PS3 (NA) Version 2.08 And 2.09 Feedback And Discussion

Ouch. Something was definitely lost in translation to the PS3.

SKILL_SHOT said:

Gotta love the purple flippers. Would have been great with some GORGAR lighting.

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I never actually liked Gorgar's lighting much--way too blown-out/contrasting and garish. It would be preferable to no shadows at all like on Genie, though. Big Shot has been their best lighting of an older table as far as I'm concerned. It'll be interesting to see how Central Park and Firepower fare. : o

Lord Boron said:

The images they posted of genie look much better. Wasn't there a gameplay video posted somewhere? I can't seem to find it. Maybe they should pay more attention to the PS3 since they can, you know, actually release them.

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The only Genie video on their YouTube channel is the table running on an iPad3. The problem with the PS3 is that its lighting system is completely different than the one they use for the other platforms, and it seems that it doesn't always get the amount of designer setup time some of these tables need.

Now everyone's beginning to "see" why the Xbox 360 version is the best overall version of The Pinball Arcade on consoles. The above screenshot of the PS3 version of Genie saddens me. I still don't understand why the quality of PS3 version is all over the place. Just look at all the Xbox 360 videos and pics (especially Genie) that FarSight posted over the past year and you'll see what consistency is supposed to look like. It's disheartening that we are unable to play these beautiful Xbox 360 tables, but I can guarantee you it will be well worth the long wait.

Sean DonCarlos said:

That's cool. I just need a target for the issue link; what the actual image looks like is immaterial.

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I'd go with smbhax's pic. I tried taking one, but my camera actually makes it look a little better than it really is for some reason.

It seems like they don't have someone acting as artistic director for the PS3 tables--someone anyway to look at the thing after the artists finish their passes on it and say whether or not it needs some adjusting to be brought up to the standard of all the tables as a whole. Because we've seen dim tables--Medieval Madness, Ripley's to an extent, Taxi, Harley Davidson, Gofers--and tables with very exaggerated contrast--Gorgar, Black Knight--and tables with a bizarre pink/orange color scheme--Funhouse, Harley Davidson again, and Twilight Zone and Star Trek to a degree--and now tables that are too bright all over--Genie--while other tables, thank goodness, look fairly decent. So yeah they really do need someone to ensure consistency for the PS3 lighting scheme.

It's just a shame that a table like Genie is rather spoiled--probably forever considering the DLC/patch situation--because someone wasn't there simply to glance at it and say "oh, no, that's far too bright, go back and get some shadows in there."

smbhax said:

It seems like they don't have someone acting as artistic director for the PS3 tables--someone anyway to look at the thing after the artists finish their passes on it and say whether or not it needs some adjusting to be brought up to the standard of all the tables as a whole. Because we've seen dim tables--Medieval Madness, Ripley's to an extent, Taxi, Harley Davidson, Gofers--and tables with very exaggerated contrast--Gorgar, Black Knight--and tables with a bizarre pink/orange color scheme--Funhouse, Harley Davidson again, and Twilight Zone and Star Trek to a degree--and now tables that are too bright all over--Genie--while other tables, thank goodness, look fairly decent. So yeah they really do need someone to ensure consistency for the PS3 lighting scheme.

It's just a shame that a table like Genie is rather spoiled--probably forever considering the DLC/patch situation--because someone wasn't there simply to glance at it and say "oh, no, that's far too bright, go back and get some shadows in there."

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Well said. It truly is a shame.

Here's the console screen they originally released for Genie:



^^^ That's nothing earth-shattering, but it's certainly better than what we got...(smbhax's pic):

smbhax said:

It seems like they don't have someone acting as artistic director for the PS3 tables--someone anyway to look at the thing after the artists finish their passes on it and say whether or not it needs some adjusting to be brought up to the standard of all the tables as a whole. Because we've seen dim tables--Medieval Madness, Ripley's to an extent, Taxi, Harley Davidson, Gofers--and tables with very exaggerated contrast--Gorgar, Black Knight--and tables with a bizarre pink/orange color scheme--Funhouse, Harley Davidson again, and Twilight Zone and Star Trek to a degree--and now tables that are too bright all over--Genie--while other tables, thank goodness, look fairly decent. So yeah they really do need someone to ensure consistency for the PS3 lighting scheme.

