cubee_cb
(separated from https://feedback.vrchat.com/bug-reports/p/1375-pico-vrchat-problems-bugs )
The performance in the default home world is somewhat inconsistent, as well as the quick menu and full menu having a concerning impact on performance.
I don't have a Quest to compare performance, so I don't know if the story is the same over there or not.
Here's my testing environment:
  • I am in the default home world.
  • The avatar I'm using to test is medium-ranked (due to physbones, 4 enabled contacts) with 255 triangles (yes, 255), though the performance issues remain with better-ranked avatars.
  • Mirrors are set to half resolution.
  • My PICO-4 has 90Hz mode turned on. (A cheap way to make it a little more consistent may be to make VRChat explicitly use 72Hz mode as app support for 90Hz mode seems to be optional... but I trust you'll do your best!)
  • PICO-4 LAB -> Power Management is set to Standard.
I've used the PICO's built-in metrics HUD to see the FPS numbers.
It seems to be GPU-bound, though the CPU doesn't have much headroom either. What's more concerning about this is that the resolution is lower than the native clarity (i.e. I can see fuzzy pixel edges where it's smooth in the system UI), which means increasing the clarity probably isn't feasible. I notice the PICO's home environment and often controller models are rendered at a lower resolution too, I wonder why that is. (sorry for the tangent)
First test [Build 1392]:
  • I do get 72-90 on average, but it drops as I walk around the home world.
  • It drops to 55-60 with the mirror enabled, and then opening the quick menu brings that down to 35fps.
On second test [Build 1393], the numbers are pretty much identical. If anything, they're slightly worse, though that may be me being more harsh with averaging the number ranges.
  • walking around: 75-90 with occasional dips to 55-60
  • looking at mirror: 50-60
  • looking at quick menu: 30-33
  • looking at quick menu + mirror: 25-30
  • looking at full-size worlds menu: 15-25
I will note, compared to what I've heard from Quest users, I have not yet encountered avatars that won't load due to "Out of Memory". That extra 2GB RAM must really make a difference?
(>> Resolved >>) However, I have had occurences of worlds not loading, leaving me stuck in the blue void with no world thumbnail until I restart the game. I'll make another post for this part if needed.