(Obsolete) 7Display

OBSOLETE: This asset is obsolete, as vrchat includes a text chat system! I won't be maintaining this.

7Display is a VRChat avatar accessory that lets you type out any text onto a display on your avatar. I find it useful when I want to be silent while playing.

Features

• NEW: 7Display now has an OSC keyboard! Enable OSC in vrchat, run osc7display.exe, and type with a keyboard instead of with your action menu!
• All 95 printable ASCII characters can be typed onto the display via the action menus.
• 50 characters in memory, automatically viewed with a scrolling view.
• 64 included prewritten messages.
• Quest compatibility: visible to and usable by quest users. Upload a quest version of your avatar!
• Optimized?: <200 polys, 1 material, 1 skinned mesh, 20 animations, 1900 blendshapes, 12 fx animator layers, <6000 animator states + any transitions.
• Simple zero-config setup tool, and an "unsetup" tool to remove 7Display from your avatar, if needed.

Avatar Requirements

If you're not sure about these, don't worry. The setup tool will let you know if your avatar didn't meet the requirements.

• 8 bits of expression parameters available
• 1 top-level expression menu control available

Setup Instructions

• Add 7Display.unitypackage to your project
• Add the 7Display prefab (Assets/7Display/7Display.prefab) to your avatar's armature and position it where you want it. The object must not be deactivated.
• Select the root of your avatar (the one with the avatar descriptor on it)
• Run the setup tool: Tools > 7Display > Setup on Selected Avatar.
• If you're uploading for quest, change the shader on 7Display to VRChat/Mobile/Standard Lite, and enable emissions.

Potential Future Plans

• Curved displays: I want scrolling text on the visor of a protogen.
• Automatic sync: Slowly resyncing the display for laggy users, or for users who joined the lobby late.
• Configurable setup: Customization for: prewritten messages, action menu generation, memory size, printable character
• Better support for projects that have multiple 7Displays across multiple avatars.
• Fix the lag caused by showing/hiding prewritten messages

Known Issues

• There may be "Write Defaults" compatibility issues. 7Display uses Write Defaults on. If your FX layer has states with Write Defaults off, 7Display might not work correctly.
• The setup tool assumes you have only 1 avatar in your project. It may use the wrong display if there's more than 1 7Display in the scene. The setup tool must be run before each upload when working with multiple avatars, as the tool will overwrite animations.
• Both showing a prewritten message and clearing the display cause VRChat to drop a few frames.
• Network lag will cause desyncs with typed characters.
• Players can't see characters that were typed before they showed your avatar's animations.
• Any work in the FX layer might be slower than normal after running the setup tool. Just run the unsetup when editing your FX layer.
• When adding 7Display to avatars that have already had OSC enabled in-game, 7Display will not work because the avatar's OSC configuration is out-of-date. You can find your OSC config files at "%appdata%\..\LocalLow\VRChat\VRChat\OSC", and go a few folders down. I usually just delete all of those json files and let VRChat regenerate them.
• The "7Display" expression param will not be added to the avatar if you have more than 120 bits used, even though the limit should be 248. You can just add the 7Display parameter manually if you want (it's an int). Ping me if this causes you issues, and I'll update the setup script.

If you're having issues with 7Display, contact me on discord: username: uber5001, discord tag: 2036

Changelog

2022-03-28: Add the OSC keyboard server.

2022-02-11: Fixed expression menu and expression parameter assets not saving to disk.

2021-07-11: Added full ASCII support. Add automatic setup for EP and EM. Add automatic creation for EP, EM, and FX. Added prewritten messages. Optimized animations and animation states. Updated action menu layout. Remove menu's scroll toggle. Increased scroll speed.

2021-07-01: Added tool to remove 7Display. Removed extra assets. Fixed FX controller not saving. Fixed FX controller file having unused objects, causing the controller to grow in filesize on every setup.