Relaunch Last Game
On rare occasions some games crash and/or someone may leave a game accidentally. There is a method to relaunch that last game to potentially join the existing session. This method works slightly differently than launching the game directly and potentially not allowing the player to join in the active game with other players. Also note that this is primarily for games that have the One Click Launch through SynthesisVR. During an active session, click on the Station Name or the Gear Icon of the station that the game crashed on/customer left accidentally. Here is from the Standard/Station View: Or from the Timeline View: On the resulting Popup, go to the Manage tab and click on the Command Calls button: On the next popup, you can click on the filter at the top that says “Relaunch Game” or use the drop down menu to choose that as an option. Note that you may have a lot more if you have more Command Calls set up at your arcade. Once Relaunch Game has been selected, then click on OK and the last game played will be launched and should join the active game session.
General Network Settings
To keep lines of communication open between the Proxy and your stations, we recommend the following settings. The first thing to do is to be sure all your PCs are on a Private Network. (Note that the images below are from Windows 10, they will be somewhat different visually on Windows 11): From Network & Internet settings, be sure you’re in the Status section and click on the Properties: Once in the Properties, simply choose the Private option. Typically wired connections start off as Private and wireless connections tend to start off as Public: The next thing to do would be to disable the Private Firewall. From the Properties screen, you can just click on the Configure firewall and security settings and agree to the next prompt: Note that when you boot up, you will likely get a security warning from Windows about the Firewall being off, you can simply dismiss it. If you are not comfortable disabling the Firewall completely, you can simply be sure the ports referenced in this article are open: https://synthesisvr.com/knowledge-base/firewall-and-network-information/
Crashing Games
Unreal Engine-based games like Eclipse, Shooty Frooty, The Raft and others could launch and crash when running on Intel CPUs Gen 10+. To fix this, run the following command in an Administrator Command Prompt: If you are unsure how to do that, just open the following in the browser directly on the PC: After applying the fix, please restart Windows.
Turn off Windows Access Point automated restart
Upon starting Windows, the Access Point app will start automatically and wouldn’t let you quit or stop it. Even further, ending the app through Task Manager would stop it just temporarily, but the app will start again in a couple of seconds. As long as this could be considered an intrusive behavior, it actually helps when SynthesisVR is used on a day-to-day basis. Operating a VR arcade could be stressful at times and having to interact with the desktops of 10+ PCs often comes too much. The default behavior also has a key role when you have your VR Stations set up with non-Administrator accounts and you don’t want your employees to mess up with the system. How to disable the default behavior: Step 1 – Find “Services” in the Windows Search bar: Step 3 – change the “Startup type” to “Manual”:
QuarkXR – Troubleshooting Guide
QuarkXR consists of two parts – Server and Client. The Server is installed on your Windows PC and adds a special driver. The Client is what’s installed on your Android-based HMD (Quest/Pico/Focus 3). There are a couple of things that could go wrong in the setup. If you have trouble pairing an HMD with a PC station, this guide is for you. 1. Make sure SteamVR is up and running. Right after restarting SteamVR, it should be stating “Headset Not Detected”. If you are seeing an attached HMD – get it physically disconnected and close all other streaming software and apps 2. Make sure the QuarkXR driver is installed: If “CloudXRRemoteHMD” is blocked – you have to unblock it and restart SteamVR. If “CloudXRRemoteHMD” is not on the list at all: 3. Make sure the Android HMD has a green dot under the “Your Arcade” page. If that’s not the case: If neither is the case, plug the HMD to a PC running MobileFuel. Under MobileFuel 4. If you suffer from constant QuarkXR disconnects, please check your HMD is connected to a 5Ghz WiFi network. If the HMD is connected on 2.4Ghz, this could very likely cause frequent drops with just 2 or 3 connected HMDs. If your 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz networks have the same SSID name, the Quest tends to randomly switch between them. A good practice is to name the SSIDs differently and let the Quest keep connected only to the 5Ghz network. Please let me know if that is applicable to your setup.
