BlahCade #151: Stern Pinball Arcade VR and Cabinet Shenanigans

[jaredmorgs]

After covering some brief news items we dive into some first experiences with virtual pinball cabinets and then have a great chat with Mike from Farsight Studios about the new Stern Pinball Arcade VR release on Oculus Rift.


We round out the show with an announcement about our new merchandise: it's not just Tshirts this time.


See https://blahcadepinball.com/151-stern-vr-interview for detailed show notes and links to things we talk about.

 

[Citizen]

Sounds like this VR release is pretty much the end of the line for SPA with new table releases only coming to TPA. Everything discussed about non-VR SPA just got awkward. Things got awkward during the newsletter bit too. And the quick Arcooda part. And the Zen part. Pretty uncomfortable interview overall.

Not holding my breath on Capcom ever happening, but his comments on EMs and LCDs are something to hopefully look forward to.

We round out the show with an announcement about our new merchandise: it's not just Tshirts this time.

Give me free stuff.

 

[The loafer]

Thanks for the shout out on the podcast. I think you do bring up excellent and yes, very valid points with Visual Pinball and the complexity with installing these types of programs. The end-user experience, especially for those less technically inclined can be daunting and for some, the VP experience just won't be for them. To be fair, this is not limited to pinball sims, say hello to the modding community for games like Skyrim where you can choose 10 different types of skies . Many out there just want to load up whatever game they want and play. This is one reason why, PCMasterRace members please forgive me, consoles will always have a place in our gaming society. But that ability to modify everything daunting it may be, also have many pluses and in my opinion your podcast would be better served to dwelve on the positives as well.

I mean, one of your complaints was that there are too many T2 pinballs to choose from? That's a negative?? Choice is rarely a negative, I mean I'm certain in a perfect alternate world, Farsight didn't lose the license, but Zen did gain it so we would have TWO commercial choice to choose from, like on consoles sports titles, the best of times were always when we had competition between different devs (hello Madden and NFL2K series). Other positives of the VPX experience: physics that are arguably better than the commercial sims, ability to customize the tables as you see fit, tables that may never see a release that are unavailable on the commercial pinsims, etc etc. For sure, it can be a chore to find what you seek but... that's also the fun part of the adventure as well, the rewards are great and many, for those willing to plunge down the rabbit hole.

Still, we all have our opinions, no one is wrong here. Where you did kind of lose me was your points about complexity (rightly so) then you go on about your adventures in creating your pinsim controller, something that came off as extremely complex, convoluted and a royal pain. Yet you are still willing to go on that adventure... why? Perhaps because the end result is worth it .

… and don't get me started about your stances on VR! grumble grumble LOL

 

[wolfson]

thanks again Jared ,it was great having you Zak and Sienna over . it was a great afternoon . found a video that topped the Nvidea settings a bit more https://youtu.be/_KsK55zgUAQ . I`m just happy to be able to play on a cab . for me it`s always about having fun .and it was the visual pinball we had the trouble with not the future pinball , and thanks to you ,it`s cool !!!

 

[Pod]

It sounds like your friend has a really freaky rift setup from what you described. You shouldnt need to setup the height everyone you take off the visor.
For what is worth, the touch controllers work fine for me, the table is sloped correctly and I'm not standing on the table
Your observations about VRs faults are correct though. We're at the very beginning of VRs second coming (1995 tech being the first *shudder*). Resolution will improve as well form factor etc.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Where you did kind of lose me was your points about complexity (rightly so) then you go on about your adventures in creating your pinsim controller, something that came off as extremely complex, convoluted and a royal pain. Yet you are still willing to go on that adventure... why? Perhaps because the end result is worth it .

Exactly!

To me, if you’re gonna go through the trouble (and expense) to make such a controller, you’d want to play the best pinball options available, especially since VPX is matching Zen as the best of the best, and even surpassing it in some ways. By the time you read through the thread, you could’ve had it running flawlessly since we worked out all the kinks already.

 

[Jeff Strong]

One thing I will admit, as I also said in the MAME thread, is I do enjoy the tinkering aspect of it, which of course not everyone else does. I guess after so many years writing code for a living and web development, it’s fun to tinker with something on the PC that’s not work-related, and I’m not one to fiddle with physical tools or woodworking, so the PC is basically my workshop or garage if you will haha.

And to be fair, the all-in-one installer does make it a breeze and eliminates a lot of the old headaches related to VP in the past (your PTSD was warranted lol). If I had known in advance to uncheck one video option, everything would’ve worked perfectly out of the box...and now you know in advance if you ever do want to try it.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Sounds like this VR release is pretty much the end of the line for SPA with new table releases only coming to TPA. Everything discussed about non-VR SPA just got awkward. Things got awkward during the newsletter bit too. And the quick Arcooda part. And the Zen part. Pretty uncomfortable interview overall.

