VIVE Console VIVE PRO 2 Issues
If you are using one of the newer VIVE Headsets with vive console software, the vive console goes offline due to battery changes or other related issues. This might lead to SteamVR quitting and restarting with errors. Vive console tries to restart SteamVR and if you have SynthesisVR on, this will also try to restart Steamvr which could lead to errors. Due to this we recommend disabling SteamVR auto start on SynthesisVR. To do this: On the SynthesisVR Access Point App, Click Settings – SteamVR Settings – Check the Disable SteamVR Auto Start Box Click Back and Refresh the App and this should prevent SynthesisVR from auto starting SteamVR. Once you connect the battery please follow this order to get VIVE PRO 2 working with SteamVR Make sure the VIVE Adapter software is running and Headset is paired and connected Restart VIVE CONSOLE software and once this comes online it will auto start SteamVR
Access Point 3.19.X – Release Notes
Version 3.19.6 – 22nd November, 2021 Support for TCP port negotiation for games using the SynthesisVR WebSocket integration. The change fixes a concurrency issue between the Haze platform and games like Paranormal Pest Patrol and Blaster of the Universe: Infinity Forever Initial support for the SDesk remote desktop application Leaderboard related updates Turning on Semi-Offline mode now have a confirmation popup Automated installation of the 64bit 2015-2019 C++ redistributables — required for some games Automated installation of .NET 5.0 (required for the SDesk app) Fixed a case where sideloaded games may not appear in front Previously muted games now gets automatically unmuted right before they get closed. Leaderboard support for Incarna Chapter 1 and Incarna Chapter 2 Certain mining apps could be detected by SteamVR and that translates to the Access Point. They are now whitelisted. Support for a new Pistol Whip game plugin, that resets the previous skin selection The KATVR support is now unlocked for the CDN plan Fixed a bug where a consequtive launch of the same game is recognized as being a relaunch of the previous game Other minor adjustments The Relaunch capability wasn’t supported when the Overlay launcher is disabled. Version 3.19.5 – 22nd September, 2021 New: Nested categories for the VR Menu. You can now create a structure like: Multiplayer -> 4 Players -> [LIST OF GAMES] or Single Player -> Kids Friendly -> Multiplayer -> [LIST OF GAMES]. New: The “svr://” URLs are now supported with the Command Calls. This allows the creation of simple but useful Command buttons like: svr://relaunchLatestGame New: The relaunch possibility itself is new and allows to join players back to crashed multiplayer games and without the need to restart the game for everyone. New: Windows Registry provisioning. Allows automated configuration for games like LA Deadzone Free Roam and Mission Critical. Synthesis Lobby – Prioritization of the network “Start” signals, fixing a race condition where a game launch can be attempted twice. Additional “under the hood” optimizations are added as well. On PCs having 200+ installed Steam games on a HDD drive, upon PC restart, it takes over a minute for the Access Point to fully load. That time is now greatly optimized. For PCs running the “Access Point Beta”, an easy [Downgrade] button is now available under “Access Point -> Settings -> System”. In case of issues, the Synthesis debug flags are now added to the AccessPoint as clickable options. Sideloading your own games is now easier. Other minor adjustments Version 3.19.4 – 24th August, 2021 Fix: Access Point crash when no cable is present Fix: Synthesis Voice Chat app may fail to start Better KATVR support for games available on both Steam and KAT I/O Support for the new “Experience Type” Engine parameters The countdown session timer is now processed through the Engine parameters, allowing greater flexibility. The Engine now uses the | character as an “if empty” operator. An example use case is the desktop timer, where the following example setting “svr:playername|desktoptext|Virtual Reality#” will display the player and if there is no player name, then it will display the desktoptext parameter. If such parameter is not set (for let say the experience type), then it will simply display “Virtual Reality”. Access Point keyboard shortcuts: F1 = Toggles the “VR Menu Mirror” F2 = Toggles the “Idle Playback” F3 = Opens the “Desktop Menu” F5 = Forces synchronization (same as clicking on the [Refresh] button) Version 3.19.3 – 8th August, 2021 The previous Access Point’s UI code is now completely removed from the code base. Upon starting a session, the games shows automatically under the Access Point. Starting the 3D launcher from within the VR menu wasn’t functional when there is a running game The SteamVR Notifications are now turned off automatically. The “steamvrdnd” debug flag would tell the system to ignore the SteamVR Notifications SynthesisVR Engine support for language pre-selection for Blaston Support for content installed via the Epic Store Version 3.19.2 – 14th July, 2021 Synthesis Engine now supports multiple Lobby channels. This allows better handling and separation of what the customer is doing in the VR launchers and multiplayer games the operator launches through web Certain whitelisted processes are excluded from going in front. Example: the cmd program that comes with Project CARS Pro The Access Point’s local API port now can be changed to any port higher than 1000. The way Synthesis