The following keys are used after the 6000 Moons tour, to allow you to freely explore:

• Left Thumbstick Forward/Back or Page Up and Page Down: “Zoom” in and out, moving your viewpoint towards or away from the Earth.
• Right Thumbstick or Arrow Keys: Rotate the camera position up, down, left, and right relative to the Earth’s surface.
• L/R Triggers or [ and ]: Speed up or slow down the rate of the simulation.
• Start or P: Pause or unpause the simulation. Selection, attach, and detatch don’t work while the simulation is paused.
• Back or R: Re-center your headset’s orientation.
• A or Spacebar: Select (hold). Press and hold the key, look in the direction of a satellite of interest, then release the button to select the highlighted satellite. This will show you some information about the satellite and its orbit.
• X or Enter: Attach your viewpoint to the currently selected satellite.
• B or Delete: Detach your viewpoint from a satellite to which you’ve attached, or cancel selection ir you’re not attached to a satellite.

Your first time trying 6000 Moons, we recommend taking the narrated tour to help explain the visualization and orient you. However, the free exploration mode at the end of the experience can be quite fun to return to. If you want to go back and freely explore without experiencing the tour again, you can use the –notour command line switch. For example:

"\Full\Path\To\Moons.exe" --notour

If you want to skip just portions of the tour, use the B button on your controller or the delete key on your keyboard. This will skip narration, though you’ll currently still need to wait for any camera transitions to complete before the next section starts.

6000 Moons is best experienced with the DK2. That said, if you don’t have a headset, you can run 6000 Moons with the –novr command line switch to run it in a normal window. You can also use -w and -h to specify the resolution; it will default to 1024x768. For example:

"\Full\Path\To\Moons.exe" --novr -w 1680 -h 1050

If you’re using a launcher like Bilago’s VR Game Manager, it may include an option for specifying custom command line switches. For example, using VR Game Manager, enter –novr or –notour in the “Notes” section. -w and -h won’t work in VR Game Manager, as it won’t correctly pass through the requested window width and height.

Otherwise, the easiest way to follow the above recommendations is to use the Windows run dialog. Using the key combination Win+R is the easiest way to do this. Or, depending on your Windows version, Start->Run (pre Windows 8) or right clicking on the start button and selecting Run (Windows 8). In the run dialog, enter the full path to Moons.exe followed by any command line switches. For example, if you unzipped 6000 Moons to c:\OculusDemos\6000Moons\Moons.exe, and want to skip the tour, you would enter the following in the run dialog box:

"C:\OculusDemos\6000Moons\Moons.exe" --notour

In Extended display mode, we’ve found judder is minimized when the Rift is set as the primary display before running 6000 Moons. You can either manually set the Rift as the primary display, use a launcher that does this automatically, or set the Rift as the only active display on your machine.

If the Oculus runtime configuration is set to use Direct display mode, and you’re using an ATI card, there’s a good chance you’re running into a known issue described in our further release notes here. Running 6000 Moons in Extended display mode should fix the problem. If you have issues with judder, see above.

If this doesn’t fix the problem, check to see if you’re running an older version of your graphics card drivers. We’ve heard reports of issues with NVIDIA driver versions 337.88 and 340.52. Upgrading your graphics drivers may help; the latest NVIDIA drivers as of this writing are version 347.25, and we believe they’re working great for most people.

If you’re on the latest drivers and in Extended mode and still getting a crash, e-mail us at info@binsoftware.com with some details about your configuration and we’ll do our best to diagnose the problem.

If Moons.exe isn’t running for you, the first thing to look at is log.txt and err.txt. Both of these files should show up in the same directory as Moons.exe.

If you try to run Moons.exe and absolutely nothing happens, you’ll probably see the following message in one of the log files: WGL: Failed to create OpenGL context

• The most common cause for this error is an older video card or video driver. Make sure your video card supports OpenGL 4.3, and make sure you have the most recent drivers for your video card. If your video card doesn’t support OpenGL 4.3 or later, unfortunately, 6000 Moons isn’t supported on your hardware at this time.
• Try both the Extended and Direct display mode settings in the Oculus runtime configuration. Direct mode and OpenGL sometimes don’t play nicely with certain video card drivers.
• If neither of the above helps, feel free to e-mail us at info@binsoftware.com. Please include your hardware specifications and driver versions. We’ll do our best to narrow down the problem.