Not holding my breath on Capcom ever happening, but his comments on EMs and LCDs are something to hopefully look forward to.



Give me free stuff.

Yep, it does seem pretty much like SPA will maybe only kept for VR purposes only. It's a shame because the game experience running native code not emulated code is superior.

I would love to see some very high-quality Gottlieb EMs coming down the line.

 

[The loafer]

Jeff: yep and let's be clear, VP can still be somewhat of a pain in the ass, there is absolutely good reason for some to stay away! Heck even rom hunting, table hunting, backglass hunting, where do files go, for sure it's an issue for some, fair point. But that's what you get when you have a system that's flexible.

It's for this reason I don't think there should ever be any fear of competition from VPX, the majority of the pinball fans have no patience for this "flexibility"

 

[jaredmorgs]

Thanks for the shout out on the podcast. I think you do bring up excellent and yes, very valid points with Visual Pinball and the complexity with installing these types of programs. The end-user experience, especially for those less technically inclined can be daunting and for some, the VP experience just won't be for them. To be fair, this is not limited to pinball sims, say hello to the modding community for games like Skyrim where you can choose 10 different types of skies . Many out there just want to load up whatever game they want and play. This is one reason why, PCMasterRace members please forgive me, consoles will always have a place in our gaming society. But that ability to modify everything daunting it may be, also have many pluses and in my opinion your podcast would be better served to dwelve on the positives as well.

I mean, one of your complaints was that there are too many T2 pinballs to choose from? That's a negative?? Choice is rarely a negative, I mean I'm certain in a perfect alternate world, Farsight didn't lose the license, but Zen did gain it so we would have TWO commercial choice to choose from, like on consoles sports titles, the best of times were always when we had competition between different devs (hello Madden and NFL2K series). Other positives of the VPX experience: physics that are arguably better than the commercial sims, ability to customize the tables as you see fit, tables that may never see a release that are unavailable on the commercial pinsims, etc etc. For sure, it can be a chore to find what you seek but... that's also the fun part of the adventure as well, the rewards are great and many, for those willing to plunge down the rabbit hole.

Still, we all have our opinions, no one is wrong here. Where you did kind of lose me was your points about complexity (rightly so) then you go on about your adventures in creating your pinsim controller, something that came off as extremely complex, convoluted and a royal pain. Yet you are still willing to go on that adventure... why? Perhaps because the end result is worth it .

… and don't get me started about your stances on VR! grumble grumble LOL

The thing about the T2 argument is that you have to make a choice: Graphics over Physics. It's a shame that the talented folks who create the tables and physics models couldn't just collaborate and make an amazing table.

Haha, yeah the PinSim thing is a different type of complexity. Its a physical type of complexity. If you had infinite money, you could just buy the parts at the premium and build the thing very easily. The only reason the build is complex is that the budget is limited.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I’m sure there’s still going to be a software side of complexity to PinSim as well, so it’s a double whammy lol.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Jeff: yep and let's be clear, VP can still be somewhat of a pain in the ass, there is absolutely good reason for some to stay away! Heck even rom hunting, table hunting, backglass hunting, where do files go, for sure it's an issue for some, fair point. But that's what you get when you have a system that's flexible.

It's for this reason I don't think there should ever be any fear of competition from VPX, the majority of the pinball fans have no patience for this "flexibility"

Good points.

You’re right: it never will be a threat to commercial digital pinball. We’ve been able to emulate the SNES for decades, but that didn’t stop the SNES Classic from selling like hot cakes because of the convenience and simplicity.

 

[wolfson]

Jeff , Jared and Loafer I`ll leave all the thinking to you guys , I`m in gaga land when it comes to the tech stuff , I`ll stick to playing and having fun . I do read everything you all say , in case something might stick in my knuckle head haha !!! keep up all the great work fellas !!!

 

[Blkthorne]

Really felt Farsight was getting kind of comfortable before all the mess with losing of the Williams' license, they had no one really competing with them with real tables, Zen was happy doing their original tables, or so we thought, Magic Pixel had the niche Zaccaria area covered, and VP wasn't for everyone to just leap in and start using, as people said, it was the convenience. If Chris was right, they would go in and buy the Williams' license outright and have a monopoly pretty much on the top tables in the business and bring out tables at a very leisurely pace. I even thought maybe they would think of doing a TPA 2.0 similar to Pinball FX3 and get rid of the clunky old TPA engine.


