Oculus Rift Support??

[lettuce]

Will TPA have Oculus Rift support??...this has to be a no brainer right??

Imagine if FS included the Virtual Pin Hall they had from there previous game, walking around that with the Oculus Rift own would be mind blowing!!!!

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

Id like to see 3D head tracking like BAM since TPA is 3D rendered its a no brainer.

 

[jhamdotme]

Done properly, VR pinball could be even more immersive than an actual cabinet, and at a fraction of the cost. We could look up and see the exact backbox that’s supposed to be there. We could step to the side and see all of the proper artwork on the sides, and everything. And in T2, we could line up on the side behind the cannon and aim our shots.

Ideally, there’d be a mini cabinet peripheral that was modular. You’d be able to adjust its width and swap out plungers for buttons and guns, as required by whatever table you’re playing. This way, you’d always have an authentic feel to go along with all of the authentic visuals you’ll be seeing in your VR goggles. And it goes without saying that there’d be sensors in this cabinet peripheral for highly sensitive directional nudging. Oh, and a real knocker. And a shaker for Earthshaker, and a fan attachment for Twister. And, and, and a pony. I want all the things.

But seriously, someone make this.

 

[DopedToInfinity]

VR would be perfect for pinball, when I play real pinball I stand in pretty much the same spot, but move my head and shoulders around. A rift bundled with a pinball controller shaped to the exact sizes of the front quarter of a pinball cabinet would be the ****. You could even have balls drain because you lifted your head to watch the DMD!

I'm a console gamer so I hope the rift makes it to next-gen consoles.

 

[lettuce]

Yeah you could make a rectangle shaped box control panel with a real life lockdown bar and flipper buttons on the side and add one of these Digital Plunger and Two axis motion sensor kits

http://virtuapin.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=105

For the complete experience!! Make it happen FarSight please

 

[Soxbrother]

Yeah you could make a rectangle shaped box control panel with a real life lockdown bar and flipper buttons on the side and add one of these Digital Plunger and Two axis motion sensor kits

http://virtuapin.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=105

For the complete experience!! Make it happen FarSight please

Something like the one I made perhaps ?

All pictures + 1 video here :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22664067@N02/sets/72157633471958539/

Greetings,
Soxbrother

 

[cubemoss]

There are some problems with the ideas of using the Oculus Rift with physical pinball controls. The main thing is, when you're wearing the Rift, you can't see anything outside of it. So you're gonna be kind of fumbling around to get your hands on the controls at times.

This is compounded with the problems of depicting virtual arms and hands inside the Rift. Even if there are some generic arms and hands shown onscreen in the Rift, without additional arm and hand-tracking peripherals, they're not going to move as you move your real arms and hands. This is more than a trivial problem, as users of the Rift have described this kind of disconnect between what you're seeing and what you're expecting to see is extremely disorienting and confusing.

There will no doubt be solutions developed for these issues, but they'll be developed over the long haul... in the meantime, what would work well is just using the Rift and a regular game controller.

 

[jhamdotme]

… in the meantime, what would work well is just using the Rift and a regular game controller.

But how will you find the controller? Won’t you be “fumbling around to get your hands on the controls”?

Kidding aside. Your point is well taken. And obviously, it’ll be better when there’s full body-tracking support and you can see your hands working the controls. But even before this, a pinball-shaped controller would still be better than a gamepad-shaped controller. When I’m playing pinball, I don’t usually take my hands off of the flipper buttons. And when I do, to plunge or to fire the cannon or whatever, my hands can go back to where they need to go pretty instinctively. And when I’m actually playing, and not just demoing the fancy new VR goggles that I’ve gotten, I’m not going to be looking at my hands. I’m going to be looking at the playfield and quickly glancing up at the DMD. So the visuals of my in-game hands aren’t really important to me. What is important is the feel, and with a peripheral like this, it would most definitely feel more like pinball.

Then there are all of the other added benefits of this hypothetical peripheral. If it is indeed modular, it can have a real plunger or a gun attachment. A plunger would be infinitely better to use than a thumb stick on a gamepad. Here, we’ll probably really notice that our hand and arm aren’t depicted inside of the game. But it would still probably be pretty neat. And you can’t really emulate the feel of a gun trigger with a button. I concede that most gamepads have trigger buttons for your index fingers, but they’re right there next to all of the other buttons. There’s something satisfying about having to quickly fire a shot in the middle of trying to keep your balls in play, and having to pull a trigger that’s far away from the flipper buttons. That just doesn’t translate well with a gamepad.

And there are motion controls in some of our gamepads, but shaking a controller in mid-air is different than slapping the side of something physical. Nudge sensors would also allow for much more nuanced nudging than is possible with a digital button, too. And I don’t care how good your sound system is, it’ll never be able to emulate the sound of a real pinball knocker. Lots of things.

This would probably be a pretty niche peripheral, but I’d pay top dollar for something like this. I think a lot of others would, too.

 

[Hinph]

I think Oculus Rift support would be incredible, making the PC version the easy must-own version of all. Forget cabinets. The stereoscopic 3D and head-tracking would make it even better, eliminating the need for camera options at all. It'd be just like you are standing at a table.

Hope Farsight can implement this. Shouldn't be too hard, yeah?

 

[paulohotline]

Hey now, agreed, Oculus Rift would take it to the next level. I have been playing Future Pinball tables with TrackIR tech for over a year now and really like the effect of being able to zoom in and out of the table while playing just by using your noggin. OR would be the next logical step in 3D pinball immersion.

