VR Session Manager – Timeline View
Overview To switch between The Station View and the Timeline View, click on the “Timeline View” switch at the top. Note that this is a local switch and would need to be set on each of the devices that access the Your Arcade page. Station View: Timeline View: On the left side of the Timeline View, you’ll see all of your stations listed sorted alphabetically. On the left of each station is a button that will bring up station specific settings (including things like Wake-on-LAN, Station Shut Down, etc). If the station is detected as connected the color of the button will be green. Offline or is a virtual station it will show as purple. On the right side of the section will be an icon of the headset in use on that station as well as controller battery percentage. Along the top of the Timeline View, you’ll find the different experience types you offer. You can, of course, click on each to show those stations the experience type is attached to and any bookings that use those stations. In addition, you can also click between the tabs using the Alt+[number} to switch. You can also change between them using Alt+ the left or right arrow to cycle between each experience type. Below the Experience Type tabs on the left side is the Walkin Mode toggle and the time display. Walkin mode will be explained a little further down in this guide. Clicking on the time display will adjust how you want your time to display in the Timeline. If you click on, for example, 15 the Timeline will show time broken out into 15 minute increments. Clicking 30 will show the time broken down into 30 minute increments, etc. This will be remembered for the next time you open the Your Arcade page. Underneath the Experience Type tabs on the right are the buttons to allow you to page through your days. This helps you see previous or upcoming reservations without having to go to the Reservations section. And, of course, the main section of the Timeline View shows the sessions/reservations all broken out by station and time. Colors are determined randomly and assigned a unique color for each session so it’s easy to identify which sessions are together and which are separate. Hovering over each session block will give you details on that particular session. Clicking on a session (or clicking on the View button in the popup details) will bring up the session summary which will be discussed later. Scheduling: Future Reservation: Somewhere along the Timeline, ideally close to the time you want to schedule, right click on one of the station’s timeline (again, ideally one of the stations you want to schedule for, but not a requirement). This will bring up the schedule menu. Click on the Schedule button. You can click on the X button or press Escape on your keyboard to get out of this menu. After you click on Schedule and once you start moving the mouse, you will be able to start putting in the session reservation. Depending on which direction you move your mouse (left and right along the Timeline) from the point you right clicked, you will be either adding time forward or time backward. Meaning that if, for example, you right clicked at 4pm and you moved the mouse to the right, you’d be adding time for after 4pm (starting at 4pm) and if you move the mouse to the left you will be adding time prior to 4pm (ending at 4pm). If you move your mouse up or down along the Timeline, you will be able to add/remove stations within the session. Once you’ve got a basic setup of what you want to schedule (don’t worry about being precise, you can refine later along this process), you will get the next set of options for scheduling. If everything looks good to you, click on the Schedule button at the top and that will bring up the Sell Ticket popup to complete the booking (again, you can continue to edit in that popup). In the bottom of this initial popup, you will have the option to pick a specific duration based on your Experience Types and Work/Business Rules. The left side will choose a duration that starts at the time on the left side, and the right side will create a duration that starts at the time on the right side of your selection. If you’re booking from the “All” tab, you will be given all Experience Types and times within those Experience Types (so long as you’re scheduling within the Work/Business Rules of those Experience Types). If you’re booking something for today, you will be given additional options to Snap Left and Snap Right. Snap Left will let you “snap” the booking to start at the end of the next session booked on that/those station(s) or immediately if you have no prior bookings. Snap Right will only be visible if you have booking on that particular station(s) and will “snap” to the beginning of the next session. Note that if you have cleaning times set in your Work/Business Rules, those will be taken into account as well. Final tweaks that can be applied to the booking before you go to the next step include the ability to remove a station from the booking by clicking on the red minus sign in the booking and adding a station by clicking on the big gray + button on the booking. Additionally, if you hover over the session and you see your cursor change to a plus sign, if you hold down the mouse button while the plus sign is showing you can drag the session to the right or left to change the start time. Once you have got all your things you wanted to set up done and you’ve clicked the “Schedule” button, this will bring up the
Content Licensing: How To License Games