Quark XR – Automatic VR Streaming – The Guide
Heads up: if you want to know more about the past and the present, please jump on our “A brief history of VR Streaming” blog post. Prerequisite: 1. Login to your account, head to the Content Store, and search for “streaming”: 2. On the next popup, pick the PCVR stations that will be used for streaming and click the Install button: 3. Run MobileFuel and install QuarkXR on the actual HMD: Note – if this is the first time you are using Synthesis on the specific HMD, you first have to install SynthesisVR. Following the Synthesis installation – put on the HMD and under the HMD’s own environment, start the “SynthesisVR” application. On Meta Quest 1/2, the app will be located under the “Unknown Sources”. On Pico, the app is next to your other applications and games. On Focus 3, the Synthesis app is under “Apps >> 2D”. Upon starting the app, you’ll see a “Please Wait” message – this indicates the system is synchronizing the game trailers and images, and depending on how much content you have pre-installed, it could take between 1-10 minutes. 4. Go to “Your Arcade” page, make sure there is a green dot for the VR station created for the HMD (if it’s not coming up for you, Log out from my.synthesisvr.com and log back in) and Enable the Kiosk Mode: 5. Pair to / Unpair from a VR Station (make sure both stations have green dots):
Remove/Uninstall Games
Removing games from your arcade depends on how the game is delivered. Games Installed Through Steam Open up the Steam App and head over to the Library; Search for the game via search field if necessary and the right click on the game and hover over the Manage option and select Uninstall. You’ll be asked to confirm. If a game is uninstalled then it will not show up in the SynthesisVR game menu. Note that this is station specific and you’d need to uninstall on all your stations. Be sure to refresh your Access Point so that SynthesisVR knows the game is uninstalled. Games Installed Through The SynthesisVR Access Point Go to the Billing Tab in the Games & Licensing section and scroll down until you see the game in question. You may need to click on the Show Unused Subscriptions at the bottom of the list if you have not played that game during the current month. Once you find the game, click on the Mark for Cancelation and decide if you want to cancel and remove it right away or wait until the end of the month. Optional Last Step To “clean things up”, you can also remove the game from any Game Categories it’s in. From the Your Games tab in the Games & Licensing section, filter on Uninstalled Games and on Show Only Games in Categories: Click on the game you would like to remove from a Game Category and go to the Categories Tab. From there you can remove it from all its assigned Game Categories by switching to Disabled.
Arizona Sunshine Advanced Game Settings Parameters
An explanation of the various configuration options: ForceLanguageIf this is not empty, the game will be displayed in the configured language.Supported values: EN, FR, DE, ES, RU, IT, ZH_CN, JA, KO. ForceEnableRotationIf configured as “yes”, and playing on Vive or WindowsMR, the “rotate left” and “rotate right” buttons are enabled. If configured as “no” you can only rotate by physically rotating. This is defaulted to “no”, because players often accidentally reload instead of rotating, and vice versa. DifficultySets the difficulty when using AutoStart and the default difficulty when using the menu. For more information, see the “Difficulty” section above.Supported values: “Easy”, “Norma”, “Hard” HordeModePlayTimeCan be configured to automatically end the horde mode session after the configured amount oftime has passed. The format is HH:MM:SS. If configured as 00:00:00 (the default), there is nolimit for the horde mode session. AutoSkipEndScreenTimeAfter a horde mode session, players will automatically become ‘ready’ (without them pressing the ready button) after this time. The format is HH:MM:SS. ShutDownAfterEndScreenIf configured as “yes”, the game application will shut down after the end screen is shown for 30 seconds (or the value configured in AutoSkipEndScreenTime) after a horde mode session. MutilationAndBloodIf configured as “yes”, mutilation and blood effects will be enabled. If configured as “no”, these effects will be disabled. LaserSightIf configured as “yes”, a red dot is shown where the gun is aiming. ForceLeftHandedIf configured as “yes”, optimizes controls for left handed players. InvincibleAtStartOfLevelSecondsThe amount of seconds players are invincible in the game level that is first played (when starting a game level from the menu or with the AutoStart configuration option). FriendlyFireIf configured as “yes”, players receive damage from other players’ shots. SelfDamageIf