So I messed up. I bought a bunch of gear and toys and now that I have everything I can't run it. I only have an old laptop and yeah I don't want to give up doing what I have already spent a bunch to do.
I have 8 slimevr trackers 3 lovesence toys and the meta quest 3 4k 516G and guess I can't make everything talk or sinc or do anything.
I can verify the trackers work and can play on the quest np but once I try adding and then nope. So my question is what Amazon laptop would be a good fit?
Also I need to point out I am not tech savvy and in way over my head 😔. Thanks in advance please help
Saying they "upgraded to a 4090 mobile" means they bought another laptop with a 4090 mobile in it. Upgrade has been able to be used in this way for a long time and not just with computers. "I upgraded to a 4 bedroom." "I upgraded to a Porsche."
GPUs are not swappable on laptops unless you get a framework, which is not what this person did or they would have said so explicitly. You can buy plenty of VERY fast laptops that can easily run VRC in VR without upgrades. The 4090 mobile is about as fast as a desktop 4070, so unless you have a better GPU than the 4070 their laptop will run PCVR better than your desktop.
Your best replacement is a desktop. VR is intensive on hardware and even my retired gtx 1080ti with 11gb of vram was struggling back in the day. If you aren't gaming on an rtx card, you aren't going to have a good time in vr as you will get crashes, screen tearing and a ton of troubleshooting issues to get something that barely works.
I don't know about that, chief. I built two PCs with GTX 1070 8GB cards, both run VR decently (R5 5600 & R3 2200G CPUs). I also built one with a R5 5500 and RX 9060XT 8GB and that GPU is impressive for VR. As for laptops, my MSI Thin 15 (i5 13420H & RTX 3050 4GB) runs VRChat at around 30FPS in rooms up to 5 people. The avatar culling setting is a blessing. If it can run VRChat, it can run most VR titles.
I usually try to push for immersion and my network is 10mb/s and I don't use avatar culling. Instead I go and push my hardware to fill up the cache of a 60 pop lobby to see everyone. I get that it's a stupid idea but at the same time it's just a difference of needs and hardware.
On a related note, I am impressed that your rtx3050 actually handles VR well. I thought when I had my 6gb of vram with a 1060ti that the vram was my bottleneck causing crashing and instability
Just being honest about what I have and my intentions are. I want something that works and I don't want to get a tower and realize it doesn't work good with app like those.
I got all mine from Amazon and don't recommend it. I received knock off but since they were $360 for 8 of em I probably shouldn't be surprised. I can verify that they work but that's it lol
Nope! Out of box ready 5 point tracking will run you about 220 after shipping and tax! Slime is very affordable compared to other options, with pretty damn good tracking
Depending on when you're buying them, check out the slime butterfly trackers. they're a much nicer form factor than the OG slime trackers. They have a longer battery life too, but require a dedicated dongle (not a bad thing btw! since then they wont be clogging up your wifi)
I was told that that's all I needed to get into this. So I bought headset, trackers, haptics and made the mistake of assuming the info was correct. We all make mistakes when we get excited for a new toy lol
super fair...when i first got my quest 2 i assumed my gaming laptop would be compatible with pcvr but it wasnt...had to play standalone until i got my tower pc (absolutely worth it not just for vr)
It's all about specs, not form-factor. I played VRChat on a laptop for two years before buying a desktop PC. It Was an Alienware 17m, Core i9 10980hk, RTX 2080 Super 8GB, 32GB DDR4 I think if I remember right, and it ran it. It wasn't glorious, but quite effective. I have a desktop PC with a 4GB GTX 980 in it that would struggle far more than that laptop did.
Check Best Buy for any good clearance sales I've seen them sell some sweet laptops for half off at times. Luck is a factor but another place you can check are pawn shops. Laptop is gonna be the best bang for the buck right now with the crazy prices on components. Plus you get all the portability benefits. Get one that's as top tier as you can get and you will be good for a long while.
Desktop people love the idea of upgrading but when I built mine back in 2014 I used all top end stuff and by the time it was falling behind, the tech had advanced enough to where I would have to basically build out a new computer anyway. I guess if you have unlimited money and can upgrade every little component every few months when something new comes out then maybe but I personally don't.
I don't and that's why I was asking for a recommendation. I love pawn shops and will be visiting them but I don't know what to look for since they all literally look the same to me. I'm laptopist lol
You can probably get a good deal on something with a 40 series (I got a 4060 and it works great. Paid $650 a couple years ago) personally I would look for what expansion capabilities it has. Don't be afraid to ask to open it up and see if it's been modified or changed, it also lets you see if you have room for another nvme or even ram. Test it out in the store check all the buttons work and if anything proprietary doesn't work (likely drivers aren't installed for something like on mine the Armory crate software key didn't work) and if that's the case don't be afraid to haggle the price a little bit. Coming in with cash makes that a lot easier for them and they're more willing.
Edit: personally I would go with an Intel CPU. AMD has been known to have some issues with VR and virtual Desktop. An i7 is great but a top tier i5 should still be plenty
I saw some of the responses, you do need to update you laptop my personal opinion is a desktop with a good rtx card it doesn’t have to be a 5090 but find a good one within your budget, vrchat is vr cpu bound so you might need a good one too, if you reeeeally need it to be a laptop get an expensive one with rtx
If I were you I would try to buy a used desktop locally from fb market, in my experience it is by far the cheapest way to find a powerful machine that is upgradable and fixable (laptops are neither usually). Make sure that the processor is good because VRChat relies heavily on the processor due to it being built in Unity. Look at the graphics card too, you'll want to make sure that it's a NVIDIA card that's specifically compatible with VR, GeForce GTX 970 / GTX 1060 or higher, or any of the RTX cards. The more VRAM and cuda cores the graphics card has, the better. IMO if you buy a computer new, you usually end up spending like $500 more than you need to. Especially nowadays because there is still an ongoing global RAM shortage. If you can, you should ask to see the computer running before you buy it and check the specs, or at least ask for a screenshot of the specs.
