Instructional videos

Unfortunately some users can have a hard time downloading Alive, especially when downloading from countries that need to make overseas connections to the Alive servers hosted in the United States.

The Alive downloader, which is the default way to download Alive, was designed to assist downloaders world-wide, but a slow Internet connection, or momentary unreliability of a normally reliable Internet connection, can still cause the Alive downloader to fail.

The Alive downloader, which is the standard way of installing Alive, is available here:
http://www.somaticvision.com/downloads/public/alive/Alive_Setup.exe

Users who have problems downloading Alive, should instead download the following Alive setup files using Firefox, Google Chrome, or another download manager (do not use Internet Explorer).

IMPORTANT: Wait for both files to finish downloading before opening either file.

Download these 2 files using Firefox, Google Chrome, or another download manager (do not use Internet Explorer):
http://www.somaticvision.com/downloads/public/alive/setup/Alive_Setup-1a.bin
http://www.somaticvision.com/downloads/public/alive/setup/Alive_Setup.exe

When both files are finished downloading open the Alive_Setup.exe file (may be seen as Alive_Setup on computers that hide file extensions).

If you move your fingers you can create false heart rate measurements (finger movement artifacts). Also if you are cold or have poor circulation the finger sensors may have trouble reading your heart rate. In either case faulty readings appear as the heart rate jumping directly to about twice or half its value (from 50 directly to 100 beats per minute for example). Try keeping your fingers still, putting on a sweater, or turning on the heat in your home. You can also warm your hands by relaxing, as relaxation tends to lead to warmer hands through increased blood flow to your hands and feet.

When using Alive, in order to unlock the main menu, you need to demonstrate your ability to control your heart rate smoothness. There is spoon bending test, which occurs at the end of the coach, where you smooth your heart rate to bend the spoon. If you get a low score on the spoon bending you can choose to repeat it, or you can go through a series of steps designed to help you improve your ability to smooth your heart rate. After you go through about 4 or 5 processes, if you still can't bend the spoon the main menu is automatically unlocked.

While demoing Alive, if you want to jump directly to the main menu without completing the spoon bending, AND ARE FINE WITH DESTROYING YOUR EXISTING ALIVE TEST USER, you can follow these steps:

1) If you have not yet run Alive, please run it once, then exit. This will create the User/Documents/Alive Sessions directory.
2) Download the AliveSessions.zip replacement session directory to your desktop or another easy to find location.
3) Open your documents folder, there should be a folder "Alive Sessions". Find and open this folder.
4) Make sure Alive is closed, then unzip or extract the files from the AliveSessions.zip to the "Alive Sessions" folder on your computer, overwriting the existing somaticvision.db and other files already in that directory.
5) Open Alive and click on the "Main Menu" user.

For clinicians we have a special version of Alive, the Alive Clinical Verison. In addition to a number of additional graphing modes, and extensive review, there is a clinician control panel which allow users to immediately unlock the main menu (and go to the main menu) at any time.

Learn more about the Alive Clinical Version

To fix slow or not working Environments or Mini-Games open an Environment or Mini-Game, then go to Choose Display => Use Smaller Videos to Speed Playback.

Keeping your graphics card drivers up-to-date is also recommended. Also if you are using a virtual machine software, such as Parallels Desktop on a Mac, make sure you are using the latest version, as virtual machine support for 3d games and intensive graphics displays requires the latest updates to your virtual machine software.

The Alive Environments and Mini-Games are the most graphics intensive parts of Alive and may have problems if you do not use the above fix, and your computer does not have a recent ATI or nVidia graphics card, does not have up-to-date video drivers, or you are running Alive through a virtual machine on a Mac.