SynthesisVR 3.2
Hi Fellow Arcade Owners, It’s been 2 months since SynthesisVR 3.1 was released. As version 3.2 (beta) is coming out next week, we are happy to give you a sneak peek of what to expect. Improvements and bug fixes: After 2 days of poor performance by our hosting provider back in May and after they didn’t succeed in convincing us the issue is permanently resolved, we switched to Amazon. The migration was well coordinated and none of our customers experienced any downtime. And now 2 months later we are enjoying 100% uptime. In addition, we set multiple monitoring tools and are ready to scale our resources up as they are needed. We addressed a case where the VR Menu Mirror may hang the desktop app. Fixed a random case of slower internet causing games not to launch when done at the start of VR session. Improved support for time zones having 30-minute and 45-minute offsets. Optimized detection of changed private IPs within your LAN network. Optimized detection of issues within your private network (usually related to WiFi installations) SynthesisVR is proud to be the only platform providing true licensing capabilities. Next to the already existing progressive billing, we have added: Free test keys – as our catalog is about to go beyond 100 titles, having to license every game in order to try it can become tedious. Now it’s possible to obtain test keys and see what you would get. If you don’t think the game would work well with your setup and customers, you don’t have to license it. Fixed fee and PPM options – Often you have to select between fixed fee and the pay per minute licensing models. Due to this, you are very likely to end up with multiple accounts. Floating licenses – the “holy grail” of the commercial licenses. On SynthesisVR, you can obtain both a fixed fee and PPM licenses for the same game. If you don’t like your PPM licensing bill, now you can cut it in half by combining Fixed Fee and PPM licensing. Country based rates – one size doesn’t fit all and we know that. If you are operating in a country with a lower GDP, it won’t be profitable to pay the same licensing fees as te USA (for example). SynthesisVR is your only escape from joining the gray market. Marketing materials – we did the hard work to maintain a big library of high quality images and videos. Enjoy! New management interface Two years after we started SynthesisVR, it’s time for a new and more modern management interface. There is still a little more “polishing” to be done, but it’s already available for everyone who wants to use it. With 3.2, we are getting closer to a complete self-service solution. More billing options We always been proud that SynthesisVR is the only platform that have true support for multiple VR attractions. Room scale, free roam, racing simulators, treadmills, PSVR.. just name it. We’ve always been proud that SynthesisVR is the only platform that has true support for multiple VR attractions. Room scale, free roam, racing simulators, treadmills, PSVR… you name it, we already can do it. However, we’ve never thought we were done, and we continue to find areas of growth. Have you ever struggled with how exactly to bill a father for his time in your racing rig and his 2 kids in Rec Room? With version 3.2, you can take advantage of our new “balance limit” functionality. Just charge their account $100 and let them all play with the appropriate amounts being deducted from the balance. You may also get that guy who wants to try all your offers. Just add in a balance for him and let him play whatever he wants deducting from that balance as he goes. If you are concerned this is going to interfere with your online reservations – please don’t, we have you covered! New web widget Sell membership cards online and have SynthesisVR to automatically renew the subscriptions. As usual – it is 100% customizable. More customization options And still, we know that one size doesn’t fit all. With version 3.2 we pass on a challenge to all web developers to overwrite the default SynthesisVR 2D menu and build your own on the top of the SynthesisVR APIs. Are you a Unity developer? Great! We encourage you to take our scripts and APIs and do something amazing! Once again, THANK YOU for being such an awesome community! If you’ve never tried SynthesisVR before or you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at info@synthesisvr.com
Games on Focus – May 2018
Hi Fellow Arcade Owners, Finding the best games for your arcade isn’t either easy nor fast. Considering different genres, we chose and are happily presenting you some of your best options: Kiss or Kill Welcome to Kiss or Kill: Trivia Royale, the ultimate trivia showdown! The social VR game show is filled with big choices and crazy shenanigans. 2-8 players must answer fast-paced questions in an intense trivia battle! Designed for VR arcades with local and global multiplayer Tens of thousands of questions Mini games in between rounds Tournament mode allows for easy rematches AFFECTED: The Manor! Oculus described AFFECTED: The Manor as the original VR horror experience, now it’s available for commercial licensing under SynthesisVR! Commended as one of the best VR experiences to date and with over 250 million views on YouTube, it has been the highest rated experience since its release on the Oculus store. It’s simple one-button controls and high quality VR environment makes AFFECTED: The Manor the perfect app to show newcomers and experienced gamers alike. AFFECTED: The Manor is a horror walkthrough that only takes approximately 15 minutes to complete. With 2 routes to choose from and multiple endings…can you make it through! Arrowborn Arrowborn brings you the fast-paced and visceral action of a multiplayer