VRChat

Let's mentally go back a few years ago, in the years 2015-2017. Virtual reality technology looks incredibly promising, developers from Oculus Rift and other startups are raising millions of money, and in general, although there are no flying skateboards yet, it seems as if the future is near.

And here you are, inspired by the dream of an incredibly immersive immersion in crazy and fantastic worlds, happily buying a virtual reality helmet for a kilogram of money. And then, literally in a couple of hours, this admiration evaporates somewhere. There is a helmet, but there is absolutely nothing to play.

You can try twenty more times to ride the virtual roller coaster, after removing all the bedside tables from the room and covering the floor with something soft. You can try some simple shooter or racing simulator, but, as luck would have it, they all just got out of Early Access, and therefore are incredibly buggy. You can even, making sure that no one is at home, watch VR porn! But ... what to do next? There is a helmet, but there is nothing to play.

And at this moment another startup VRChat Inc. appears, which offers the project of the same name. It's not really a game. This, as the name implies, is a chat. You can meet other happy owners of VR helmets, discuss various interesting issues with them, go through small mini-games and even get acquainted.

In VR, only talk about the real world

Remember those wonderful times of "WEB 1.0", when there was little content on the Internet? Well, when cat-matrices and demotivators could really cause a fit of laughter, and you didn't want to send their senders to Odnoklassniki, except to send them to Bobruisk? And there were no Odnoklassniki themselves. There was a "contact", but it was a closed network for really privileged students, so that they could easily exchange highly intelligent cat matrices.

Then, in order to somehow keep the user, almost every site had a chat. As simple as possible, with “kolobok” emoticons, often without the ability to attach a picture or a link, and they did not even suspect the existence of stickers. But such chats had their own charm, and the possibility of talking with other people was so intoxicating that one could spend the whole night discussing some nonsense or even - shh! - having virtual sex.

VRChat is an analogue of such chat rooms, only in virtual reality. Even now, in the 2020s, there is very little content for VR, and AAA-class games can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Well, there, Half-Life: Alyx. And ... and that's all, in general. So you have to somehow have fun, for example, looking into chatters and discussing various burning issues and experiencing the invasion of the Ugandan knuckles.

VRChat provides complete design freedom. You can create any avatar for yourself or download a ready-made one (for some reason, anime girls and various furries are leading in this regard), build an environment or download a ready-made one, and start communicating. With friends or with random people from all over the world. And further gameplay directly depends on your social skills: if you want to have a tea party - please, a virtual tournament in “Your own game” or “What? Where? When?" - yes, do whoever's stopping you, to practice some BDSM skills in augmented reality with furry - well, ugh, actually, but you can do something.

What to do in VRChat

Even the name VRChat itself demonstrates what to do here - to talk! The game engine can even reproduce the movements of the lips and mouth when pronouncing words, and for this the developers should say a special thank you.

If the developer of the environment world took care of the visitors to the room, then there are also mini-games. For example, Capture the Flag. But more often than not, mini-games are based on exactly the same entertainment as ten years ago - only "Cities" or "Three-liter jar" now take place in virtual reality.

It should be noted that there are very few Russian-speaking users in VRChat. Therefore, this game is a good place for those who want to improve their English, Spanish or French by interacting with native speakers.

Finally, VRChat can be played without glasses or a VR headset. It supports the output of the image simply to the monitor. Of course, the immersion effect in this case is not so bright and noticeable, but suddenly you just want to talk?

VRChat Ugandan Knuckles

Time to dig a burial ground with ancient memes! Remember those weird Ugandan knuckles from late 2017 and early 2018 that flooded the internet? So, this meme is a product of VRChat.

Even now, you can just install an avatar with Ugandan knuckles and go running around the worlds of VRChat, clicking your tongue, but they will most likely look at you as mentally retarded and continue to do their anime gatherings and other strange Internet fun.