"polygon count has no bearing on performance."

what the fuck

As someone that made a few models, 20k should be considered the normal limit for something like vrchat. Upper limits should be around 30-40k with appropriate material counts easily. I think 7k as someone mentioned, is pretty low poly for a vr situation where the camera angle isn't fixed like a traditional video game. Sacrificing quality by living with terrible faceting just to open some doors for the type of character you want is a real thing at less then 20k and that is my problem with this limit. Just a out of the box thought: For people with experience or earned reputation as a user with knowledge of optimization perhaps there could be tiers unlocked for higher poly limits for those users. While knew users still learning about optimizing start with the cap lower. BTW someone showed me a 1.8 million poly prop in front of a mirror and my fps only halved and that was with about 10 other avatars in the room. Poly them selves don't make that much impact. The biggest offenders is dynamic bone simulation, material counts, and particle simulation past a certain threshold. Poly's come way after those 3 offenders mixed IK and rigs.

Beware, this comment is VERY TL;dr, lots of rambling...

It would be nice if it were increased to warn closer to 20k, for those that might want to consider adding stuff to their avatar in the future and then it would be good to warn them so they know not to add too much.

In general, I think it's actually nice to have, because it helps to encourage you to get in the habit of making models that aren't too high poly (especially good if you would like to get into 3D modeling for games). It doesn't force you to make your models under 10k, so I see no problem with it just simply letting you know.

I think the "poly count has NO impact on performance" saying isn't really true though, because at least on average/lower end computers, it really can lag/stutter if there's enough polys on the screen at once, and if you combine it with stuff like materials, high textures, separate meshes, etc which would more likely often be associated with high poly models... it can be laggy for those without strong computers at least for loading, especially in VR.

I think they are doing this in consideration of those with lower end PCs, because VR is still new to many people, and it will be a while before the general public has very powerful PCs which are made to truly handle very high graphics on VR without lagging or FPS drops.

It could be eased if LODs were a thing, though, as that would help to optimize avatars/worlds and even raise the limit without problem (assuming people did it).

It could be done like Second Life, where when you upload a mesh it can auto-generate the lower LODs for you, and you pretty much only need to deal with the High and Medium LODs as the lower LODs than that would be hardly even visible.

One might say that those people on lower-end computers should just get a better computer, but I think this would make the VRChat community look very snobbish for blaming someone that does meet the minimum requirement for VR.

I mean, my computer meets the minimum for Steam VR, and it's one of the expensive gaming computers from a few years ago, but it lags if there's enough people, tons of clutter (tons of polys), or mirrors.

Even without VR, it can lag really bad in something like Second Life or really any game that allows user-created content, when there's a place that has a ton of tiny unscripted, high-poly, high-res-textured/material objects all concentrated in an area, and when I look away (or the excess objects derender), the lag is gone until I look back again. I mean unless there's something else causing this in just about any 3D program (Even Blender lags if the model is too high-poly or too many vertices on the screen, but is fine when you rotate the camera away from the model), because this seems to be a common thing not just for me, but other people who get really low frame rates from the same thing.

I mean, if they lifted the restriction completely to allow unlimited polys (which from what you said, implies that it doesn't cause any issues), we'd probably see things like this on avatars:

And please do not tell me these do not cause lag without a super computer, because they totally do on average/affordable computers. They don't even have LODs after all... :(

So that is really the biggest fear that I have when there is not proper education about at least decent level of optimization in 3D games/worlds of user-created content.

I mean, most of the people importing the high poly models that go over 20k seem to be importing from MMD without much knowledge of actual 3d modeling or optimization. Which some models would be fine if a bit over 20k, but there are also models which are way too much to not cause noticeable lag, like in the hundred-thousands or even up to the millions, as they were intended to be used in pre-rendered movies, not real-time games. Plus most of these models are going to want to use Dynamic bones or other scripts, and many have excess of bones for this... I think it's good for users to learn to also create/optimize bones in general.

Maybe if with the message (which yeah, I'd be for it they increased the limit for when it appears), they included a link to a guide to help educate and encourage people to learn to not get excessive with models.

Since I know my models are fine, I just ignore the warning message. I never saw a problem with it being there because it doesn't actually impede anything...

This is an example of one avatar I recently worked on which is a whopping 7496 polys, so I really don't see it as impossible to make detailed girl avatars with dresses be under 20k, when this isn't even 10k (and has 3D detail like muscles, and human-ears under the hair):

In the case of MMD models I wanted to upload, I would do things such as converting any tiny detail like jewelry/beads into flat planes with textures of them in cutout alpha, remove unnecessary edge loops, and this alone cuts most models' poly counts dramatically.

I don't think the intention of VRChat was to just take models from other programs/games that were not made for using in realtime, or at least I would hope not if they ever planned to implement a market/store system...

So while I don't see a problem with people using MMD models as non-profit if they can get it to work, I also see that it would be better to learn making avatars from scratch or from a lower-poly dummy model. I plan to release two male dummy-bodies (a slim and muscular body) some time soon specifically for use with VRChat users that want to upload avatars they can customize without needing to lower the poly count of the base model. Eventually I'll create a tutorial for how to extrude the body to VERY easily create custom low-poly clothes for it without the need for weight-painting or UV-mapping, as well.

I wondered if this could help, to those who don't mind making or editing their own clothing and hair or adjusting the face shape/texture, and if it works out, I can also make a female dummy model and models of different physiques, face shapes, and heights, too. I started with male because there's hardly any usable models for attractive anime-style males that don't already have clothes hiding the body shape, and it'd be nice to see more diversity with characters in anime community, and lower poly models at that. ^_^

Also should probably add some more information like how many materials the avatar has, how many separate meshes, etc.