consumes the default 8080 port allows sharing it with other processes, but certain third-party software and apps are not adopting the same level of openness and demand port 8080 exclusively for them. Check our short guide Version 3.19.1 – 1st July, 2021 Better handling of incomplete or non-working idle playback videos A couple of Access Point options were displaying the wrong state The “Preparing” state during the installation of CDN content is sensibly improved Depending on how fast some game load, they weren’t starting in front The automated Steam’s key activation is back! Better support for Windows User names that contains space or hash characters Some unnecessary data has been removed from the logs Support for the new “ESSP Bill Acceptor” module Initial support for an upcoming Racing Game Additions to the “NFC Scripting” capabilities Bugfix – the player may not be able to navigate back from a game category having multiple assigned, but only one accessible game Improvements to the “Steam Lock” and how the “Steam Library” button is handled. Other minor improvements and refinements Exclusion of some Windows 11 apps from the processes monitoring. Version 3.19.0 – 31st May, 2021 Replacing the standard WebBrowser control with the newer WebView2 control. This results in smoother Access Point experience as well better Idle Playback quality. Bugfix: Save Games may not properly restore previous files New scripting event: onWebSessionStart Platform optimizations
Content age ratings
After receiving inquiries from our customers, SynthesisVR is proud to present the “Content age ratings”! To activate the “ Content age ratings “ feature, from the Admin panel navigate to Administration –> Business Setup –> Operation Settingsand click on the “Edit” button for the desired Experience type: Then you will see the new “Enable Age Limit” option in the Advanced tab in the Experience Types edition, where you can enable it.Please note: This feature is not enabled by default, and if you want to use it, you must enable it manually for each experience. Select ON for the option and click the “Save” button. Now when you start a session from “Your Arcade” you will see a drop-down menu to select the age limit for the game: Please note that you also have the option to fine-tune “CONTENT AGE RATINGS” on a per-game basis. To do this, go to Administration –> Business Setup –> Games, Licensing, Categories On the Your Games tab Search or find for the desired game and click on the game icon: under the Settings tab change the “Required Player Age” dropdown to select the age restriction for this game: This feature is also useful for more detailed filtering when selecting games for the respective age group.Also, every game in our Game Catalog (https://synthesis.games) has an added Age rating, keeping in mind that “Age Limit: None” means that the game has no age restrictions:
Access Point – 2020 Updates
Version 3.17.0 (28th September, 2020) -> 3.17.9 (28th December, 2020) Release Notes Version 3.16.0 (22th July, 2020) -> 3.16.7 (07th September, 2020) Release Notes Version 3.15.8 – 19th June, 2020 Bugfix that may affect the Save Game functionality Bugfix a rare case where the running game is not properly closed at session end Free Roam additions Optimization affecting The Raft Version 3.15.7 – 16th June, 2020 Stability improvements bHaptics 1.6.0 support Improved content verification and repair process “Download Cache” beta (disabled by default) Version 3.15 – 23rd March, 2020 New licensing capabilities bHaptics support Save game support for Half-Life: Alyx Version 3.14 – 18th February, 2020 Stability improvements New “File Update” plugins Support for yet unannounced games Version 3.13 – 17th January, 2020 Stability improvements Improved Revive support Leaderboard App support
Operation Settings
From Operation Settings, you have the ability to do the following: Set up and edit (or delete) Experience Types, which is a core element that all your system rules are built on Set up Work Rules which control when certain things in your arcade are “active” (or not active, depending on the rule) Assign Work Rules to your Experience Types Assign Experience Types to specific VR Stations To access the Operation Settings, head to the Administration section and from the Business Setup tab in the Advanced View or directly from the Simple View, click on the Operation Settings: If you have multiple arcades under your account, you will be asked to choose your arcade to continue (you can also change the arcade after you have chosen it during the rest of the set up): Select the arcade (if necessary) and you’ll now be in the Experience Type initial section of the Operation Settings. From here, you can create a new Experience Type via the New Experience Type button at the top. This will be detailed in the Experience Types Knowledge Base article. Below this New button, you will see all your existing Experience Types. For a new arcade, you will see the pre-generated VR Experience and the Parties Experience Types. Experience Types are listed alphabetically. Note that if you have just created a new Experience Type and are going to populate it with new Work Rules, you have the option of creating either a Duration Based Rule or a Per-Game Rule. Once you’ve created your first Work Rule based on that, the Experience Type is “locked” to that type of Rule. Hovering over certain parts of the Experience Types will give you more information about those settings. Examples below for a couple of