Mike Lindsley did seem pretty subdued in the interview, you mentioned he was the main cheerleader for pinball in the office and you could kind of tell he wasn't exactly loving the idea of Party Zone app over Bally/Williams' tables. At least he did say they were working on some Stern tables, though you wonder what they would allow Farsight to even have?? Would Stern give them some AAA title or some slow selling one that they want to give a little attention to? I did like that you plugged Gottlieb EM's and early SS along with Stern Electronics' tables, though I don't think they are overly enthused about that prospect.

 

[The loafer]

The thing about the T2 argument is that you have to make a choice: Graphics over Physics. It's a shame that the talented folks who create the tables and physics models couldn't just collaborate and make an amazing table

This is a flawed argument as I don't recall anyone saying the T2 with the fantastic graphics had bad physics, just that one dev used a server farm to render all the graphics and the other T2 FOR SOME (including me) has better physics. I'm pretty sure others prefer the physics of the server farm version. So to be clear, the one with the better graphics still plays fantastic, its not like it plays like a friggin dog, in fact the physics on the server farm version still wipes the floor with the TPA T2.

 

[Jeff Strong]

The Loafer nailed it, as usual.

I’m just happy we have actual options for quality pinball nowadays. Zen didn’t really do anything for me until they scooped up the WMS license and gave us realistic physics. VP was always good, but not nearly what it is now. With TPA, we needed the constant stream of DLC to keep it interesting as the gameplay didn’t have that addictive feel that real pinball does. But now VPX and FX3 have nailed that vibe and you can rock out on even just one table for several hours and lose track of time because you really get pulled into the joy of pinball at its finest.

Good times, gentlemen.

 

[The loafer]

Indeed! I don't know if this is bold talking but it feels like the golden era of digital pinball has finally arrived. I'm sure it's bound to get even better.

Relevant to the VR aspect of the podcast, I didn't listen to the entire thing but one aspect that VR beats the regular PC/console pinball hands down is the lack of lag. This is in part due to the technology as the screens used on the vive/rift (and probably others) are low persistent which is something that I don't think 99.9% of typical digital pinball users are accustomed too. There are trade-offs (obviously resolution wise) but the first time I played Pinball FX2 in VR was an eye opener. I'm not the biggest fans of their initial tables but what matters here was just how much the playability was so improved, it was downright shocking and difficult to adjust. I was wondering if I was nuts then I listened to Jeremy Williams's tested review and that's exactly what blew him away as well! you press the button and the flipper response is so quick, years of being used to lag fecked me over good for the first couple of hours of VR pinball gaming lol.

Phew! I managed to talk about VR without trying to destroy your opinions, NAILED IT!

 

[shutyertrap]

I'm just smiling over hear as I love it when something we discuss in the podcast becomes a hot topic on the forum!

First things first. I pulled the name of T2 as an example out of thin air, as I vaguely recalled Jeff and Loafer commenting on it. You could substitute Monster Bash, Attack From Mars, and who knows what else as the point remains the same; there are multiple versions of the same table and it can become a task figuring out which is the version you most respond to. That's not how I want to spend my time, I want to just play. When I was playing VP8, that's the one thing that most drove me nuts. It's what made PacDude become my favorite author, because he produced 20+ tables, they all had similar camera angle, lighting, physics, and a general quality that was consistent. As I switched table to table, it all flowed nicely. Then I'd load up some other author's table that PacDude hadn't made and I'd have a bit of culture shock.

There was this one guy, I wanna say Scapino, who did amazing lighting and graphics, but his camera angles were weird, the physics not great, and they required a lot of processor power. So even though they looked the best of any I'd seen, I never played them because they failed on so many other levels.

Initial setup of VP, especially with the installer (and they've had easy installers since VP8) is fairly painless. Gone are the days of setting all the paths to the ROMS and sound and game file, etc. That being said, when I tried VP9 I still had times when it couldn't find certain paths, or it would say a file was corrupted, and then I'd have to find all the pertinent files on a different website and hope that'd solve it. A table like NBA Fastbreak always proved a pain because of that 24 second clock, which required it's own set of fonts and stuff if I recall correctly. Every time there was an update to VP or MAME, it seemed I'd have to bug hunt some problem that would affect a few tables and I feared each time one dropped.

Look, I get that all this might not be an issue for you guys, that you like tinkering. I'm someone who chose an iPhone over Android because I wanted a closed environment, that didn't expect me to tinker and futz with how it worked, and I knew I'd never jailbreak my phone. The only reason I started gaming on the PC was because of Steam and how easy it made it to boot up games. I don't play modded versions of games, unless it's an official DLC. My friend has been trying desperately for me to play The Long War in XCOM 2, and I told him the deal breaker was I couldn't use a controller with it.