Have you checked out the amazing update to the Star Trek - The Next Generation (20th Anniversary Edition), check out my vid with TrackIR and an XBOX360 controller. I have it set to vibrate every time I use the flippers or nudge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne5AQhhKuiM

Get the table here:

http://www.pinsimdb.org/pinball/tab...he_next_generation_(20th_anniversary_edition)

 

[cubemoss]

I definitely think it has potential... I'd love to try a peripheral like the pinball table controller you describe, jhamdotme. But one other issue with the Rift, at least in its current state, is that it can't track your head moving forward and backwards.

Anyhow... as for things that I think would be potentially great about it, how about if your collection of games is in a virtual arcade, so you get that atmosphere of being in the midst of a bunch of games?

 

[Shaneus]

Hey now, agreed, Oculus Rift would take it to the next level. I have been playing Future Pinball tables with TrackIR tech for over a year now and really like the effect of being able to zoom in and out of the table while playing just by using your noggin. OR would be the next logical step in 3D pinball immersion.

Have you checked out the amazing update to the Star Trek - The Next Generation (20th Anniversary Edition), check out my vid with TrackIR and an XBOX360 controller. I have it set to vibrate every time I use the flippers or nudge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne5AQhhKuiM

Get the table here:

http://www.pinsimdb.org/pinball/tab...he_next_generation_(20th_anniversary_edition)

Are there many other real tables that are that good in Future? When I last checked (a LONG time ago) there wasn't a very big selection and most of them were either very basic or custom-designed.

Something you might find interesting/useful, is a plugin I stumbed across a while back which will emulate a TrackIR device, but use a Kinect to do it! I haven't verified it's accuracy or if it even works at all, but it's worth a go:
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B4lfqq0DpUo-TWF1T2ppdHdGSWs/edit

Again, I can't actually verify that it works or not, but given that more people here would own Kinects than have a TrackIR-compatible setup, it may be worth toying with!

 

[paulohotline]

Are there many other real tables that are that good in Future? When I last checked (a LONG time ago) there wasn't a very big selection and most of them were either very basic or custom-designed.

Something you might find interesting/useful, is a plugin I stumbed across a while back which will emulate a TrackIR device, but use a Kinect to do it! I haven't verified it's accuracy or if it even works at all, but it's worth a go:
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B4lfqq0DpUo-TWF1T2ppdHdGSWs/edit

Again, I can't actually verify that it works or not, but given that more people here would own Kinects than have a TrackIR-compatible setup, it may be worth toying with!

Hey now, they have improved Future Pinball significantly. Most newer tables are using Physics 2.5. I have over 360 tables installed in my Table folder and some of the original tables being made by these mad geniuses like Nightmare on Elm Street, Back to the Future and Gremlins are crazy!

Stern's Lord Of the Rings, Tron, Elvis, Avatar, POTC, Iron Man, Spiderman, Batman are there in glorious 3D and they play and look fantastic. As well, Scared Stiff, Attack From Mars, Fish Tales etc are all there now. Future Pinball would be amazing in the Oculus Rift since its already 3D. Looking forward to a developer making this happen!

 

[_gl]

Hey now, they have improved Future Pinball significantly. Most newer tables are using Physics 2.5. I have over 360 tables installed in my Table folder and some of the original tables being made by these mad geniuses like Nightmare on Elm Street, Back to the Future and Gremlins are crazy!

I haven't tried FP in years, so I just tried the STTNG table with Physics 2.5. The flippers are horrible and wrong, I can't get most of the shots. It still looks real pretty and the table design is excellent (and clever), but none of that is any use if the physics aren't right. Farsight are WAY ahead on that score.

Bring on the PC version - two major issues on my iPhone version:

- screen is really too small to see comfortably.
- a lot of the table designs use far too bright/colourful artwork, making the ball very hard to see against them. There are some tables that get this right (eg. Bride of Pinbot), and some are very wrong, eg. STTNG where the artwork completely overpowers the balls.

Really looking forward to have proper lighting effects on the PC version...

 

[_gl]

Another issue with FP that I hope Farsight will address in the PC version - audio lag.

FP has significant lag, not enough to be really obvious, but enough to make flippers etc. seem slightly late. Speaking as a programmer (who hasn't done game audio in a while), game audio on PC (DirectSound) was always a little laggy. I know that with Vista onwards MS have improved audio a fair bit, so I hope this is no longer an issue. If it still is, then Kernel Streaming and/or ASIO are the way to go for low latency.

Even slightly laggy audio destroys the feeling of responsiveness, even if the graphics are actually responsive. The audio on the iPhone is really good in that regard.

 

[paulohotline]

Any updates on Rift support? This needs to happen!

 

[sotie]

Any updates on Rift support? This needs to happen!

None. Let's just let them get the PC version released first.

 

[Sploofy]

The Occulus Rift does not have 3D position tracking (at least the developer version doesn't), so things like leaning forward or around to the side of the table won't really be possible.

 

[rob3d]

Something like the one I made perhaps ?

All pictures + 1 video here :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22664067@N02/sets/72157633471958539/

Greetings,
Soxbrother

That's looks great! How much did that cost you to make? Also is that a real coin door or did you fabricate that?

Excellent work.

 

[Pete]

i can't wait till we get full holodeck support