Zen Pinball FX3 Williams Pinball Volume One

[Jeff Strong]

Posting here as well in case some of you don't visit the Podcast thread.


Spacies Arcade Youtube channel uploaded an excellent and very constructive video on the Pinball FX3 Williams release. Hopefully Zen will take a look at it as it should be helpful for them.

Thanks for sharing. Hadn't seen his stuff before, and he seems like a great guy.

 

[Nomorestalker]

Posting here as well in case some of you don't visit the Podcast thread.


Spacies Arcade Youtube channel uploaded an excellent and very constructive video on the Pinball FX3 Williams release. Hopefully Zen will take a look at it as it should be helpful for them.

100% Anybody from Zen lurking watch Spacies video. He nails what needs to happen with the flippers.

 

[thefly0810]

Posting here as well in case some of you don't visit the Podcast thread.


Spacies Arcade Youtube channel uploaded an excellent and very constructive video on the Pinball FX3 Williams release. Hopefully Zen will take a look at it as it should be helpful for them.

Thanks for sharing SilverBalls. I love the breakdown and comparisons between Zen, TPA and VP, as well as the short demonstration of ball and flipper physics on the real Firepower. You can really see how beautiful of a job Zen did in recreating these tables in this video. I tweeted a link to this video to Zen on their Twitter Page.

 

[Jeff Strong]

100% Anybody from Zen lurking watch Spacies video. He nails what needs to happen with the flippers.

He brings up another good point around the 15:10 mark about the predictability of the ball launcher. There needs to be a bit more randomness/variability there.

 

[Nomorestalker]

He brings up another good point around the 15:10 mark about the predictability of the ball launcher. There needs to be a bit more randomness/variability there.

Agreed. I have no doubt they will take this feedback and put out the best possible product. I just wish they'd let me buy the tables in the beta. 1:30 on Medieval Madness should be considered torture.

 

[thefly0810]

Hopefully Zen will take a look at it as it should be helpful for them.
]

Zen wrote me back “Loving it! Very good points in there as well.” And they retweeted the link to the video on their Pinball FX page

 

[wolfson]

yep I watched Spacies this morning , and I watched Chriss and Jarred last night , plus I played the public beta this morning . I hooked up my PC to my TV , boy did it feel great !!! and for those who love there visuals , bloody beautiful !!!

 

[Rafie]

I never thought I would see the day that the TPA community would be praising Zen on something. They really must have impressed the lot of you to praise like this.

I for one am excited. I've always been a fan of Zen and THEIR approach to digital pinball. Of course I apprecitated FS's more authentic style as well. This is good news. I have every single TPA table to date on PS4...and I also have every single Zen table to date. I wasn't excited for Zen's tables as of late, but I am now with this announcement. I will be repurchasing every William's/Bally's table on Zen. This is great for digital pinball.

 

[darwould]

Great Spacies video! Thanks for the link.

I play FX3/ TPA exclusively in my cabinet which has a nudge sensor. Once I played the FX3 Beta I was both elated and saddened at the same time this is simply a game changer for digital pinball and the sad part is when I go back to playing TPA the difference is so apparent. Looking forward to the amazing things Zen will do for this hobby.

So my "must haves" with cabinet implementations are: 1) realistic ball physics (Zen has this nailed with the Beta IMO, 2) proper aspect ratio for the tabes (Zen has always nailed this with their cam modes (Arcooda - not so much) and 3) realistic nudging. Nudging is where there is room for improvement here. I still think TPA has the edge on nudging at least as far as it feels in my cabinet. We really need some sensitivity adjustment in app for those of us who play in a cabinet (I can't quite get there with calibrations of the sensor alone). Also, I think it would be good to realize that when cabinet mode is enabled, the nudge should affect the ball "without" the table moving (or moving less). I realize not everyone has a nudge sensor so maybe this should be an option, but in cabinet mode, the physical display already moves with the nudge action and seeing the table move more (while not a real problem) does take away from the realism. I would love to have a mode where I could disable the table movement on the display but have the ball react to the nudge (the physical display in my cabinet will move). I just wanted to put this out there and I think this would go a long way to improving the realism for us cabinet players (though who knows, maybe it will not feel right). What do you think? I don't have much experience with VP - is this possible there? If so, how does it feel?

 

[Nomorestalker]

Great Spacies video! Thanks for the link.

I play FX3/ TPA exclusively in my cabinet which has a nudge sensor. Once I played the FX3 Beta I was both elated and saddened at the same time this is simply a game changer for digital pinball and the sad part is when I go back to playing TPA the difference is so apparent. Looking forward to the amazing things Zen will do for this hobby.

