Explorer crashes at start up, and some Play apps pedal backwards?

[GoHybrid67]

Hi folks. Brand newbie here, so if there are other threads that I didn't see, or another place on the site that I've missed, that might help me out, just point me in the right direction.

But I bought the VZfit just as soon as I saw they offered two price tiers and a free one week trial of the Premium. 

Dug out and dusted *cough cough wheeze sneeze achoo!* off my stationary bike last weekend, and finally hooked everything up and installed everything on my Go this afternoon and started off with Play and the Tour de bike race (or whatever it's called). Works great! Although I am going to have to readjust the distance from the seat to the pedals again so I can actually reach more comfortably. And the Bandit demo worked fine too. So I thought, hey, this was pretty easy to get going! Piece of cake!

However, in the race car app that I tried, as well as the tanks (and likely Pegasus as well), I have to pedal backwards to move forwards, which feels incredibly awkward. Is there a settings menu that I can access to change that? 

And the Explorer app, when I try to access it from the Go menu, it constantly crashes. It starts, I press A to connect, pedal forward to sync the sensor, look down and press A to recenter, and it boots me back out to the Go menu. I DO seem to have better luck when I access Explorer via the last option on the Play menu. Sometimes it still crashes, but other times it will take me into the app, but I sit there like I'm in the middle of the ocean and no matter what button I press, I just sit there, no way to select where I'd like to go. 

I'm clearly missing some obvious step to actually bring up a selection menu, but heck if I know what it is, since there seems to be very little "How To" menu included with this thing. 

I think I'm going to like using this, if I can work out the "I'm a stupid newbie" hiccups and figure out how to run it properly.

Can y'all help? 

Thanks!
~Karen~

[emalafeew]

Hi Karen,
We noticed your crash and explaining to everyone else here that it's because you need to accept all the permissions requested by Explorer. The mic permission is what caused the crash, because it is necessary to initialize our speech-to-directions and upcoming head-to-head chat. It won't listen if you don't use those things.

The reason the race car moved backwards is that we determine direction when our apps ask you to "pedal forwards to connect bike". It's not based on a fixed direction of the crank sensor, so that can be mounted inside or outside of either crank. Just restart the app and be careful not to be pedaling backwards then. Note the app doesn't look for the crank sensor until you've connected the button, to hopefully ignore any backwards pedaling due to getting on the bike.

Also note that we flip backwards pedaling to act like forwards in Le Tour, River Run, and Jailbreak, but allow it to mean reverse in the tank and race car games. In Pegasus it's flipped for the purpose of motion but not flight, so if you sensor is backwards you won't be able to generate lift. We should probably make backwards act like no pedaling in those games to avoid confusion!

[GoHybrid67]

Thank you! I also got a similarly thorough explanation via email (tech support on a weekend, I'm impressed, wasn't expecting to hear back until Monday or Tuesday, which is why I also posted here) from Jason. Everything now works. Woohoo!

Can't quite figure out where I went wrong about the permissions, I remember seeing about "allowing all" before I started the set up, but I did remember my Go screen getting a little wonky during the set up process and thinking that not all of my "sure, go ahead" clicks registered. So I uninstalled and reinstalled today and made very sure to click my approval on all of them. That seemed to work. As did the making sure I was definitively pedaling forward as I started the apps. Pegasus worked, the race cars worked, Le Tour continued to work. Can't vouch for the tanks, since by the time I tinkered with Pegasus, the race cars and Le Tour, I was too tired to try the tanks. But did start the Explorer app and while my data entry was a bit clunky (and I need to learn how to enunciate if I'm going to use the mic feature) it did at least start this time and put me in the right town!

How do you exit out of that app though, once you're in a location? I didn't set a length of ride, and after already having ridden a half hour, I only went two miles before I was beat, but couldn't figure out what to hit to end the ride. So just used the Go controller, paused, and then exited out that way.

Hate when you want to keep tinkering, would have liked to have explored more, but when your legs say, no, you're done, well, that's it.

[emalafeew]

Glad you’re up and running! Explorer remembers where you left off in each ride, so take them at your own pace. Trying to finish one ride a week is a good goal, you can track your progress at vzfit.com/stats!

And it’s bad of Explorer to crash rather than say it need mic permissions, will fix that in next build.

[emalafeew]

I forgot to mention, but using the Go controller to exit is correct. You need the Go controller to run another app, which is the only reason we see for exiting! Btw you can launch Play from Explorer, and vice versa, from their menus without the Go controller.

[GoHybrid67]

That's the one thing I'm finding, is that the menus do seem to be not all that obvious to find. Apparently the one in explorer is hiding in the compass at the top of the screen? That's what I was told in email, haven't tried it yet, but would never have thought to look there for anything. So some sort of online or in game instruction manual for where to find things would definitely be helpful for those of us a little slower in finding things.

But had a hugely crazy thought this morning, that made me laugh. I actually made it into Google Map street view on my way home from work one time. Assuming my photo is still one of the ones at that intersection, in theory, I could actually GO there on the bike and pull up next to myself in Explorer? Now I REALLY want to try that!

[emalafeew]

That's the one thing I'm finding, is that the menus do seem to be not all that obvious to find. Apparently the one in explorer is hiding in the compass at the top of the screen? That's what I was told in email, haven't tried it yet, but would never have thought to look there for anything. So some sort of online or in game instruction manual for where to find things would definitely be helpful for those of us a little slower in finding things.

But had a hugely crazy thought this morning, that made me laugh. I actually made it into Google Map street view on my way home from work one time. Assuming my photo is still one of the ones at that intersection, in theory, I could actually GO there on the bike and pull up next to myself in Explorer? Now I REALLY want to try that!

That's awesome, you can totally make an Explorer ride that goes by there!

We try to teach that the compass acts as a button the first time you start the game, which directs you to look up and press the compass button before you can do anything else.  But's a one-time thing and see how it could be forgotten, and you're not the first person to comment on it.  Still thinking of a good solution, and I'll at least add to this forum's FAQ now.