As for why I'd poo-poo VP complexity but jump into building a PinSim, allow me to retort. I'm building a physical item. The board is already coded, I just need to solder wires to it. This to me is no different than what I have to do to my real pinball machines. When I am done, it will act and be recognized as a 360 controller. Plug and play, perfect for me! I have a friend who is going to walk me through every step as he was building his own fighting stick controllers back during PlayStation One days. I'm not afraid to tackle a project when I know someone is right there in person to guide me. So it's less an adventure and more a guided tour with a definitive end destination. For as much guidance I can be given into the world of VPX, it's still a fairly open ended introduction.

I like consistency, I like ease of use, I like knowing that if something goes wrong I don't immediately need to start checking my own rig but can probably put the blame on the software designers and hopefully they'll fix it soon.

Oh, and my favorite part of Zen Pinball FX3 is the online community aspect. I've said it many times before, that alone triggered me from only playing Zen tables maybe 15% to TPA's 85%, into playing Zen 95% of the time. VPX doesn't even have leaderboards.

My issues with VR start and end with the resolution. I can't be expected to get used to any other aspect of it when the visuals are blatantly front and center not up to my expectations. I was just on set today, looking through an Arri Amira digital camera who's eyepiece uses an OLED display. Sure that one piece of viewing equipment probably costs $15,000 but once you know what is possible, what's being used for VR becomes unacceptable. You can't plop me down into the middle of a rose garden and tell me how wonderful it all smells if you first surround me in dog sh!t. Until you clear that up, I'm never going to be able to appreciate everything else.

I also made it perfectly clear that it'd be unfair for me to judge the games when it's not my setup and I didn't set the conditions. There were some carry over issues from when I first played up at FarSight in June to when I played at my friend's house, so I know certain things were not due to improper setup. And I certainly appreciate the immersive experience to be had with pinball, something I thought I made sure to point out. I'm happy for you VR guys, but you also have no issue with overlooking some glaring problems that most of the public can't get past.

I'll give you a perfect example of how quirky and exacting I can be. I have a 23" monitor for my PC that is only 1080p. My friend dropped off an unused 30" 2160p (or there abouts) display for me to use if I wanted it. The problem was, it was and LCD that used CCFL type backlighting, which meant whites always had a yellow tint to them, blacks were never black, and it generated a lot of heat. There was also one row of dead pixels running vertically an inch from the left side. I tried it for 2 months, hoping I'd get used to it. As much as I liked the size and the resolution, the yellowed whites and that very narrow, hardly visible line of dead pixels were too much for me. I gave it back and plugged in my smaller, lower resolution monitor because it produced the crisp whites and deeper blacks. Sure, over time I had gotten used to the larger monitor, but all it would take was to look at a different monitor and I'd be right back to disliking the large one.

I know, this was all very long winded (surprise surprise) and I don't mean to spit on the VP community. I'm just saying it's not for me, I know what aspects of digital pinball I really like, TPA fostered those and Zen is now putting 'em on steroids. Were I a cab owner, I might feel completely different as the VP community totally caters to that subset. I'm just not going to be a convert anytime soon.

 

[The loafer]

There is no beating the polished end result that can come from having funds and paid dev talent. Although you may hear comments from me about physics being better in vpx there’s no denying it’s shortcomings too and as stated it’s not for everyone. Great point about multiplayer, that along with the plug and play nature should go some way to satisfying Zen’s audience. Yeah Vp pre vpx was a pain at times. Separate tables for desktop versus full screen use, poor 3rd party support for backglasses, etc I remember well scapino’s pre-rendered tables, Kurt was something else but yes you were confined to just that one view. Thankfully although not perfect, vpx has improved on all of these limitations. Personally I can’t wait for it to get a real 3D engine, probably the last step needed to really compete graphically with the modern commercial sims.

I had a good time playing fx3 williams tables on the pincab tonight. They’ve done a great job on the main program though there’s still a lot of work to do with the pincab support. Seriously how hard would it be for them to pop in the matching backglass in the proper folder? Nope I gotta hunt them down. Whatever, no one is perfect and at least they provide some support though I hope active backglasses are coming . I’m a little anal about some stuff, Especially the lag issue. Pinball fx 3 seems to have more lag than I am used to so I’m going to have to review options in the Nvidia control panel to see if that can help a bit, hope so! The brain can and does adapt but it seems to be a bit more than acceptable right now. Still it’s apparent the Williams license is in good hands

 

[Jeff Strong]

SYT, the time you spent typing all that up, you could've had VPX running

Just busting your balls man haha...but we'll enjoy it for ya!

But yeah I totally get where you're coming from. Some people just want things to work and don't have time to mess with settings.