configured as “yes”, players can shoot themselves in the head. InvincibilityIf configured as “yes”, players will respawn after a short time when they die. Note that horde mode levels will never end unless “HordeModePlayTime” is used. InfiniteAmmoIf configured as “yes”, players don’t have to press the reload button because guns will have an infinite amount of ammo. ForceStartWeaponMainHandThe gun which is automatically equipped in the main-hand at the start of a level. If empty, the player will not automatically be equipped with a gun. Default: “M9”. For a list of all guns, please refer to the ‘Weapon List’ . ForceStartWeaponOffHandThe gun which is automatically equipped in the off-hand at the start of a level. If empty, the player will not automatically be equipped with a gun. Default: “M9”. For a list of all guns, please refer to the ‘Weapon List’ . ForceStartWeaponSingleHandThe gun which is automatically equipped at the start of a level (only used when using a supported peripheral which is held by the player with two hands, see InputDeviceLeftModelType, InputDeviceRightModelType) . If empty, the player will not automatically be equipped with a gun. Default: “K50M”. For a list of all guns, please refer to the ‘Weapon List’ . AutoSkipEndScreenTimeAfter a horde mode session, the session score is displayed, as well as the top scores from the leaderboard of the played level. This configuration option determines after how much time the screen is skipped. The format is HH:MM:SS. LocalLeaderboardNetworkFolderPathIf not empty, and configured to an existing folder’s network path (for example: \\COMPUTER-NAME\SharedFolderName\leaderboards). If empty, the Windows registry will be used to store leaderboards, and they will be synced to other players in the session at the end of a multiplayer session. LastScoreAdditionalSaveDirectoriesLastScore files will also be saved in all directories specified here, in addition to the directories mentioned under ‘ Latest score saving ’ at the top of this document. The paths specified can be absolute, or relative to ArizonaSunshine.exe. For example, to save the latest score files in C:\ArizonaSunshineLatestScores and C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Arizona Sunshine Arcade\LatestScores, specify: [“C:\ArizonaSunshineLatestScores”, “LatestScores”]. InputDeviceLeftModelTypeConfigure this if using one of the supported peripherals. If using a two handed peripheral, configure both this and InputDeviceRightModelType to the same value. Supported values: “”, “ViveController”, “HyperkinBlaster”, “PPGunRifle InputDeviceRightModelTypeConfigure this if using one of the supported peripherals. If using a two handed peripheral, configure both this and InputDeviceLeftModelType to the same value. Supported values: “”, “ViveController”, “HyperkinBlaster”, “PPGunRifle” MainMenuQuitButtonIf configured as “yes”, the main menu will have a quit button. If configured as “no” it won’t. This can be used if you don’t want players shutting down the game. PlayerNamePresetThe default player name. This will appear as the starting value in the menu, and it’ll be used as player name when AutoStart is used. WalkingLocomotionIf configured as “yes”, the default locomotion type is walking. If configured as “no”, the default locomotion type is teleportation. This can be used in combination with AutoStart, since it can also be configured by players in the menu. MatchMakerBranchThe match list will only show matches of players which have the same MatchMakerBranch configured. For example, you could configure all of your PCs as “MyVRArcadesName” to only show matches created in your arcade. RenderScaleLower values decrease image quality (less GPU heavy), higher values increase image quality (more GPU heavy). GraphicsQualityLevel0: low, 1: medium, 2: high, 3: very high, default: 2 AUTOSTART CONFIGURATION OPTIONS These configuration options are used for the AutoStart feature, in which the main menu isskipped and the configured level is loaded directly. The AutoStart feature is enabled if a value isconfigured for the AutoStart configuration option. An explanation of the AutoStart configuration options: AutoStartConfigure a level to be loaded automatically. Supported values: Holdout_Canyon, Holdout_Caves, Holdout_Warehouse, 01_Base (singleplayer only), 02_CarCrash, 03_Canyon, 04_Caves, 05_Traintracks, 06_Refinery,08_Trailerpark, 09_Sunshine, MissileBaseDLC. IsMultiplayerConfigured as “yes” if playing a session with more than one player. IsHostConfigure as “yes” on one of the players in the session. NumberOfPlayersConfigure as the number of players in the session (not used if IsMultiplayer is “no”). ConnectIPAddressConfigure the IP Address of the player which has the IsHost configured as “yes”. WEAPON LIST One-handed weapons: 44Magnum = “_44MAGNUM” 44MMGL = “_40MMGL” Blackhawk = “BLACKHAWK” DesertEagle = “DESERT_EAGLE” FiveSeven = “FIVE_SEVEN” FortyCal = “FORTY_CAL” Glock17 = “GLOCK17” M9 = “M9” M1911 = “M1911” Mac11 = “MAC11” Makarov = “MAKAROV” MicroUzi = “MICRO_UZI” MP5 = “MP5” MP9 = “MP9” P250 = “P250”
