Game breaking bug on some explorer rides

[surfous]

I’ve found a game-breaking bug where I’m unable to complete some rides that I’ve previously been able to complete. The problem presents the same in each case: I see the next white dot or two some distance ahead of me, farther away than normal, but the landscape stops moving and I’m unable to reach it. Exiting and resuming the ride results in the same situation. The problem remains if I try to resume the ride days later.

These are the affected rides I’ve found and the point at which I cannot continue to the next white dot:

⁃ surfous’s San Simeon ride: forward, 23%, 22.7 miles (suggested)
⁃ surfous’s Truckee ride: forward, 66%, 6.7 miles (shared)
⁃ Old military road: reverse, 18%, 17.4 miles (suggested)

I don’t know what the root cause might be, but I’m hoping that there’s an overall fix that can marker these rides work again and prevent this problem in future rides.

[emalafeew]

Thanks, the cause of this is our connectivity threshold being too low for those cases. I've been bumping it up, but it's at the point if I bump further can cause other weirdness, so am planning to use the path instead to "jump ahead" when next dot is too far. That'll also handle when the next dot is beyond the load radius we use.

We're very close to releasing a Play build then we should be able to add this and a couple other fixes to Explorer build.

[KevinBrook]

Hi there. It's Kevin Brook from VRFitness Insider, you kindly sent me out a demo kit to review which I received a couple of days ago.

I think I can concur I'm having the exact same problem. I've tried 3 routes, Colorado River, Arizona and Ireland Old Road and all of them just stop around 11% or so. The photo's just stop updating and my rider won't move. The only thing I can do is reboot but then the problem occurs again.

Up to that point it all seems to be working very well.

I did also try and create a ride from my home town of Torquay to Paignton, about 3 miles. The ride created instantly but almost immediately the photos corrupted and I was just riding through a blue screen. The dots were working but the it was just a blue screen environment I was cycling through.

I've not noticed any issues at all with the games I've played, although with working I won't have time to properly test it all until the weekend.

The Explorer app looks incredibly exciting, when it works its wonderfully immersive so I hope you iron the kinks out. Am I right in assuming its in a much earlier state of development than the games are and you are still actively developing it?

I'm using the Oculus Quest if that matters, don't own a Go so can't test on that.

[emalafeew]

Hi Kevin,
Yes the Explorer app is newer and still being improved. It relies on external dynamic data that we’ve been handling better every release, and are also researching ways to look better. That said it should be working better than you describe—those routes are well traversed as you can see from the number of times they’ve been finished at vzfit.com/stats. You seem to be having two types of problems. The first is when the program stops loading “white dots” which allow you to move forward. We have a new method for next build that should eliminate that kind of problem entirely along precreated rides. Until then, restarting the app typically fixes the issue, note you’ll start at your last location. Your second problem is blue screens even when you can load dots. That is far more rare, and may indicate a network issue. In the location you are having the problem, could you open the web browser in your headset and load fast.com? That’ll give you a bandwidth report that should be at least 3 Mbps for Explorer to function properly, and about what Netflix needs to stream standard def video.

[KevinBrook]

Hi Kevin,
Yes the Explorer app is newer and still being improved.  It relies on external dynamic data that we’ve been handling better every release, and are also researching ways to look better.  That said it should be working better than you describe—those routes are well traversed as you can see from the number of times they’ve been finished at vzfit.com/stats.  You seem to be having two types of problems.  The first is when the program stops loading “white dots” which allow you to move forward.  We have a new method for next build that should eliminate that kind of problem entirely along precreated rides.  Until then, restarting the app typically fixes the issue, note you’ll start at your last location. Your second problem is blue screens even when you can load dots. That is far more rare, and may indicate a network issue.  In the location you are having the problem, could you open the web browser in your headset and load fast.com?  That’ll give you a bandwidth report that should be at least 3 Mbps for Explorer to function properly.  That’s about what Netflix needs to stream standard def video, but some gyms don’t provide that.

