Williams' Collection Volume 3 guesses

[shutyertrap]

Williams pinball in VR? No. A while back they said VR takes a lot of time and resources for what amounts to an exceedingly small market. Right now they are focusing resources to mobile and a better workflow pipeline for WMS. It’s not that it can’t happen, it’s just way down the priority line.

 

[blindpeser]

Thanks mate. I just wonder why they switched back to 2D on FX3 when FX2 was in 3D. Would be pretty easy to add VR support for FX3 if it was in 3D. Zaccaria did an awesome job here. If VR is low on the priority list, I doubt it will happen soon. There is soo much other stuff to do.

Future Pinball made some major improvements recently. And there is a promising VR support for Visual Pinball now. Both still need some work, but hopefully us VR Pinheads have some decent alternatives soon.

 

[wilbers]

I've heard about the flipper issue a few different times, but hadn't heard it is mainly a Daily Challenge issue. Does the Android app have the tab you can press to report beta issues?

As for nudging, is it impossible because you are playing on a tablet and the reach to the proper touch zone is too high up for a simple thumb stretch? Is it a different nudge zone from Zen's other pinball apps? I personally never nudge while playing the mobile version of any pinball, so it's hard for me to have an opinion on the effectiveness of what is in place.

I haven't installed it on my phone so can't check myself, but is it possible to use a controller with it so nudging would then be possible - I was thinking a steam controller in Bluetooth mode (that got added in a firmware update last year, which is why it came to mind), but I googled it, and found https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-android-game-controllers/ so there are loads of them.

 

[tizerist]

Thanks mate. I just wonder why they switched back to 2D on FX3 when FX2 was in 3D. Would be pretty easy to add VR support for FX3 if it was in 3D. Zaccaria did an awesome job here. If VR is low on the priority list, I doubt it will happen soon. There is soo much other stuff to do.

Future Pinball made some major improvements recently. And there is a promising VR support for Visual Pinball now. Both still need some work, but hopefully us VR Pinheads have some decent alternatives soon.

The last future pinball update was 8 years ago?

 

[shogun00]

Thanks mate. I just wonder why they switched back to 2D on FX3 when FX2 was in 3D. Would be pretty easy to add VR support for FX3 if it was in 3D. Zaccaria did an awesome job here.

The simple is cost and lack of demand. Even 3D support costs money to add onto each table and the number of people using the feature is even lower than VR.

 

[blindpeser]

The last future pinball update was 8 years ago?

Check: www.gopinball.com / All new technologies are due to BAM. This is essential for FP today. Most promising stuff is "dynamic flippers" at the moment. Get tables that have this inside.

Pretty early stuff, but I see a bit more potential in Visual Pinball, to be honest. Check this link:

https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=38417&page=3

@shohun00: 3D always looks better, even in desktop mode. It allows a wider camera range i.e. and gives depth that 2D never could provide. Yeah, maybe it means a longer development and more costs. But it is worrh it, imo.

 

[trash80]

Check: www.gopinball.com / All new technologies are due to BAM. This is essential for FP today. Most promising stuff is "dynamic flippers" at the moment. Get tables that have this inside.

As someone who has done quite a large amount of development with both the FP and VP platforms over the years, the FP physics (even with all the custom XML and BAM related extensions) is so far from ever being remotely close to behaving in a rational and realistic sense, it doesn't matter how good a table looks. There is also the other issue with FP not supporting VPM.

"Dynamic Flippers" is not promising, and is just more duct tape and bailing wire tied to the "built-in" underlying and extremely old Newton Game Dynamics engine (which has some baffling errors in the implementation within FP). I think most of the FP table authors are finally accepting that the platform will never be more than a curiosity, and we are beginning to see conversions of FP tables to VPX format with positive results.

 

[Hinph]

Williams pinball in VR? No. A while back they said VR takes a lot of time and resources for what amounts to an exceedingly small market. Right now they are focusing resources to mobile and a better workflow pipeline for WMS. It’s not that it can’t happen, it’s just way down the priority line.

Rats. I really hope the Oculus Quest ends up being a hit product so there is more incentive for developers to support VR. I feel like it's the best bet for VR so far, being a dedicated, effortless device with decent power. Zen's Williams tables in VR would be something.