Arizona Sunshine and Game Plugins
This article will provide a practical use for Game Plugins while also showing you how to set up multiple versions of Arizona Sunshine (Horde Mode, Campaign, and Single Player). The first step is to head to the Your Games section: From there, search for Arizona Sunshine Arcade and open it up. We first need to create 2 Variations. More could be made once you understand this whole process, but we just need 2. To create Variations, click on the Add Game Variation and you’ll want to do that twice to create 2 Variations: Once you the 2 Variations are there, you’ll want to rename them. Rename them to Arizona Sunshine Horde Mode and Arizona Sunshine Single Player. If you want, you can rename the primary Variation to Arizona Sunshine Campaign but that’s optional. Naming them will be important so we can find them later. Once you’ve renamed them, click on the Save button at the bottom and you’ve completed step 1. The next step is to head to the Game Plugins section: Once in the Game Plugins, you need to create 3 new Game Plugins and we’ll start with the first one. To create a new Game Plugin, click on the 3 dot menu and click on the Add Option: For our first one, we’ll create the Horde Mode Game Plugin. Follow the image below exactly. Note that the Title is internal to this section and is not critical, but we recommend naming it something like the image so you can identify it if you need to edit it later: To add more Selection Options, you would need to click on the Add New Selection Option + button. If you need to remove one, click on the red x on the option you want to remove. Now that we’ve entered all the information above, we need to edit the Conditions tab to tell the system what game to associate things with. In the Conditions tab you need to click on the Enable For Games button and using the drop down menu you’ll need to find the Arizona Sunshine Horde Mode game variation: Once you’ve selected the Arizona Sunshine Horde Mode you can Save Changes. The final step is to edit the Config File for the settings for Horde Mode. To do that you need to click on the Advanced Games Settings button. To keep things simple, copy the following code into the field: Note that you should not click on the Load Default if you want to allow the automated SynthesisVR Provisioning to do its thing. Additionally, you can feel free to edit any of the above if you want to change some of the parameters once you feel comfortable. Once you’ve copied this info, click on Save. And that’s one Game Plugin done! 2 more to go. Create a new Game Plugin and for this one we’re going to create the Campaign Variation (for 2 players). Please refer to the following image for all the settings: And in the Conditions tab, you’ll want to add the main Variation of the game (and if you renamed it to Arizona Sunshine Campaign, you’re ahead of the game ?). Save Changes and now copy the following code into the Advanced Game Settings: And Save when done. We’re almost there! One more Game Plugin. For that one, we’re going to create the Single Player Variation. When you create the new Game Plugin, you’re going to actually use the same settings that we did for the Campaign Variation above and this time you’ll choose the Single Player Variation in the Conditions tab: And for the Advanced Game Settings, copy this code: And that’s it for the Game Plugins, not so hard, one more step and you’ll be done and the magic will begin! The final step would be to add each one of these Variations into at least one Game Categories. We won’t be going into detail about that here, but one thing to note is when you go to add a game into a Game Category, you would want to use the search field for Arizona Sunshine and drag the appropriate game into the appropriate Game Category. Finally at the end! But you’re probably wondering what all the above does. Glad you asked. When you launch a session on your stations and go to choose Arizona Sunshine, you’ll be presented with several choices at this point: Depending on which version you choose, you will then be presented with additional options: And now when the game launches, it puts people directly into that specific variation together without the need of having them go into the menus to create things. The additional bonus is if you do use customer’s name in the session launch (and you keep the SynthesisVR parameters in the Advanced Game Settings), the names will be automatically interjected in the game and they don’t have to do that part either.