For game licensing, head over to the Your Games page: or From there click on the “Content Store” tab and you’ll see all the games available for licensing. On the left side you can either use the filters by clicking on them (green is selected, white is not selected). Or you can search by entering the name or part of the name in the top field and then pressing Enter on the keyboard. When you hover over a game, you will be given two options, the first, “Visit Page” will take you to the game page on games.synthesisvr.com in a new tab which will give you details about the game, including info on pricing, system requirements, etc. Clicking on License will open up a new portion on the same screen on the right side. On that new tab, the first thing you have to do is ti check the box next to the “I understand that, once subscribed, Licensing affects all stations in the arcade regardless if the game is installed via third party.” Once. you’ve agreed to this, then the License Now button becomes available. Once you’re ready, click on that button to license the game. Once you’ve licensed the game, you will be presented with one of 2 options. If the game is delivered through Steam, you will be presented with the following choice for installation: Click on the stations you want the game installed on and click on “Install”. The game should then be licensed and downloaded on the selected stations. On the stations you are installing the game to, you would need to do one more step. When the install is initiated, you will need to click on the Next button on this screen: Accept any agreements that pop up after and installation should begin after that. If, for some reason, the game doesn’t install, please check your library and locate the game and see if it’s stuck on “Installing”. If that’s the case (and it doesn’t show up in the Steam Downloads section, you will need to cancel the install by right clicking and choosing Cancel and then exiting Steam. Once you restart, you can attempt to initiating the install again remotely or find the game again in your library, right clicking and then choosing install and you should see the prompt above. If there are still issues, please send us an email with details to info@synthesisvr.com. If the game is delivered through our CDN, the popup will show all stations detected as online and allows you to choose per station where to install the game both in terms of which station as well as what drive (if you have multiple drives installed on your system): Once you’ve chosen the stations and drive locations, you can click the “Install” button below all the stations and the game will begin to install on those stations. If you check your Access Point app and click on the Content Events button, you should see the game being installed: If that is not the case, please refresh your Access Point app via the Refresh button and you should see the Content Events button and the game in there. You can start it manually if it hasn’t started. The need to do this manually is rare, but is more reliable than Steam installs. Once a game is installed (via the auto methods above), you will then be prompted to add to a category. Select the categories you want and click on the “Add [GAME} to [X] Categories” button at the bottom. If you’ve only installed the game on some, but not all, stations and want to go back and install remotely, then find the game again using the search feature and click on “License” when you hover over the game icon. You’ll now see a button that says “Install [GAME} and when you click on it, you will be presented with the same choices as above for installing on stations. If you want to change a game from Usage to FIxed Fee, then find the game again using the search feature and click on “License” when you hover over the game and you will be presented with choosing between Usage and Fixed Fee. Click on the Fixed Fee and you will be asked how many licenses you need for that. Choose the number of licenses and then click on Add To Cart. Remember, this is a floating license so you man not need as many fixed fee licenses as you have stations unless you expect the game to be played a lot on all your stations at the same time. Once you’ve added the right number to your cart, the cart option will appear above the game and you can click on “Checkout” if all seems correct. Your card will be charged the amount shown on the screen. This amount will be a prorated amount for the remainder of the month. If we’re close to the end of the month, you will see the prorated amount as well as the upcoming month added together. If the game is already installed, nothing more needs to be done. If it’s not installed, then the process is exactly the same as described above.
Leaderboard Add-on – Getting Started
Installation: Under SynthesisVR Web Administration portal, navigate to “Administration >> Arcade Setup >> SynthesisVR Subscriptions” and get your stations subscribed for “Leaderboard Application” (it is free for stations that are already subscribed for the full SynthesisVR version). Note: If you are offering Project CARS Pro, you have to also subscribe for the “Project CARS Pro Leaderboard” plugin. Upon subscription, click the Refresh button for all your Access Point instances Go to https://games.synthesisvr.com/games/synthesisvr-leaderboard and click the “Install SynthesisVR Leaderboard” button. The application can be installed on ANY Windows based PC in your local area network. Run the installer, follow the steps and launch the application. You are presented with an option to install Plugins. Do that for the games you are offering. Optional: Go to “Administration >> Games & Licensing >> Your Games”. Find one of the supported games and click on it. Under the popup, switch to the “Plugins” tab and install the “Customer Name” plugin. This will allow you to click on the station name under the “Your Arcade” page and change the customer name on the fly (doesn’t require a running session).
SynthesisVR Log
For troubleshooting purposes and support related issues SynthesisVR log files provide a necessary insight on what could be the issue or for support team to better decipher a certain problem or track an activity. In cases like this knowing how to access to log file and sending it over to support is very important. To access log file – On your right bottom taskbar you will find a SynthesisVR icon as shown below: Clicking on the Load 1000 Lines to bring up the most recent entries. You can then copy all the text into a text file and send that or just paste it into an email for support.
