VRChat 2026.2.1 (OPEN BETA)

Accessories

They're still here! Here's what we wrote last time:

Avatar Accessories are... exactly what they sound like! They’re accessories that you can put on your avatar: think a hat, or sunglasses, a halo, a tail, or… well, you get the idea. There’s a lot you could do with a system like this!

But let’s just cut to it: yes, you can put cat ears on any avatar. Or Googly Eyes.

No, seriously – any avatar. If you can use the avatar, you can throw Accessories on it.

Want to know more? Check out the Developer Update video below!

There are a few test Accessories in the Open Beta! Test them out. Obviously, we'll have a lot more things in the (real) launch... but uh, play with some eyes. and a sphere. and a cube.

https://youtu.be/Clk2OhiWphg

They are expected to ship live with this release... when it goes live. Woo!

Third-Person View

Over the past few months, we've been running a beta branch for folks to test an optional third-person view for desktop users. With this Open Beta, we're bringing that change to our main beta branch, as we intend to release it with this update.

One important caveat: this is going to be a VRC+ feature out of the gate... but only for a brief "early access" period. It is expected to last until the end of June, at which point this feature will be enabled for everyone. It is completely possible that it might be released to all users sooner than that.

You can find options for this feature in the Graphics Settings in the Main Menu. There are key binds to control it as well: F5 to toggle, TAB to freely rotate, and scrollwheel to adjust distance.

Loading Screen Updates

The loading screen has changed! Wait, what -- didn't we just do this?

Well, sort of. In the last patch, we changed the ability to customize the background itself. In this beta, however, we're tweaking how the "box" UI looks.

You'll see soon enough. 👀

Avatar Performance Gating in Group Instances

We have added the ability for Groups to add minimum avatar performance levels to their instances. How does this work? We have a very long post about it in our Dev Update! You can read that here.

As an FYI, this will create some strangeness between Open Beta and Live users! If someone in the beta creates a performance gated instance, those restrictions will apply to folks in the beta.

For Live users, they'll experience it as a normal instance. If a user on Live who is using a performance gated avatar stumbles into an instance like this, folks on the beta in the instance will see their avatar as an Impostor.

(Human API: you are the notification, run up to them and tell them they need to use a different avatar. This is a joke. Don't do that. I mean, unless you really want to. We're trying to fix you having to do that, you know.)

Changes & Fixes

• We've changed how the chatbox timeout behavior works.
  • The flat timeout has been removed and replaced with a "leaky bucket" rate limiter. You are now allowed to send 5 messages within 5 seconds before having to wait to send your next message.
  • Auto sent messages will no longer contribute to rate limiting, only manually sending a message will have limits.
• Improved the chatbox typing indicator.
  • The typing indicator should now show and hide more reliably, not get stuck, and work when backspacing.
• VRCat's Variety Box world category is no longer forced to always take the top spot in the world category list.
  • It is now possible for other world categories to choose a higher priority and take that first spot over.
  • This change does not inherently rearrange anything, as VRCat's Variety box still has the highest priority, but it is now possible for us to change that in the future.
• Removed the automatic group join notification some users could receive if they spent enough time in a group instance.
  • We also removed the setting related to toggling off automatic group join notification as it's no longer in the game.
• We've removed the progress bar from the Explore Groups page that encouraged some users to join at least 15 groups.
  • For those that participated, we hope you found a cool group or two!
• The per-user volume adjustment can now be set up to 300% and will snap to exactly 100% for easier resetting.
• Tweaked the Item section of the Quick Menu:
  • Removed Visibility toggle for your own Items.
  • Removed View User Profile button for your own Items.
  • Changed "Remove" button to "Put Away" for your own Items.
  • Added a "Customize" button for your own Items.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent some moderation and badge-related notifications from being cleared using the "Clear All" button.
• Fixed an issue where bundles in the Shop would not show as fully "owned" if the Items/avatars within had been obtained independently (i.e., from individual listings or gifts).
• Fixed a bug with the Camera Lens sometimes appearing, uh, huge.
• Fixed a bug with the scroll bar in some menus going too far down after hitting the back button.
  • Too far... into the jungle.
  • 160 bpm amen break begins
• Fixed a bug preventing first-party store products from being able to be gifted to non-friends.
• Inventory UI updates.
• Lots of small code refactors and minor performance optimizations in this one. More than usual, so we thought we'd mention it!