those. Clicking on the hamburger menu brings up a menu allowing you to Edit, Assign to Stations, or Delete the Experience Type. More may be added to this menu in the future. Note that this menu is an off/on menu and will not go away after you Edit or Assign Stations. If you click on the Stations button to assign the Experience Type to your VR Stations, you are presented with all your stations at which point you can click on the VR Stations you want this assigned to. Or uncheck the stations you want it removed from. Clicking on Save will save your changes. To edit or add Work Rules, click on the Add/Edit Operation Settings which will take you to all Rules assigned to that Experience Type. Once in this section you can now Add a Duration Based Work Rule (or Per-Game Rule if that’s what you’re using the Experience Type for) Assign the Experience Type to your VR Stations (which follows the same method as above) Edit, Copy, or Delete your Existing Work Rules Specific details on creating and editing Work Rules is covered in a different part of the Knowledge Base. under each work rule, you’ll see a summary of the rule including durations available in this rule, dates it’s active, time of day it’s active, and days of the week it’s active. Note that the title at the top is internal only and is only referenced in this section to make it a little quicker to identify the rules you want to work on. From here, you can also Edit, Copy, or Delete the Work Rule.
Work Rules By Duration
Where things like Experience Types and Discounts and Game Categories are core components of SynthesisVR, Work Rules are where all those core components come together and is where the full power of SynthesisVR is realized. This allows you to have multiple combinations of pricing, durations, times, etc. Once you have an understanding of how to set up all your Work Rules, these will branch out to things like Booking Widgets, etc. From the Administration section, click on the Operation Settings button (you need to be in the Business Setup tab if using the Advanced view). From the Operation Settings section, from one of your Experience Types, click on the Add/Edit Operations button. Note that if you haven’t added any Experience Types, please review the Operation Settings and Experience Types sections in the Knowledge Base. Once in the Experience Type, you will be presented with the option to create either a Duration Based Rule or a Per-Game Rule. In this article, we’ll be focusing on the Duration Based Rule. Clicking on the Add Duration Based button and that will open a new Work Rule. The tabs are set up in sequence to help follow the proper work flow. In creating a new Work Rule, start in the first tab, Time Management which determines when this Work Rule is going to be active. Open Time: This is what time the Rule is to begins. Note that time will show in 24 hour, but when entering in times, you can use “5pm” or “10am” Close Time: This is what time the Rule ends. Same point about time as above. Cleaning Time: This is the number of minutes that a VR Station will be in cleaning time (and not bookable) after the end of a session. First Date: This is the day the rule would be being to be active. Active Until: This is the last day the rule will be active The days of the week can be checked off to determine what days of the week this rule is active. If you check “Days” it will reverse the checkboxes. So if something is checked, it will be unchecked and vice versa. Not that if you are creating a 24 hour rule (typically something you would do if you are NOT using the SynthesisVR booking system), then the Open Time would need to be 00:00 and the Close Time would need to be 24:00. Once you have the Time Management set up, it’s time to move to the Billing tab where you can set up you your durations and pricing. Title: This is an internal Title and is only visible to you and in the Experience Type section. It’s best to make this something that you would recognize (like VR Sessions – Mon-Fri” or something. Add Experience, Duration and Billing + section: This is where you would be adding in your durations and pricing. The blue bar is a button and when you click on it, you add a new line item below which contains the Experience Type, the Gameplay, and the Cost. Within the section, you can delete a line item by clicking on the red x. In the Experience Type column, the appropriate Experience Type will be chosen as you’ll be creating the Work Rule from within the Experience Type, you can use the drop down menu to change that. It is advised to keep the Experience Types the same in a single Work Rule, but we will discuss an exception further down. Sales Tax: If your state or country requires you to charge tax, then this is the place to put it. Leave blank if you don’t charge tax. Discount IDs + section: You can add Discount Rules in the section. Click on the blue bar to add any quantity of Discount Rules to the Work Rule. You can remove Discount Rules by clicking on the red x. Note that Discounts have their own set of rules and may not actually apply this a rule even if attached to it. One thing to keep in mind in this section is that prices and discounts are only important if you are taking (or recording) payments within SynthesisVR. If your plans don’t include that, then you can put in 0 in the Cost column, but it’s generally a good idea to have pricing in there to avoid having to go back and fill that in later. Once you have your Billing filled out, next up is the Games