first-person shooter and combines it with the immersive experience of virtual reality archery. Show your lethal accuracy and clever map tactics as you load your quiver full of deadly magical arrows and lay waste to the competition! Select from an ever-expanding assortment of magical arrows each with their own unique way of wreaking havoc on your opponents and giving you the advantage. Attach a powerful gem to your armor to increase your survivability or boost your mana pool to unleash deadly barrages! Cosmic Trip You’ve been deployed on an alien planet full of hostile enemies. You must defend yourself by building and commanding an army of cosmo bots to gather resources and destroy the opposition. Built from the ground up for VR, Cosmic Trip lets you experience real-time strategy like never before. Feel what it’s like to destroy alien enemies using futuristic weapons. Strategically build swarms of badass robots to defend yourself and gather materials. SynthesisVR supports the arcade mode for Cosmic Trip Sovient Lunapark VR Treat yourself to an array of thrilling VR-attractions! Contemplate the magnificent creations of Dr. Pavlov! Immerse yourself into the brilliantly crafted world of walking and thinking machines and abominable cadavers hungry for the flesh of the living! Stroll through the facility in single player mode or compete with other visitors in the arena. Based on extensive feedback provided by SynthesisVR, the game would be optimized for VR Arcades. Vacate The Room | Vacate 2 Rooms Can you find your way out of the different rooms? You need to find a lot of hidden items. Uncover secrets. Use strange mechanisms to proceed through the different rooms to the exit.
SynthesisVR 3.1
Hi Fellow Arcade Owners, Along with all the excitement with the SynthesisVR 3.0 release, we also received great requests for new functionalities and business models. Thank you for being such an awesome community! What is new in SynthesisVR 3.1: Save games: We removed the required initial setup for the game progress functionality (also refereed as “save game per customer”). The functionality now works automatically with any deployment. Classic arcade billing: At SynthesisVR, we do not follow the trends – we creates them. It is with great pleasure that we announce the support for the classic arcade business model. As of version 3.1, you are able to run sessions that are not fixed in duration, but runs as long as a game is running. The first supported title is the legendary Space Pirate Trainer. As example, you can charge $8 for a single SPT game or $20 for 3 credits. To give this even more meaning, you can have “Thursday Open Doors” from 4pm to 10pm (as usual, it is you who sets the rules) and let your customers play as long as they can (yes – SynthesisVR would offer fixed monthly fee for SPT). Scoreboards: Just run your sessions with actual customers instead as “Guest sessions” and SynthesisVR would take care and collect the scores for you. All that would come as a beautiful widget for your website (some final touches still pending). The scoreboard widgets supports all session models (time based / classic / other upcoming models). Game variations: Now you can create “custom” games based on the games installed on your VR stations. To give you an example, the “Longbow” game is the most popular one among all the games included in “The Lab”. You can create a new game variant named “Longbow” and set it to directly start the Longbow game. This would save your operators some time explaining to your customers what they should initially do. Looking for more cool functionalities? We have a lot planned for SynthesisVR 3.2, so stay tuned !
SynthesisVR Version 3.0
Hi Fellow Arcade Owners, It’s TIME TO CHANGE! As the out-of-home VR entertainments constantly gain more and more popularity, there are number of new solutions that aims to solve one or another issue. Usually, you would end up with a multitude of solutions such as: games launcher booking system waiver service discount solution(s) As arcade owners, with your resourcefulness you would make all this work until the moment you have internet or server issues (ring a bell!) and then you realize you are in a heap of mess trapped in piles of unproductivity. Don’t let some unfinished software dictate how you would be doing your own business. Use SynthesisVR – the only arcade management solution built based on actual business needs. Now, we have some exciting news to share with you – SynthesisVR 3.0 now enters into a public beta and is already live in few of our early partnering arcades! What’s new: We listened to you and got rid of the static desktop window that was accompanying SynthesisVR since our first release. Now you can minimize and easily control all th sessions, start reservations and much. The tiny desktop configuration app is now enhanced with menu functionalities Yes – it works OFFLINE as well. Now, you can use SynthesisVR for mobile events and demos outside of your main location. NO MORE UNPRODUCTIVITY! We brought animations, trailers and games information to our 2D VR launcher. 2D launcher is a helpful tool to change games during game play, pause the game and take a look at other games. According to our survey and partners, having a 2D menu is very important as it helps switching games faster and prevents customers from exiting games by mistake. You want to change the information for a game? We’ve got you covered: It could be a pain installing new games or trying to license games on your VR stations. By licensing games through SynthesisVR, the system would take care and activate the games for you. As easy as pie! Version 3.0 is just the beginning of our primary mission – achieving 100% self-service. Before, during and after the actual VR session. No excuses! Try SynthesisVR @ VRLA 2018 or join SynthesisVR and get a free trial