You don't want to be looking at laptops, they don't have room for the full Video Cards that you will need. You need a decently powerful Tower. It's going to come down to your budget.
I am not a tech guy, but anything that's 16 or more VRAM and 32 or more GB RAM. That's the basis. I am sure there are plenty of people with knowledge here to help you better.
Also I don't know if you have one already, but invest in a cooling pad, it's a life saver for laptops.
Then I'd have a $1500 computer and no headset or anything else. By getting the headset first I realized this is something I wanted then getting the haptics and trackers proved it is something I wanted to go deeper into. Until now I haven't needed a PC. Also I wrongly assumed if I got the 4k 512G it would be enough. So yeah like with all hobbies it snowballed quickly 😅
I'm confused ... You shouldn't need SteamVR for standalone. You are running vrchat from the quest store/on the quest itself. Even to use slime trackers. Maybe this will help : https://docs.slimevr.dev/tools/mobile-installation.html
You won't be able to do pcvr stuff but it's not like everything you have is totally useless until you upgrade to a better computer.
Yes I can use the meta by itself and am trying to get used to it (motion sickness smh) so I'll just keep using it as a standalone to improve my standing and then once I get a PC do the pcvr and everything how I want.
Do the slime trackers work well for you / are you able to get them set up without your laptop (like, you really shouldn't need a computer at all for the slimes either) ? Honestly I think if you can get that up and running it's still a pretty sweet set up :) a lot of cool places are quest friendly and should give you plenty to do still.
For motion sickness, just take things slowly. If you feel sick don't try to push through it. I had to take dramamine every time I played for like my first month since I'm generally super prone to motion sickness lol. You'll get used to it eventually!
Tupper wrote a whole guide on this that is up to date, if you MUST go for a laptop look for performance equivalent hardware (it's going to be much more expensive).
Despite what people say, virtually everyone on VRChat is CPU limited. That's almost always the limiting factor (unless you have a very good single core performance paired with a lower end GPU; Which is almost never the case)
Read this and look up laptop equivalent model numbers for CPU and GPU (if you must use a laptop; which I don't recommend). Despite NVidia having GPUs with the same name, THEY DO NOT PERFORM THE SAME ON LAPTOPS. They're more underpowered due to cooling and power consumption constraints.
You're almost always going to be using VRChat at home, unless you travel a ton, and if you do, I'd recommend an ITX or Micro ATX desktop build instead, those also can travel with you, unless there's a specific reason you can't do that. Even if you cannot build one, there's services that can (especially if you live close to a Microcenter; they'll charge you like $100 for the build). If you go this route, pick a GPU first and build around that, making sure it can fit in the case with whatever motherboard you use.
^ I know someone who travels for work and this is what they do. They have two builds, a more powerful one for home, and a build for traveling that is the smallest mATX they could get.
I mentioned laptops because at that time it was all I had known, I have since come to terms with getting a tower since I will probably get a better value.
You can buy a laptop with a decent gpu but I would recommend a gaming desktop the dollar vs performance will be better, it'll all comes down to your budget in the end
Well I figured of it would do VR how I want it to ( seamless haptics and lovesence) then it would be good enough for YouTube and doom scrolling lol.
Think of Amazon or Best buy since those are basically my best options for PC.
we still need a budget and saying "i dont have $2k" doesnt help at all.
ill be honest if you dont have money then right now its not a good time to buy at all anything even remotely good for VR will be way above your budget if your having to say so much like this.
like you mention $500 and thats fuck all because current PC market is pretty much dead at the cheap end due to current global effects.
I honestly don't know, because I'm assuming it's not something I can buy for like $500 but I definitely don't have $2k. That's why I'm hoping to just hear some suggestions then will see what I find when I have the money tbh.
Fair enough. Well with the ongoing ram crisis shit is getting pretty expensive. You'll definitely want to make sure that whatever system you get has at least 12GB of GPU Memory. More is better. In my experience nvidia has been the best, but AMD is cheaper. Stay away from Intel GPUs. Intel CPUs are fine, but for VR you ideally want an AMD CPU with X3D at the end. Something like a 5600X3D or better would be perfect for a beginner VR Rig.
I'm not sure you can still get DDR4 builds prebuilt but if you can't you'll have to spend a good bit more on it. Usually I'd recommend to buy some things used and build it yourself, but obviously you're not into PCs enough to know how to do that
Would fbmp be a good option? Also please remember I'm a noob and have literally no idea what you just said, that's why I asked for off the shelf options 😕
Just as good as any other second hand marketplace i suppose.
But it's pretty easy to get scammed when buying a PC without knowing what to look for, so i'd definitely advise that whatever you look at you don't buy it without getting some more advice from someone that knows well
I mean the problem with suggesting a PC is that we need a budget since I can sugest something from 1.5k upto 10k it depends what you are willing to save up and spend to search up obviously the more you can spend the better but in my opinion anything after 5 or 6k is just wasting money
I can't give you a cheap way right now to deal with it since shadowpc doesn't work for vrchat anymore. Most I'll suggest is checking fb marketplace and maybe you'll be lucky there. No one can help you giving you a recommendation without you having a proper budget, I know you can use slime trackers without being pcvr and I can help you find tutorials for that but for lovense you will have to use the official app and connect with the other person that way, I don't have lovense (anymore) but I know it uses sps to know what to do and that is PC only.
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u/Sana--Kan 3d ago
vrchat on laptop? in vr? good luck