Looking forward to seeing this in the proposal phase.

New Wearable Category: Hands This proposal is now in status: PASSED. Voting Results: * Yes 100% 7,158,852 VP (220 votes) * No 0% 0 VP (4 votes)

Ah! Thank you for clarifying - voting yes!

Hey @Morph great points and thanks for chiming in. Sorry for the confusion. Maybe I'm using the wrong verbiage when I say "hide" Hands. The idea of having the upper bodies automatically hide hands is so that they don't overlap. It wouldn't "remove" any hands from any existing wearables. It would just mean any Upper Body published *after* integration, would not include hands in the mesh. The hands will still exist on the pre-existing Upper Body wearables. Players will not be able to equip a new Hands Wearable with pre-existing Upper Body wearables. This would allow creators to keep the integrity of their original design and have the choice of updating to accommodate the new category. Otherwise, there will be **many** overlapping hand accessories. It's worth noting too that **none of this is binding yet** and even after the "binding" stage there will likely be some shifts in the integration process once the Render and SDK teams are able to provide their insight.

I love the idea, I wish there was more options for hands so that I could have robot arms with multiple outfits. However the concept that 'All pre-existing Upper-Body wearables should automatically hide the Hands category' - this feels like a huge change that would essentially break a large amount of the existing wearables. I'm sure we have lost many artists or account details that manage these wearables. Are we able to add this category, but _not_ remove existing hand slot models? Or only do so if a hand slot wearable is equipped? Having a category for hands/gloves that either covers the hands model, or outright replaces it, while not breaking the existing DCL catalogue seems like a good compromise to make it backwards compatible. EDIT: Additionally, adding a gloves slot that goes on top of existing hands models would be much simpler from a technical perspective, adding a 500/1000 tri slot to the hands specifically for this would be much simpler while still enabling the functionality, while complete avatar hand replacements would cover the existing hands. I agree that while DCL characters are high in Tri's currently, a 5/10% increase for a proper hands wearable slot (similar to how we have shoes/feet slot already) is a worthwhile increase, especially if not everyone has complex hand items equipped. Eventually, optimizations will be less relevant as hardware scales, and alternative technical solutions can be formed as part of the avatar pipeline to optimize baking textures or removing the default hand models etc..

As I said, if the explorer team or other teams aiding in the integration of this new category agree that tris should be lower for Upper Body and are willing to include that with this integration, we will listen. But this can all be speculation as neither you or I are a part of the foundation's development team. A 10% increase is pretty reasonable for an entirely new wearable category that will breed a ton of innovation and revenue. Also to clarify the "governances" I was just pointing out that those numbers did not prevent someone from publishing. They have separate parameters for publishing. Would be cool if DCL users had that VRChat functionality of limiting how many tris they register. But I'm pretty sure Islands help with this rendering pressure too.

Quick google search on character tris count recommendation. (Documentation from Unity 3D) 

[quote="NikkiFuego, post:5, topic:17497"] Hands wouldn’t be a direct 1500 increase as all pre-existing upper bodies have hands included [/quote] Yeah that's why I recommended to reduce the UB limit to 1000 if we're gonna have a hands category or else it will indeed be a direct 1500 tris increase. [quote="NikkiFuego, post:5, topic:17497"] which I think is just recommendations, not actual governances [/quote] Not sure what you mean "governances" but its a ranking system in VRchat so that players can hide users in "poor" avatars so they don't ruin their experience in-game The point is that adding categories, hence tris, will heavily impact performance. There's a reason tris limits were implemented and introducing new categories with more tris than needed is not the best.. I've already seen multiple people not being able to play just because the game was too heavy for their computer to run in crowded areas. Making it heavier will only make things worse.. Also 100k is a LOT especially if you consider that's only hands.. You're correct on the 10k tris total that exists at the moment which is why I'm saying *Let's not push it even more*

@Yannakis sorry I misread your original comment. I thought you were saying hands should be 1,000 tris. I realize what UB means now. We are totally open to the idea of updating the Upper Body tri limit to 1,000 due to the fact that hands won't be included in Upper Body meshes. But that also adds to the development and integration. Which is more resistance. However, I would like to push back on the tri perspective. Because if that chart is true (which I think is just recommendations, not actual governances) then DCL already exceeds that "Poor" label. I just went in-game and equipped the following: * Hair 1500 * Upper Body 1500 * Lower Body 1500 * Feet 1500 * Eyewear 500 * Earring 500 * Tiara 500 * Mask 500 * Doki Head 1500 * Top-Head 500 * Main slots = 7,500 * Accessories = 2,500 * Total = 10,000 And we know that there are dozens and dozens of wearables that are approved slightly over the tri limit when necessary so this 10k could be larger. Also, some wearables get approved that don't hide the appropriate categories so therefore the 10k could be even larger. So using that logic, any event that has 100 concurrent users would see 1,000,000 tris at one time or more. Hands wouldn't be a direct 1500 increase as all pre-existing upper bodies have hands included. Hand wearables will still include hand meshes which are 500~ tris (I checked). So it would only be an increase of roughly 1,000 tris per hand wearable. If there are 100 concurrent users that is only a 10% (100k) increase in tris to what exists now.

Game performance because of excessive tris has nothing to do with server stability of catalyst servers etc its 100% users hardware. Also I don't think its fair to compare feet category to hands as shoes are one of the main wearables but hands would fall under the "accessories" category which all have 500 tris. Its not a bad idea but would add unneeded complexity to existing wearables and make the game a lot heavier than it already is not to mention that the possibility of having a character with that amount of tris on VR or mobile is non existent. Nonetheless my comment was to try and make up for the excessive tris use since the hands which were included in the UB would now be a separate wearable Id think it'd only be fair to reduce them from the initial UB tris limit. Expansion of economy and stability of platform won't make a game that's not optimized run on a medium spec computer.. This is a Performance Ranking for VRChat on Oculus Quest for some reference 

Hey @Yannakis thanks for chiming in. We are treating this like the already pre-existing categories. When thinking about the longevity of the platform, stability eventually will not be an issue. We believe if we wait until the day that the servers are perfect and introduce the category there will be even more dilution to the existing accessory categories with the excessive hand wearables being made. We are looking at this from an art quality perspective and the integrity of the wearable system. If the explorer team feels that the 1,000 tri limit is more appropriate, then we would consider it. We feel like there are way more possibilities with hand wearables than feet as the feet are a major component in the way the avatar navigates the world. Whereas hands can include many different features. If feet have more tri limit than hands it doesn't really make sense. We chose 1,500 because it is consistent with the pre-existing wearable categories. We looked at the base for every default wearable category and they have a base of 500-700 tris and a limit of 1,500. Additionally, the stability of the platform shouldn't be a barrier to the expansion of the economy. I would argue that a lot of the stability issues go far beyond tri counts for wearables. There are many factors that play a role in the stability of the catalyst servers and whatnot.

Do you think UB tris should also be reduced to 1000 since we're taking away over 500 tris that were used for the hands? Optimization is a major factor for onboarding players and DCL is already heavy and for many unplayable. Adding an additional 1500 tris to each character may not sound like a lot but will heavily reduce performance in a crowded area. For example, if you consider that some scenes have over 100 concurrent players that would be 150000 tris just for hands.