Command Calls & OBS
Preface: This is by no means a deep dive into OBS, this is a basic overview of the software and how you can integrate its usage with SynthesisVR using Command Calls. We will highlight the basics you will need to know to get going. SynthesisVR has an integration with OBS allowing you to record and/or trigger a stream with OBS. This article introduces an alternative and possibly more granular usage using Command Calls as well as giving an overview of how to set up OBS. We hope you enjoy this ride ?. First the OBS Stuff You’ll need to install OBS first via https://obsproject.com/ and you’ll also need the VR Plugin is you are going to record the VR portion, you can find that here: https://github.com/baffler/OBS-OpenVR-Input-Plugin/releases Once both are installed, you will want to be sure to set some basic settings for OBS. The first thing is to make sure your Profile, which is basically a “memory slot” of your settings. You can create a new Profile or duplicate an existing one. Name it something like “1080p Recording” or “VR Recording” or something indicating what the overall settings are going to be. Technically you would only need to do this once depending on what you may be recording, more on that later: Once you are in this Profile, the next is to go into settings and we’ll discuss the primary things to edit: For recording locally, which is the primary goal of this guide, first head to Output and click on the Recording Tab. The following is probably the best options to set, the thing to play with would be the Video Bitrate which is usually defaulted at 2500 Kbps and should be sufficient, but a higher value means better quality with the sacrifice of additional storage space. Play around with that until you get the result you are happy with. Additionally you’ll want to pick a storage location that works for you. Next would be the Video Tab and you can set the proper capture and output resolutions along with the framerate. Generally speaking 30 or 29.97 frames per second is your best bet, but you could do something faster if you want to do some slow motion. But this isn’t an editing tutorial ?. The last thing to set would be in the Advanced tab and it’s the Filename Formatting. This would be the reason to have different Profiles if you’re recording different things (like in VR and also an external camera or something) and would be useful if recording simultaneous recordings at once. More on that later. You’ll notice that on the screenshot there is a list of the % placeholders, feel free to use whatever combination you want. Once you’ve got your Profile settings done, click on OK and it’s time to build your scene. Scenes are what is being recorded including video and audio components. You have to first set up a Scene Collection and this is similar to the Profile setup. You can either create a new one or duplicate an existing one. Be sure to name it something memorable as you did the Profile, it can even share the same name if you want to keep things consistent. You can have multiple Scenes in a collection and each scene (and Profile, more later) can be triggered via a command line and by extension Command Calls. You will likely only need one Scene per Profile. You can leave the left side Scenes along and focus on the Sources box. To add a Source, click on the + at the bottom and choose a source. If you’re looking to capture VR, choose the Open VR Capture option: For Audio Input/Output, the recommendation would be to choose the VR Headset Microphone for Input and the VR Headset Audio as the Output (vs any other options that might be presented to you). Be sure to name them appropriately to better identify them. When adding any video source to a Scene, be sure to adjust the size and position in the viewer at the top. When adding audio sources, be sure to adjust the levels in the audio mixer so the volume isn’t hitting the red a lot. If you plan on doing simultaneous recordings of both inside and outside of the headset, the recommendation would be set up a different Profile (with its own Scene) with a different Filename Format so that there’s no chance of overwriting the file or strangeness with file naming issues. Once you have all your Profiles and Scenes set up the way you like them (be sure to do some test recordings to confirm OBS is saving things the way you want), you’re more or less done with the set up process of OBS and it’s now time to move onto the SynthesisVR portion. You will need the names of the Profile(s) and Scene Collection(s) you will be using. You’ll need to head to the Command Calls section: And now the SynthesisVR Side To create a new Command Call, click on the 3 dot menu and then choose +Add Command. Enter in the title of your Command Call, probably something like Start OBS Recording and enter in the location of the OBS executable which is likely C:\Program Files\obs-studio\bin\64bit\obs64.exe Next comes the fun part, the arguments. You can find the OBS Launch Parameters here: https://obsproject.com/wiki/Launch-Parameters and we’ll primarily focus on startrecording, minimize-to-tray, profile, and collection. The last 2 would not be necessary if you have only 1 Profile and Scene Collection. So if we called our Profile “1080p” and our Scene Collection “VR”, our Arguments would look like this: Note the double – before each parameter and the quotation marks around the Profile and Scene Collection names. The last step would be to make sure to Enable the Command Call and, if you want to trigger it from the Your Arcade page, enable the Allow As Interface Option. We will discuss the Conditions tab shortly, but if you now head to the