Thanks for reply emalafeew. Next time I test it then if I have those problems I'll check on fast.com.  My router is in my lounge, and my bike is in my bedroom so maybe there is some lag? My PC is only wireless as well I don't have it wired to the router although that probably wouldn't make any difference on the Quest.

I am able to stream Netflix fine on my Quest and never have issue although when I've tried to stream pc games wirelessly from Steam to my Quest via Virtual Desktop it was such as slideshow I couldn't even move my hands so maybe a connectivity issue is indeed causing it.

[emalafeew]

I’ll also be happy to look at your Torquay ride to see if it’s the location that could be the problem.
Also if you don’t mind clarifying, when the white dots stop in Colorado 128, does restarting the app and resuming from your last location get you further along the road, or can you not progress beyond a certain % ever?

[KevinBrook]

I’ll also be happy to look at your Torquay ride to see if it’s the location that could be the problem.
Also if you don’t mind clarifying, when the white dots stop in Colorado 128, does restarting the app and resuming from your last location get you further along the road, or can you not progress beyond a certain % ever?

Hi Emalafeew

I was able to resume where I left off today on the Arizona ride. I was planning on just cycling for a few minutes to see if it would continue but ended up going for 30 minutes and completing the whole race.

Felt great when I rode through the checkered tape! The ride carried on after that so I exited out, is that supposed to happen to allow masochists to carry on going?

I'll try and resume the other routes I've started over the weekend and check them out.

There were a couple occasions when I thought it had frozen again as I the photo stuck but then it seemed to jump to the next one cleared up and carried on again.

Overall it was great fun, cycled with the female trainer in 3rd person.

---

Probably should add it offered me an update prior to launching which I installed. So the update likely fixed the problems I was having.

[emalafeew]

Nice work! And yes, we intentionally allow masochists to keep riding anywhere after they finish.

The build update included a smoother way to load paths, which may have helped your case, though the next build should fix it more definitively with a new loading method that handles any stalls or breaks.

If you’re doing a deep dive, checkout the trainer mode, matchup with a live player (happy to join myself), create and share your own paths, and follow your progress and leaderboards on vzfit.com/stats. There’s more to come, happy to answer any questions.

[Puychaud]

Hi,

I am new to explorer - i am having same problems with white dots stopping a short way into the ride,  I have checked with fast.com and I am getting 15 Mps, so apparently no connection problems.  This is what I bought the kit for (and paying subs), not the games, so please please fix asap.

[KevinBrook]

I created my first Explorer ride today, on the moors near where I live, Princetown to Widecombe. That's a 10 mile route across Dartmoor in my home county of Devon, England.

It worked pretty well. There was some distortion of close up objects by the side of the road but when it was open moorland it looked great, even allowing for parallax when i turned my head to the side, grass and walls nearby whizzing past whilst the distant hills and tors not moving. It was a really neat effect.

I got almost 90% of the way through when the dot freeze happened again. There were a couple of junctions where it looked like there was a single dot going in either direction so maybe I took a wrong turn or something. Anyway it didn't break completely, I was able to manually turn 180 degrees by tilting my head. I rode through a blue screen for a couple seconds before rejoining the white dots and was able to ride back the way I had come. I was planning a 30 minute ride and the bug occurred about 26 minutes in so I just cycled a few minutes back the direction I came and then exited out.

Overall for a route created instantly on the fly it was really enjoyable. 10 miles is the perfect length for me at the moment and I used the controls on my bike to increase wattage from 90 watts downhill up to 120 going uphill. Super fun workout considering cycling is probably my least favourite exercise activity.

Anyway on to questions;
1) Do you think the dot freeze might be because i went the wrong way at a junction and so was going away from my destination? It was country lanes with no road signs I could read so don't know if I went the wrong way or not.

2) For rides I've started and that are at like 7% or something, can I reset to start from the beginning?