It's just a shame that a table like Genie is rather spoiled--probably forever considering the DLC/patch situation--because someone wasn't there simply to glance at it and say "oh, no, that's far too bright, go back and get some shadows in there."

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I still think they don't have a PS3. I'm serious. How can they let these go out like this?

For example, my girlfriend, who can't tell the quality difference between an HD Big Bang Theory episode and a black and white I love Lucy episode, prefers the PHOF verison of NGG over the TPA version. She says the TPA NGG "looks weird".

Correct...it's not earth-shattering, but it is consistent with the lighting on the rest of the Xbox 360 tables and that's all most of us want is consistency. FarSight needs to get the overall presentation of the graphics and lighting on the PS3 they're happy with and stick with it like they've done on the Xbox 360.

I agree. Not sure why they haven't found that consistency yet...the older PS3 tables looks great, but the newer ones are definitely hit and miss.

The lighting on both tables is terrible. Everyone has brought up Genie, but I think AFM looks awful too. All the colors are washed out. It is especially noticeable on the plastics, you can't see any detail in the artwork because they're so bright. The inserts look bad too. Both tables play great but the art is total fail.

I definitly prefere the iPad version of a number of tables (which seems soooooo wrong). The details are clear and crisp. A lot of the PS3 details have this strange bright fuzziness to them like a picture taken through a soft lens. I'm not sure if its some "artistic" choice or what.

PiN WiZ said:

Now everyone's beginning to "see" why the Xbox 360 version is the best overall version of The Pinball Arcade on consoles. The above screenshot of the PS3 version of Genie saddens me. I still don't understand why the quality of PS3 version is all over the place. Just look at all the Xbox 360 videos and pics (especially Genie) that FarSight posted over the past year and you'll see what consistency is supposed to look like. It's disheartening that we are unable to play these beautiful Xbox 360 tables, but I can guarantee you it will be well worth the long wait.

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Xbox 360 is the best version by a mile, for the tables (except Monster Bash) that it has.

Hey Jeff, I know your question poll is over for this month, but maybe this is a question you could ask Bobby about directly. Something along the lines of...

What happens to the lighting of a table between the time it is done for the videos via the 360, and the time it gets translated over to the PS3. There seems to be no consistency to the look on the PS3, where a table like Black Knight is overly dark and blotchy, to now overly bright with no shadow on Genie.

Just throwing that out there. The real concern is that these aren't issues they can go back to and easily patch, unless that light slider is coming down the pike sometime soon.

I'm not gonna dump on the PS3 version's lighting altogether, because it seems to me some tables do come out looking better; TotAN, for instance, looks a bit better on the PS3 as far as I can tell from comparing YouTube clips. And if their Mars Attacks promo video is the Xbox version, which is usually the case unless they say otherwise, then I do prefer the look of the PS3 version; you can see in the Xbox video that in order to get contrast so you could see the lights, they had to leave the whole rest of the playfield very dark (I know some people seem to like that very dark look, but here I think it looks pretty flat and unnatural), whereas on the PS3 version they actually managed some pretty good, subtle gradation of lighting up the length of the playfield; heck, there are even cast shadows in places along the sides! So I have to take back some of what I said earlier--it seems that their PS3 lighting model *is* capable of some detail, it's just that they aren't able to get it done thoroughly on ever table--I suppose because it doesn't make economic sense for them to devote so much separate time to just one platform--which is the real trouble; when it's right, it's pretty nice, but when it's wrong--phew!