Synthesis VR 2018
Hi Arcade Owners, After keeping quiet for some time, we are happy to be back with a brand new web site and a series of awesome news. In the past few months, we have been working extremely hard to polish and simplify Synthesis VR and to prove ourselves as the one-of-a-kind system. In return, we received the biggest reward we could ever dream about – your trust. It is a real pleasure to constantly work with all of your and to receive such priceless suggestions about what you guys wants to see next. We are all doing the first steps of the VR industry together and now we are sure – it is going to last! To hit in with the news, we are bringing the light back on the Synthesis VR commercial licensing platform. For the past 4 months, we became the most robust platform, providing unmatchable distribution options. You could use SynthesisVR to license games based on usage or on a fixed monthly fee. We even have few games offering lifetime license option. Adding to that, many games comes up with progressive billing, where as more you use as less you pay. This all indeed wouldn’t be possible without the help of our awesome partners – the people who create us the content that empowers all the arcades. This post wouldn’t be enough to thank everyone, but we would like to welcome our newest partner; a company that in fact is well known to all of you – Survios. After testing the platform for the past few weeks, we are more than happy to announce the following games are now available on Synthesis VR and in our opinion, you shouldn’t miss licensing them for your arcades (at least this is what we’ll do for our own VR chain): Raw Data Arcade – you all know what a top title Raw Data is, and “Raw Data Arcade” has been optimized for VR arcades Sprint Vector Arcade – soon to be another top arcade title – brings a lot of fun and competition among the arcade customers Smashbox Arena – no doubt, one of the best multiplayer games ever made Jumanji VR – now you can add a huge selling point in your catalog Stay tuned for more!
Version 2.0 Release
Version 2.0 Release Notes Hi Arcade Owners, We already shared some screenshots and videos with some of you and now, we are pleased to announce SynthesisVR Version 2.0 is ready to release! Head to the download page and try it out. Prior Version 2.0 When we started the SynthesisVR development in 2016, we knew how important would it be for our own arcade business. That is why SynthesisVR aimed for speed and flexibility. We indeed needed a launcher too, so at first, we took the obvious approach and started building one in Unity. However, the downsides quickly came out: SteamVR doesn’t let two heavy 3D applications to run at the same time. This meant, our 3D launcher wouldn’t stay in the background and being ready for further commands. By having an actively running 3D application all the time would increase our electricity consumption with ~ $10 per month It would also keep the hardware loaded and with the time, this would decrease the performance (short the lifespan of the components) The operators wouldn’t be able to perform simple tasks from the desktop, unless they uses Steam. If you ask why this is bad – as VR arcade, we provides experiences the customers cannot have at home. Showing the Steam interface does the opposite effect An unified 3D environment suitable for both room scale and sitting experiences isn’t feasible The 3D launcher is harder to rebrand with your own arcade logo So, we dropped the the idea and moved onto building the actually harder solution – a 2D environment (also called Overlay). In the end, what SynthesisVR brough in the 1.x versions is a easy to use system that addresses all the mention issues and let us integrate whatever functionalities are needed. As example, the Voice Chat wouldn’t be possible if we were stick with a complete Unity based solution. So, what changed? Despite SynthesisVR became the most mature solution and our popularity increased, many of you still needed a 3D environment to be able to easier catch the customers attention. It has been an year since we decided to move ahead with the 2D option, so the time to reconsider our decision has come. Despite all the mention downsides are still valid, there is one significant difference that let us integrate a 3D environment in the right way – SynthesisVR’s core is still that tiny 2D application running in your PC tasks, so the 3D environment doesn’t have to perform tasks it isn’t intented for. So, as our company name hints – version 2.0 is the perfect synthesis between 2D and 3D environments and it addresses all the listed problems. The video below is a raw (unedited) OBS capture: raw OBS capture Keeping to our ideology that SynthesisVR has to be 100% customizable, v2.0 introduces a new “locale” functionality that lets you change all the texts in the 3D environment. You are also free to play your own welcome video in 3D. On the top of that, now you could not only change the text-to-speech, but you are free to record and play your own audio files instead. At the time of the official release, you would receive a detail documentation on how to do that. And the best part – this is just the first of many 3D environments we would be releasing. We aimed for an environment that is relaxing and welcoming for people of all genres and ages. Aiming for more environments wouldn’t sacrifice the flexibility – you would be able to use different environment for any of your VR stations. Stay tunned with our further updates by following us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Get in touch now at info@synthesisvr.com.