tab. Max Games Per Session: If you want to limit the number of games played in a session, this is where you would enter it. Note that this doesn’t limit the total number of games, it limits the different games played. So if you have it set to 4 and someone plays Elven Assassin, Arizona Sunshine, Skyfront, and RevolVR, then that will lock them out of other games but they can keep switching between those 4. Assign Game Categories + section: In this section, you would add the game categories you want to assign to this Work Rule. Clicking on the blue bar will add game categories and you can use the drop down menu to choose which categories you want. Clicking on the red x will delete that category. The order in which they appear in this section is the order they will show in the menus in the headset during a session. One note on Game Categories, if you don’t assign any Game Categories, SynthesisVR will show all games it has detected installed in the menu in the headset during a session. If you add one category, then only the games in that category will show and there will be no categories shown. Once you have more than 1 category, customers will then see categories first when going into the menus (or when clicking on the Library icon in the SteamVR menu in the headset). You can find more information about Game Categories in the Knowledge Base article about them as
Interface Changes March 21
As of March 2021, SynthesisVR will be refining our web Dashboard to consolidate certain functions and to make changing some back end settings a little more direct. The first change will be a reworking of the Administration panel to help differentiate the items available to all Standard subscriptions (in the Business Setup and Arcade Setup tabs) and shifting Pro subscription items to a Pro tab, with a slight overlap in the Extras tab. This will make it a little easier and quicker to identify what would be available in each membership level. Note that customers on the Standard plan will not see the Pro tab and any items in the Extras tab that are specific to the Pro subscription, so if your Administration page doesn’t look exactly like this, that would be the reason. The Business Setup tab now contains the Operation Settings which leads to Experience Types directly from which you will be able to create and assign Experience Types as well as create and modify Operations Settings formally known as Business Hours/Work Rules. This section also allows you to assign Experience Types to specific stations without having to switch to another Administration section. See below screen shots of the updated interface, detailed breakdown of this section will be posted separately in the Knowledge Base. There are also some minor changes in the Work Hour Rule of the Operation Settings which will be covered separately. The primary change is a shift in the Time Management and Billing tabs to make more sense of the workflow for setting up a Work Rule. The Games, Categories, Licenses button will lead you to the Games, Categories, Licenses formerly the Your Games section. The primary change here is in the Categories section (shifted to the 2nd tab now) which is to match the visual look of the Operations Settings section. In the Arcade Setup tab you’ll find some of the “core” system settings, starting with the SynthesisVR Subscriptions button that will lead you to the subscriptions page for modules and, of course, station subscriptions. Nothing has changed here. The VR Stations section will take you to your VR Stations if you need to do further editing than simply assigning Operations Settings to the station. That page has not changed dramatically and continues to show you the summary of your stations and do things like change the name of your stations, turn on/off the 3D environments, etc. This is also where you would need to set a few station specific items like AnyDesk ID, Multiplayer Priority, etc. This is documented separately in our Knowledge Base. The System Users button will lead you to settings for the local Users in your arcade, no change for that. Found in the Extras tab, you’ll find an overlap of some Standard subscription Items and Pro. Again, if you are on the Standard subscription, you will not see all the options noted in the image above. In terms of changes, the change is that several of these buttons have shifted from the Business Setup or the Advanced Settings tab (retired). Functionality has not changed for the respective buttons. The PRO tab was previously the Advanced tab and will now only be visible for those with the Pro subscription. The buttons in the section have not changed in functionality, but some buttons have shifted to the Extras tab.
Updated Access Point to Beta Version
If you need to update SynthesisVR to the latest Beta version (for testing and/or directed by the SynthesisVR support team), go to C:\SynthesisVR Exclusive Content\4301 folder where the Updater app is installed and with right-click create a new shortcut to the Desktop for the SynthesisVR-Update.exe: Then right-click on the shortcut on your Desktop and select Properties then go to the Shortcut tab: Add ” -beta” but without the quotation marks at the end of the Target. Be sure there is a space between the -beta and the text already in the field. Click on “OK” and launch the app via the shortcut and if there is a beta available you will be prompted to update the Access Point. To go back to the standard update, edit the shortcut as above, but remove the ” -beta” portion.