Here's a photo of the PS3 Attack from Mars:



(These are at funny angles because it's a projector so I can't stand right in front of it. )

Aside from the one frame delay for lighting at 1080p on the PS3 version, which from the sound of things maybe they are going to be able to fix once and for all after all, I don't think I'd trade the PS3 lighting scheme for the 360 scheme....hm...well, there are some things I'd miss, at least. Anyway again this all just makes me look forward more to the PS4 version, which shouldn't be stuck with so many graphical compromises in replicating these tables as the current gen.

Eh I can't help getting back into more of that lighting thinking I've been doing lately. Quake whatever on current consoles, for instance, has real-time lighting you might say, but that's from a very limited number of light source at once, whereas pinball tables have loads and loads of highly animated light sources. You could also point out that Zen's lighting looks sharp--sometimes, I would say...actually some of their tables, especially the earlier ones, are rather washed out, and it's hard to make out contours--but they have the advantage of being able to design their tables' lighting schemes from the ground up to take advantage of what can be done on the system, rather than having to try to replicate something from real life like FarSight is doing.

I am really starting to get upset. They make comments like they can't fix our issues with a patch but don't bother to try to get it right the first time. I understand missing glitches...but this crap is hard to miss even at a glance. I'm really getting tired of obvious seams in the table art the too much or too little lighting the game breaking camera bugs, faded tables. They need to stand back and see the effect that their attitude has toward their paying customers. I have zero faith they can make a passable PS4 version after all of this crap so I'm not even going to bother.
The people we have contract with here seen like genuinely nice good people so I feel bad talking badly of the product. But someone at FS HQ is really alienating pretty much every customer they have.
I have bought every table so far, some twice, but I am thinking that is coming to a end. If they can't be bothered to give us something that even looks remotely close to the promotional stuff they release beforehand ... I won't be buying them anymore.
Sick of feeling like my money is somehow worth less than the other obviously higher priority platforms. You would think with the 360 and PC delays they could treat the only non mobile version they are releasing version like it mattered.

Don't forget the Mac version!

Man that's disappointing! I agree with Jeff, the core pack has some nice visuals, I still think TotAN is the best looking table out there.
After the updated lighting on the Xbox/PS3 you'd expect that all following tables would have the same quality, why do they still differ so much?

PiN WiZ said:

Now everyone's beginning to "see" why the Xbox 360 version is the best overall version of The Pinball Arcade on consoles. The above screenshot of the PS3 version of Genie saddens me. I still don't understand why the quality of PS3 version is all over the place. Just look at all the Xbox 360 videos and pics (especially Genie) that FarSight posted over the past year and you'll see what consistency is supposed to look like. It's disheartening that we are unable to play these beautiful Xbox 360 tables, but I can guarantee you it will be well worth the long wait.

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or they could, you know, fix the ps3 version/make it right the first time...

Just spent some time with Attack from Mars and Genie on the PS3 and I'm sorry to have to say this, but this is the first table pack I regret purchasing on any platform or device. I love this table pack on my Galaxy S3 (and it looks great on the Xbox 360 gameplay videos), but not even Attack from Mars looks anywhere near as good as Scared Stiff on the PS3...what happened here?...really?!? As for Genie, I'd rather play Black Knight on the PS3 and that's saying a lot. As bad as Black Knight is, I can still play a few games on it every now and then, but I won't play Genie on the PS3 again until the contrast is adjusted and that's a pity because I really like playing these older tables on my consoles with proper nudging.

Really, I don't know what else to say about this table pack except that I expect much better from FarSight.

Jeff Strong said:

I agree. Not sure why they haven't found that consistency yet...the older PS3 tables looks great, but the newer ones are definitely hit and miss.

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I'm beginning to think that they have different teams working on different tables!, this would count for the difference in quality across the tables. Either this or they need to sack their Quality Assurance manager

I'm just not really sure why FS are having soo much hassle with the difference in quality between the 360 and PS3 version. You look at 99.9% of other 3rd party games on the market that are multiplatform and there is hardly any difference between the 360 and PS3, fair enough the 360 version usually just pips it, but here on TPA there is a massive difference in quality!. It's like going back to the 16bit era and the difference in ports between the Megadrive and SNES!