April 16, Build 1832

Fixes & Changes

• Third Person View fixes and adjustments:
  • The scrolled-in-to-1P state is now saved properly. Previously it would reset, so if the 3P "feature" was enabled, you'd start back up in 3P at close zoom even if you'd scrolled in to 1P the last time you closed VRC.
  • The "Third Person View Vertical" setting has been adjusted to default to 30%, which restores the old default behavior of looking over the avatar's head rather than looking into the back of its head.
    • You can adjust this value to where you like it in the Main Menu's "Graphics" page in Desktop mode.
  • Fixed portal placement forward-direction not matching view when using "free rotate" in 3P.
  • Fixed handheld camera and drone camera buttons sometimes rotating sideways or upside down while using 3P.
  • Added guidance showing the 3P controls in the Main Menu "Controls" page.
  • Fixed handheld camera flight mode not being controllable when 3P is in Free Rotate mode.
  • Stop re-centering an already active Free Rotate on every TAB press (helps with late-starting a cinematic feeling orbit while walking, which requires holding tab while you start walking, since walking usually cancels free-rotate).
  • Fixed Accessories on head bones not showing while in 3P mode.
• Improvements to the new loading screen UI:
  • Fixed aspect ratio of world thumbnails.
  • Fixed instances of the wrong font being used.
  • Fixed font weight on some text elements.
  • Fixed the "Go!" button not switching to the "Accept & Continue" button when entering a world requiring extra consent for URL access.
  • Made the consent panel dynamically resize to fit its content.
• VRCRaycast components are now stripped from other users' avatars when Poor or Very Poor avatars are locally blocked and the count of raycast components is above their respective performance thresholds.
• Several visual fixes for how particles are handled in the avatar look editor.
• Saving avatar looks now has a cooldown period to prevent spamming.
• Fixed users without any VRC+ exclusive emoji not being able to spawn default emoji.
• Remote portals (from other users) will show as their default skins when in low memory mode, instead of not at all.
• Fixed muting and the "microphone sensitivity" setting not affecting the Viseme and Voice animator parameters on the local avatar.
• Fixed a bug where "Link Event" was showing for Group Instances you couldn't actually link events to.
• Fixed black fade on quit when certain Warp Effects were selected.
• Sliders on the handheld camera now have consistent decimal formatting.
• Fixed an issue that could lead to players becoming invisible on mobile platforms.
• Spelling fix on the "VRC+ Exclusives" banner in the VRC+ menu.
• Minor performance optimizations for network IK.
• Small update on the performance regressions from 2026.1.3:
  • The mirror-timing change (OnWillRenderObject -> OnPreCull) that was reverted in 2026.1.3p2 is now confirmed to be the root cause of the issue.
  • This update adds it back into the open-beta branch, but with a fix for the part that caused the performance issue, we hope. 🤞
  • Let us know if you notice worse (or better!) performance on open-beta compared to live!

Known Issues

• Selecting a look on a generic avatar while scaled to a non-default eye height will place your camera in the wrong spot.

