New Arcade, Sharing my Thoughts and Questions

GFVRCade

Hello all!

I just opened up my arcade on 8/17 here in Grand Forks North Dakota. I figured I would just share kinda how my opening went and my thought about the HTC Vive enterprise customer support.

The operation I run is a small 7 station set up inside of a mall, we rent a suite that's about 1400Sqft. I've got some nice windows in front of my suite that allows full visibility inside(except for areas that I have signage up) and one thing I've noticed is that not everyone realizes we are open. So I was wondering if any other mall locations have experienced this? I think its mostly because the lighting inside is 80% blue light and then the rest being normal lighting. I do have some overhead lights just behind mt glass entry which seemed to help when I turned those on but most people still walk by and mumble "is that place open?" It could also be because I just opened.

As far as getting everything set up I did most of it myself but what upset me was one of my Vive Pro kits had some issues..... The headset had ~20 dead pixels in it and one of the controllers was just bricked right out of the box. I was setting these up on Saturday and I decided to try the live chat to see if they could fix them, but nope... so I sent an email to the enterprise support and got a response on Monday saying that they would give me a shipping label later that day... Tuesday comes around I send another email that gets no response, on Wednesday I get a response from someone else saying that they are going to send me a new headset and controller and a return label and that will be dispatched that day... Friday comes along I send a follow-up email and then at about 6 PM local time, I get an email response with a FedEx tracking number saying it has been dispatched... It took them a full week to dispatch that... I will have to give them credit though as they did overnight shipping and I got it Monday. I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced similar issues with the Vive enterprise team of if I just got unlucky?

Opening day went about as I expected as far as issues. Had to reset some rooms and give away some free time. I seem to also have to reset a room once or twice a day for one reason or another, is this common? All but one of my resets have been because it thinks that the player is 14ft high and shoots them way up into the sky.

Have any of yall setup a 20x20ft area before for multiple players? if so how did that go and what game(s) were played.

Anyways I think that's all I got for now, would love some tips/pointers if anyone has some. Thanks!

Spectrum_Waylon

Try to make the headset lose tracking instead of resetting the room. You can do this by hiding the headset from the sensors. This may or may not work

Spectrum_Waylon

once it loses tracking it should fix itself

SaberPrince

Greetings,

My both of my locations are also in malls, we’ve been kicking butt and takin names for over a year now so I feel I can offer some advice on some of the issues you’re having. HTC Vive I wont comment on, we sold all ours because of the headache and went with Samsung best field of vision, 1080 screen, plus they run off steam, done. People don't know you’re there because they only come to the mall to return stuff or work; they shop on Amazon lol!! That’s why having an online presence is a must. Also, use the mall to your advantage. Ask if they have a TA incentive for promotions and upgrades, or a few free months rent. We are not in the retail space we are in the entertainment space and boost all the other retail stores revenues when parents drop their kids off and shop! So focus on parties, they will keep the place busy on the weekends and passers by cannot resist stopping when the arcade is packed! Do promos in the mall ( Use local talent) outside of your store and send the traffic into your store. Offer your venue for fundraisers (Cub & Girl scouts, Charities, local sports teams etc...) for free, just take a percentage of what they raise! Do them during the week when its not busy , its a win win.

This is my first post so I wont layout the entire road map to success just yet lol!! But there’s more to come . Being dynamic is the key to longevity in the industry.

*Next time we’ll discuss why having a LAN center is critical

Cheers, Saber VR

NickSucik319828

SaberPrince Wait -You’re running Samsung Odysseys instead of Vives? How’s that been working out? We own one but have been reluctant to use as it seems fragile

thevrclub

I'm not surprised Vive enterprise isn't very good, better to buy spare headsets and just get the consumer version.

If your floor level is floating away it could be because your base stations don't see each other properly, try using the sync cable if you're not already

DimensionalDrop

thevrclub

Until this last week, Vive Enterprise has been great for me. Generally they responded within a day, shipping label the next day, everything fixed and back to me within a week. I've had 3 controllers, 4 headsets, and 4 base stations all go back for various reasons and returned to me in complete working order within a week.

For whatever reason, this last week I've been unable to get a response out of them. Not sure what's going on.

The base station 2.0 that comes with the Pro can't sync with a cable, but you should be able to use the bluetooth to set them to different channels if that is proving to be a problem. I've had that issue once or twice, and it was always that I had two base stations (sometimes in different play areas) set to the same channel. There are 16 channels, with 14 base stations you shouldn't end up with any overlap so I would just double check how they're set.