 

[Pete]

Im having difficulty playing my atari 2600 because i cant find my damn rf converter and my hdtv doesnt have those two screws in the back. So i need farsight to rerelease video pinball for atari with vr so i can see the real scan lines at 240p. Im gonna submit my request as a glitch because i think its an error it doesnt just do this. Jay Obernolte if your listening KNOW that i am miffed about this big time.

 

[Byte]

This is the Zen Studios section.

Anyway, back on topic, any word out of Zen yet when they are planning to release Vol. 3 now that they have the mobile platforms out "on store shelves"?

 

[jaredmorgs]

This is the Zen Studios section.

Anyway, back on topic, any word out of Zen yet when they are planning to release Vol. 3 now that they have the mobile platforms out "on store shelves"?

Not yet, but soon. We've got an episode ready to fire as soon as we can release it.

 

[Gorgias32]

I really admire you guys being able to keep quiet on this - it must be killing you to know and not be able to tell us.

Also, how about a hint?

 

[shogun00]

I really admire you guys being able to keep quiet on this - it must be killing you to know and not be able to tell us.

Also, how about a hint?

Their NDA probably prevents them from giving out hints as well.

 

[shutyertrap]

Here’s a hint I’ve comfortably given before...it’s NOT a wedge head!

It can be tough sitting on info. Having Jared and a couple other people who have NDAs with us helps in that we can at least geek out with each other. But there’s been more than a few times where I’ve seen comments in the threads and it kills me to not spill the beans. We were sitting on the news of Zen getting the license to WMS long enough that it got real uncomfortable to even do the podcast because we were worried we’d accidentally slip up and reveal something.

 

[yespage]

Here’s a hint I’ve comfortably given before...it’s NOT a wedge head!

It can be tough sitting on info. Having Jared and a couple other people who have NDAs with us helps in that we can at least geek out with each other. But there’s been more than a few times where I’ve seen comments in the threads and it kills me to not spill the beans. We were sitting on the news of Zen getting the license to WMS long enough that it got real uncomfortable to even do the podcast because we were worried we’d accidentally slip up and reveal something.

So what you are saying is we need to get you guys drunk?

 

[Xanija]

So what you are saying is we need to get you guys drunk?

It's always worth trying

 

[wilbers]

..so given that Zen seem to announce a release about 3 weeks before the actual release, and your podcast is on 'standby' its fair to assume (with very high probability) a table pack will be released towards the end of March. Could be Williams pack 3, could be Zen originals; still seems early to be the Indy pack that fingers crossed may be later in the year.

Unless its not a table pack, and its better pincab support with backglass images.

 

[shutyertrap]

There’s 15 more minutes of talk with Mel and Tom that we edited out of the prior podcast specifically for this new one. There’s some interesting nuggets you’ll all enjoy, some of which Jared and I fire up the ol’ speculation machine after.

 

[Pete]

Oh crap thought this was the video pinball for atari 2600 thread what the crap am i doing here. Oh wow if you count the words per sentence on shutyertraps last comment ignoring numbers its 22 and 20. Since V is the 22nd and T is the 20th letters of the alphabet I conclude he is actually telling us in code that Cirqus Voltaire and Theatre of magic are coming out on the 15th of march. I stand by this factual truth 100%.

 

[BostonBuckeye]

I’ve just noticed that there’s a logic behind the releases so far!

If you go back and watch the original Williams announcement video, you’ll see that the instruction manuals stack in the following order. In reverse (top to bottom):

1. Medieval Madness (Vol 1)
2. Fish Tales (Vol 1)
3. Attack from Mars (Vol 2)
4. Black Rose (Vol 2)
5. Theatre of Magic (Vol 3?)
6. Cirqus Voltaire (Vol 3?)
7. Tales of the Arabian Nights (Vol 4?)
8. White Water (Vol 4?)

So logic dictates Vol 3 contains ToM and CV

We pretty much already know what Vol 3 and Vol 4 are going to be per kimkom's posting. I would bet the house on it.

Also, Fungi noted that at one point, he saw "Theatre of Magic" in the Game Center achievements.