April 23 Build 1833

Fixes & Changes

• VRCRaycast fixes:
  • Fixed an issue that could cause animator parameters set by VRCRaycast to be incorrect in worlds with no realtime lights when those raycasts are moved by the avatar's animator.
  • VRCRaycasts from the avatar's head now apply before the head is hidden from the first-person perspective of the person using it, not after. This makes them consistent with how they behave when that avatar is used by someone else.
• Accessories fixes:
  • Avatar Accessories now display a loading indicator while they're being attached to your avatar in the Looks or Accessories tabs of the Avatars page.
  • Fixed an issue which could cause your view height to be incorrect when wearing a look for a scaled avatar.
  • Fixed yellow callout box for Accessories overlapping the "Avatars" button.
  • Fixes previews for Accessories with particles appearing invisible.
• Fixes for performance-gated group instances and avatar details:
  • "Set as Group Instance Default" now saves the instance performance gating selection too.
  • Fixed an issue with performance-gated group instances where remote avatars couldn't be force-shown if they were compliant with the instance-level performance limit, but violating the user's local limit.
    • In other words: You can only force-show avatars that are hidden by your own limits, but not the instance limit.
  • Restored text colors for avatar stats found on the Main Menu Avatar Details page.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause avatar performance fields to show incorrect values on the Avatar Details page.
• Voice and Audio fixes:
  • Fixed an issue that would frequently reset your microphone input volume to 100%.
  • Fixed the Voice avatar animator parameter showing too low values.
  • Fixed avatars using "Jaw Flap" instead of "Visemes" displaying incorrect values.
  • Fixed non-humanoid avatars not displaying visemes in mirrors if used more than once per session.
• Fixed a potential issue causing avatars to not unload. In other words, they would "stack" on top of each other.
• Fixed the "In Use" animation in the Emoji wing menu appearing on the wrong emoji after scrolling.
• Fixed a crash affecting some users using local Build & Test from the SDK.
• ⚠️ Network optimization: Unreliable network data (e.g. VRC Object Sync or Udon Behaviors set to Continuous mode) will now be dropped client-side if the outgoing queue gets too large. The latest state will still always be transmitted, so there should be no desyncs, but under extreme network load in-between data may be dropped in favor of maintaining local FPS and RAM footprints.
  • There should be no direct user- or creator-facing impact except improved performance in some scenarios (our servers were always dropping some of these anyway), but please do let us know if this causes issues in any of your uploaded or favorite worlds!

April 27 Build 1834

Changes & Fixes

• The "Link Event" popup (accessed from Quick Menu's "Here" tab) has been fixed.
• Group instance defaults no longer reset between VRChat updates.
  • They will reset one more time, then it'll save going forward.
• Fixed the particles from the Default Loading Screen appearing in the Classic Loading Screen.
• Fixed certain dialogs, like the Quest's popup for denying microphone permission, disappearing instantly.
• Minor stability improvements.

A special note about Avatar Scaling

In our last release, we fixed some bugs with other systems that inadvertently broke third-party custom avatar scalers. We haven't ever supported these scalers, because they use fragile methods and techniques to scale your avatar.

After reading all your feedback, we've made some improvements that allow OSC input to set eye height to much higher/lower values than the native UI allows.

We decided to do this via OSC rather than updates to the in-app UI to keep it easy to implement, to avoid some design churn, and to avoid increased user support resulting from unknowing users inadvertently getting way too big/small.

Be warned: setting very large (over 100m) or very small (below 0.1m) eyeheight values may still break VRChat systems.

A notification will appear when you go beyond these limits. Past these points, you are on your own! Please do not file bugs or contact support regarding issues stemming from scaling to these extreme sizes.

Side-note: Other users won't see you with the extended scale in instances created before this (beta) update released! Make a new instance to test! This issue will solve itself with normal instance churn.

Please see our new documentation regarding this new OSC endpoint.

New OSC paths:

• /avatar/eyeheight
  • Read/Subscribe: The current avatar eye height in meters. Sends events to subscribers when changed by the user, Udon, or an avatar switch.
  • Write: Set the current avatar eye height in meters.
    • This is not limited by the user-selectable range.
    • Minimum is 0.01 (1 centimeter), maximum 10000 (10 kilometers).
    • Only scales between 0.1 and 100 are officially supported, setting a value outside this will show a warning on the user's HUD.
    • Note that Udon can still enforce scale, in which case you will first receive your set eye height as an event on this endpoint, followed by the Udon-enforced actual eye height that the user will see.
• /avatar/eyeheightmin
  • Read-only.
  • The minimum user-selectable eye height configured by Udon, defaults to 0.2.
  • Does not affect settable range via OSC.
• /avatar/eyeheightmax
  • Read-only.
  • The maximum user-selectable eye height configured by Udon, defaults to 5.0.
  • Does not affect settable range via OSC.
• /avatar/eyeheightscalingallowed
  • Read-only.
  • If disabled by Udon or world tag (website).
  • When true, writes to eyeheight will be ignored.

Udon APIs for setting scale also share the new 0.01 - 10000 range extension, the same caveats apply.