Replace Text-To-Speech with Audio files
By default, SynthesisVR uses TTS to provide audio feedback to the players. The full list of supported languages is available under: Administration >> [tab] Advanced Settings >> Customizations >> Branding & Voice Prompts –> Voice Language If your preferred language isn’t among the supported ones, you could use pre-recorded audio file instead. To do that, you have to edit the first 8 settings from the “Branding & Voice Prompts” list of settings. Example: End of session announcement: playfile:C:\audioFiles\session_end.wav Bonus time announcement: playfile:C:\audioFiles\bonus_#bonusMinutes#.wav Post-paid time announcements: playfile:C:\audioFiles\postpaid_#timeSinceStart#.wav Voice announcement about the time left: playfile:C:\audioFiles\time_left_#timeLeft#.wav Last voice announcement before the end of the session: playfile:C:\audioFiles\final_announcement_#timeLeft#.wav Audio notice on session start: playfile:C:\audioFiles\session_start.wav Audio notice on request for help: playfile:C:\audioFiles\help.wav Audio notice on game start: playfile:C:\audioFiles\game_#title#.wav With such settings in mind, each of your VR stations should have the folder C:\audioFiles\ and the folder should contain files like: session_end.wav — announcing the end of the session bonus_5.wav — announcing the player received 5 free minutes bonus_10.wav — announcing the player received 10 free minutes session_start.wav — announcing the start of the session help.wav — telling the customer they will be assisted shortly game_Arizona Sunshine Arcade.wav — announcing that Arizona Sunshine Arcade is about to start game_Fruit Ninja VR.wav — Fruit Ninja VR is about to start time_left_15.wav — the session will end after 15 minutes final_announcement_5.wav — the session will end after 5 minutes and you can encourage the customer to extend the session
Making Sure Time Is In Sync
To make sure your arcade is operating effeciently, all stations and server/proxy pc (if you use a separate PC for the server/proxy) should have the same, and ideally correct, time. We recommend using the app NetTime. To download, head over here:http://www.timesynctool.com/And download the latest stable version (3.14 at the time of this writing)Install should be straightforward. Once you click on finish, NetTime will run and be placed into the Task Tray. You can check by clicking on the Task Tray arrow and you will see it running. Right click on the NetTime icon and click on Update Now. A confirmation will pop up, you can then click on OK and it should now keep that station at the correct time. You will need to be sure to restart your SynthesisVR and SynthesisVR Server/Proxy on the PC you just added and do a refresh from the Access Point app.
Synthesis VR API – Gift Cards
1. Create a new API rule (similarly to https://synthesisvr.com/knowledge-base/reading-leaderboard-through-api/) or edit an existing one and assign the following permission: Gift Cards Important — SynthesisVR RECOMMEND using the “Strict Access” option and limit the endpoint access to your trusted IP addresses. Generate new Gift Card: 2. Get the key for the rule and construct an HTTP GET request like this: https://api.synthesisvr.com/data/giftcard/<KEY>/generate/<AMOUNT>/<EXPIRE_PERIOD> Example: https://api.synthesisvr.com/data/giftcard/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111/generate/15.50/2 months Response data: { “code”: “REO6CUWR”, “valid”: “2018-02-22T00:00:00”, “amount”: 15.50, “status”: 1 } Delete an unused Gift Card: 3. Construct an HTTP GET request: https://api.synthesisvr.com/data/giftcard/<KEY>/delete/<CODE> Example: https://api.synthesisvr.com/data/giftcard/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111/delete/REO6CUWR
Using SteamVR Environments with SynthesisVR
To use the default environment (the branded SynthesisVR Holodeck), follow these steps: In the Access Point app of each station, go to Settings / SteamVR Settings / SteamVR Home Settings Inside of the SteamVR Home Settings, click on the Environment Subscription which will open the SynthesisVR Holodeck page. Click on Subscribe on that page. Note that if the Steam app doe not open to that page, please go to the Steam / Exit menu, reopen Steam, and then click on the Environment Subscription button again in the Access Point and the Steam app should now open to that page. Once subscribed, check the “Enable SteamVR Home” box in the Access Point. The new SteamVR home environment will be downloaded by Steam and should refresh into it. Using a Different SteamVR Home Environment If you want to use a different SteamVR home environment, you first need to locate the URL of the environment. If you haven’t already phone the environment, head to either of the following URLs in a web browser (they will give you different results if you want to browse through them): https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=250820&requiredtags[]=Environment or https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=250820&requiredtags[]=Destination Browse through the available options and once you’ve found the environment you want to use, not the number in the URL: Before the next step, you will need to go through and log into each of your store’s Steam accounts via browser, head to the full URL of the environment and subscribe to it. This is necessary for the environment to be downloaded to your stations. Once all stations are subscribed, go to the Branding and Voice Prompts settings in your SynthesisVR dashboard: In the Branding tab, enter the number you took from the URL of the environment and put it into the SteamVR Environment ID field. Click on Save Changes and then refresh your Access Point apps in the method of your choice. Once your stations are refreshed (and the Enable SteamVR Home box is checked as per the initial instructions above), you and your customers will now be standing in the SteamVR Home environment.
Install SteamVR off Steam
Please refer to the following article under our new Knowledge Base: Steam & SteamVR
Multiple networks
Required SynthesisVR version: 3.12.4 In some setups, you may have Synthesis running on a VR station having 2 or more network adapters. In those cases, Synthesis will use the first connected adapter to determinate its settings. If you would like to change that, you have to add the following line to both your Access Point and Server Mode (Proxy): “preferredMac”: “001122334455”, where 001122334455 is the MAC address of the adapter you would like to default to. For the “Access Point” app, add that line to: %localappdata%\SynthesisVR\app\Resources\localmanifest.json For the Server Mode (Proxy): C:\Users\synthesisvr\AppData\Local\SynthesisVR\op.json