Access Point 3.18.X – Release Notes
Version 3.18.9 – 27th April, 2021: The Microsoft suggested functionality for bringing applications and games in front has been replaced with another one that has a much higher chance for success. Bugfix: launching a single-player instance of multiplayer games and from a multi-station session was working only through the in-VR menu. It now works equally well through any other method of launching. Bugfix: If a CDN delivered game is about to be remotely installed and it’s not yet a known game in the network, the Access Point may hangup Upon starting a game, the volume for the exe will be set to 100% in the Windows Mixer Other minor improvements Version 3.18.8 – 14th April, 2021: Various optimizations to the automated network negotiation for the multiplayer games: Fixed an issue that happens when the player is about to start a multiplayer game through the VR launcher and the operator performs the same through the web administration New: broadcasting an End-Of-Session signal to inform stations that are not part of the current session — useful when there are involved out-of-the-session stations (Game Servers / Spectator PCs) The desktop’s Access Point application now scales properly when the Windows zoom level is set above 100% New: you can set the size for your free-roam space by going under the games management, click on the game you want to set and look for the “Extra Settings” tab. New: upon starting a session with a preselected multiplayer game, the VR launcher will display the message “Get Ready! Your game will start soon!”. This is useful when it takes longer for the operator to set the player names. With the previous versions, the players were seeing the regular VR menu and this could be confusing if they expend to land in the game. The new text can be changed/translated through the “Arcade Menu Translation” administration option. The SynthesisVR Proxy is updated to 3.18.8 Version 3.18.6 – 18th March, 2021: The desktop shortcuts for any newly installed CDN game would no longer point directly to the exe, but to a local URL that will launch the game through the SynthesisVR Access Point. Other minor adjustments in regards to different custom setups. Version 3.18.5 – 8th March, 2021: A new “Multiplayer Priority” setting (under VR Stations >> Edit >> Advanced), allowing better hardware resource management for the LAN multiplayer games. Version 3.18.4 – 4th March, 2021: Multiple “Engine” optimizations related to starting multiplayer games on only some of the session stations. Collecting data about the installed DirectX and Windows versions, so we can better suggest third-party software and required related updates. In order to better suggest game’s game requirements, we now collect data about the system’s RAM and CPU SteamVR 3.16.8 is added for installation through the Access Point. This takes off the need of having a Steam account for stations running only CDN content. Overall improvements Version 3.18.3 – 22th February, 2021: The “game” variable is added to the Engine. This way the countdown timer can be set to visualize the game. Example setting: svr:game|[pcname]# Leaderboard support for Propagation: Top Squad Support for “SynthesisVR Leaderboard v2021.1” Overall improvements Version 3.18.2 – 11th February, 2021: The old 2D (called “V3”) hasn’t been updated for over a year and is now officially retired from the platform. It served us well but is now removed in favor of the more superior and functionality-rich V4 (now permanent for everyone). Improved per-game segmentation within the same running session. Version 3.18.1 – 4th February, 2021: New: Access Point – Live data to the “Your Arcade” page, pushing information about the current game Web Administration – Displaying the current game under both, the Standard and Timeline views. Clicking on the game image provide options to stop the current game for one or multiple stations from the current session Proxy – support for the above functionalities Option to assign the individual player names at the session start. The name is populated automatically for the games supporting name provisioning. It, as well, is synchronized with the Access Point’s countdown timer and the Leaderboard data. Minor adjustments to the Standalone game server module Version 3.18.0 – 25th January, 2021: Improvements to the multiplayer’s network negotiation process – making it much more robust to various network and station conditions. The Proxy will notify all other stations if one of them suddenly disconnection from a multiplayer session A multiplayer network session can be initialized through the 2D launcher Stability improvements Additional functionalities needed for yet unreleased games Improvements to the Voice Chat application – it now auto-detects and restart the call upon certain issue cases
Save Game Progress
In simple terms, it just works and there’s nothing you specifically need to to make it do anything. Games that have the Save Game Progress will have the following icon in our list found at https://games.synthesisvr.com You can also filter on those by using the “Save Game” filter on the top of that page. If there’s a game you think should have the same game option activated, please reach out to us at info@synthesisvr.com, we just need to know where the save game data is stored. Please note that as of the time of reading this, save games will only work with a single station setting. Customers information should be attached to a session prior to a game that you want to save information from (ideally it should be done prior to a session start to avoid errors). This is the case for both saving game data as well as restoring it.