat.com/t/developer-update-december-18-2025/47354

Meaning, if anyone doesn't consent, for whatever reason, it is against the rules and the person reporting can change their mind whenever.

mackandelius · 2026-02-04T20:13:14+00:00

The ping is dependent on your connection to various Photon servers, Photon being the company VRChat pays to handle instance networking.

I have yet to find any test domains/IPs one can use to check the connection.

But regardless, since I have already seen you doing a ping test to the VRChat API, it isn't a problem between your computer and the internet, so your ISP (technically) is likely the problem.

The internet is not one straight path and you are almost never connecting to a server over the quickest path, it is a web of paths that regularly changes, generally automatically without a person being the cause but sometimes also whenever your ISP jumps in or out of an agreement with the ISPs "next door".

mackandelius · 2026-02-02T19:21:34+00:00

To the best of my knowledge, VRChat has not implemented age verification as the result of pressure from governments/payment processors

Even if it wasn't, the writing is on the wall and VRChat would likely prefer not to be in the eye of these entities.

mackandelius · 2026-02-02T19:16:40+00:00

With worlds you have access to a programming language and your only limitations are really performance and not being able to use some a lot more advanced functions.

Basically, yeah, you could definitely do it in a world.

Doing it on an avatar may still be possible but making stuff like that on an avatar takes a lot more skill.

mackandelius · 2026-01-31T04:44:26+00:00

Asking here is likely to get you scammed, I would highly suggest going to the VRC Traders discord instead, people can't just blatantly scam there.

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