Commercial Game Licensing
Commercial VR Licenses – A partnership that counts! When we first launched VR Territory in June 2016, as a dedicated arcade for virtual reality, we were among the selected few. Virtual Reality was a cool, but fledgling tech novelty and not embraced by the mass market. At that time, the content available for arcades were very few. Another big drawback, there wasn’t a single management software dedicated to virtual reality arcades. Hence, Synthesis VR (SVR) was born – an arcade management and game automation system with many features like voice chat, mixed reality, game tracking and many more. We listened to our customers, and over a period of time kept enhancing SVR, and very soon other Arcades started using SVR for all their needs. Fast forward to September 2017, while the general public’s awareness of VR has jumped dramatically, VR technology and content have evolved greatly and sales of VR Headsets have grown steadily, these dynamics have not yet resulted in VR capturing the mass market, a big factor is the increasing skepticism due to its slow adoption in-home. Surprisingly VR has seen a phenomena in the growth of Out-of-Home VR adoption namely arcades dedicated to virtual reality like VR Territory. Given our experience working with VR Studios and Arcades, we decided to take SVR to the next level. We are now introducing the SynthesisVR licensing platform. Unlike everything similar, SVR is the first to “unlock” a dialog between the VR arcades and the VR studios. How SynthesisVR makes the difference: Multi faced licensing solutions – The VR arcades no longer have to join multiple platforms to obtain the license type that best suits them. SVR not only allows licenses based on fixed monthly fees or usage, but unlocks a whole new set of functionalities. Daily licenses ; annual licenses or lifetime – it is as simple as you are hoping for. You would love our progressive and “best fit” billing models. Strong Reporting – You can track all the processes and keep the control of your spending. Support & Customer Service – You can count on us all the time! The first titles would be revealed in October! To join SynthesisVR as an arcade or to distribute your content on the platform, just shoot us an email at info@synthesisvr.com.
Is your arcade social enough?
Is your VR Arcade Social Enough? “I have some money to invest. I saw that cool VR arcade and it indeed is a great business. How hard can it be? Just buying some hardware and renting enough space.” It is very likely that you started your jurney as a VR arcade owner with a similar understanding. However, as it often happens, the things are not that simple as they seems. You not only have to convince the people to try out VR, but you have to explain what is the difference between what you have and all the cheaper mobile alternatives. Considering this is more a matter of time rather than anything else, your next goal is to convert the first time visitors into returning customers. You may think the VR arcades are their only option to play high quality VR games, but you are most probably wrong on this. https://uploadvr.com/windows-vrs-price-starts-900/ Now, you can have an affordable VR system as low as $900 or $1000. It may not be powered by GeForce 1080, but is still relatively cheap and you would have the PC and an Oculus or MS HMD. And most importantly, you would have it at home and you can play as long as you wish. With that in mind, there are a couple advantages for the VR arcades: You may not have enough space at home Some of the VR atractions are not available for home use You can play multiplayer games along with your family and friends Being able to offer multiplayer games is your biggest advantage. You probably already noticed the people comes mostly in groups and they do expect their VR to be a group experience (just like the escape room ones). Instead of this, what you offers them is an unforgetable single player experience. A similar kind of experience they soon would be able to afford at home. To keep your business profitable in long term, you have to go social and offering just “Rec Room” isn’t enough. So, is your VR arcade social enough? Lets name some of the tools that SynthesisVR offers since its first public release: Save Games – nobody really experienced the full VR excitement until getting to the end of the Arizona Sunshine campaign mode. However, this is close to 4 hours of gameplay, so does any of your customers actually did that? SynthesisVR offers automated backup and restore of the save games for every of your customers. Gameplay Recording – automated OBS recording and mailing the video files over to your customers, it sounds cool, right? They loves it Confirmation Emails – as simple thing as sending out a confirmation email for phone bookings, gives a different and more professional look to your business Birthday Sessions – having a birthday booking cannot be easier and enjoyable For the past few months, we worked hard into bringing you even more advanced social tools. As the 1.5.9 release is around the corner, here is what you can expect from it: Flexible Membership Cards Management – engage your customers with discounts and free time, all bundled into a single card Mixed Reality – setting up mixed reality never been easier. The module automatically provisions your games with the necessary settings and gets rid of the annoying requirement for a third controller. Voice Chat – a set of powerful tools that enables voice chat between a group of people. It works no matter if they plays the same or different games or if they plays a game that already have its own voice chat. Your customers comes in groups and they can keep their communication trough the full experience. On the top of this, your employees could join the chat and assist your customers far easier than before. If any of this makes sense to you or you think we are missing something, please feel free to get in touch at info@synthesisvr.com.