So my "must haves" with cabinet implementations are: 1) realistic ball physics (Zen has this nailed with the Beta IMO, 2) proper aspect ratio for the tabes (Zen has always nailed this with their cam modes (Arcooda - not so much) and 3) realistic nudging. Nudging is where there is room for improvement here. I still think TPA has the edge on nudging at least as far as it feels in my cabinet. We really need some sensitivity adjustment in app for those of us who play in a cabinet (I can't quite get there with calibrations of the sensor alone). Also, I think it would be good to realize that when cabinet mode is enabled, the nudge should affect the ball "without" the table moving (or moving less). I realize not everyone has a nudge sensor so maybe this should be an option, but in cabinet mode, the physical display already moves with the nudge action and seeing the table move more (while not a real problem) does take away from the realism. I would love to have a mode where I could disable the table movement on the display but have the ball react to the nudge (the physical display in my cabinet will move). I just wanted to put this out there and I think this would go a long way to improving the realism for us cabinet players (though who knows, maybe it will not feel right). What do you think? I don't have much experience with VP - is this possible there? If so, how does it feel?

They could solve a lot of this with a similar implementation of the free camera mod.

Out of a cab solution I basically want VPX with a budget.

 

[Kolchak357]

I never thought I would see the day that the TPA community would be praising Zen on something. They really must have impressed the lot of you to praise like this.

For me Zen always made very good pins. But they rarely made any pins I actually wanted to play. Hope that makes sense. This changes that completely.

 

[shutyertrap]

For me Zen always made very good pins. But they rarely made any pins I actually wanted to play. Hope that makes sense. This changes that completely.

Ditto, but the release of FX3 last September changed all that for me. It simply came down to the create your own tournaments tab. Having competition gave me a connection to the tables, one that then lingered. All the pack releases since Aliens have also been top notch. I think a lot of people who dismissed Zen years ago are going to enjoy the 'platform' these WMS tables are going to join, and by default maybe start enjoying some of the Zen originals too.

 

[Zaphod77]

I disagree about the ball launcher. it should be that predictable, to make sure that the physics allow for fastcasting off the plunge.

it's the OTHER rebounds that should be less predictable.

 

[Tann]

Concerning the room lighting, apparently that's what gamma correction is for!

https://youtu.be/OuHhujozH6Y

This is a general setting, and not a "night mode" setting.

The Gamma Correction is a non-linear setting (unlike luminosity or contrast), to set how the luminance signal is rendered on the screen (for the human eye, it means more or less luminosity).

On the video, we can see that tweaking the gamma correction in PFX options, makes the image look "darker", but the lighting doesn't change in-game (bulbs brightness is the same, same for the light reflections).

The gamma setting is often available in video games (and often wrongly named "Brightness"), because some TVs don't propose this setting, or simply that users are not aware it is possible to have deeper blacks/colors on a LCD or LED screen, by increasing a bit the gamma correction (1 or 2 step, not more), but at the cost of losing a little amount of details.

Example (source):

The “brightness” adjustment provided by the developers will leave your game with washed out shadows and colors in many cases. This is actually not a brightness setting, it‘s a gamma setting, and should be set far lower than the developer recommendation for most users in most viewing environments. Many players have opted to use something like SweetFX to fix this problem, but the best first fix is to simply adjust your gamma lower. If that does not fix enough of the washed out or bleached look, then use SweetFX. Here is a handy guide on the optimum setting. If you find this leaves dark areas a bit too dark to see things that you need to see—like when in a dank, dark dungeon—nudge it up only barely until you can make out shapes. If you like it more creepy like me, leave it dark.

In the same idea, it's like set a console to full-range RGB, when the TV does not support full-range RGB (limited range only). The blacks will be crushed, and whites possibly burnt. Tweaking precisely the gamma allows to prevent that (but not totally).

 

[Kolchak357]

Ditto, but the release of FX3 last September changed all that for me. It simply came down to the create your own tournaments tab. Having competition gave me a connection to the tables, one that then lingered. All the pack releases since Aliens have also been top notch. I think a lot of people who dismissed Zen years ago are going to enjoy the 'platform' these WMS tables are going to join, and by default maybe start enjoying some of the Zen originals too.

I can understand that. I don't have FX3. Probably would have made me play more too.

 

[lettuce]

So what did Farsight actually do to piss Williams off so much then!!???........as we now know they didnt want to get out of leasing out their licences to 3rd parties so FS must have pissed them off pretty bad!!?

 

[Jeff Strong]

So what did Farsight actually do to piss Williams off so much then!!???........as we now know they didnt want to get out of leasing out their licences to 3rd parties so FS must have pissed them off pretty bad!!?

Who knows what happened, but maybe they just wanted to go with Zen instead or maybe Zen was simply willing to pay more. Anyways, we do have other threads for such speculation. We should probably keep this focused on the new demo.

 

[shutyertrap]

So what did Farsight actually do to piss Williams off so much then!!???........as we now know they didnt want to get out of leasing out their licences to 3rd parties so FS must have pissed them off pretty bad!!?

Listen to our next podcast. I am going to go into everything I believe happened.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Listen to our next podcast. I am going to go into everything I believe happened.

Your one-stop-shop for all things speculation!

 

[Dok5555555]

Anyone else having problems to get the Williams tables to load? I open them and the loading screen is about to end and start the table when the game just crashes and takes me back to my steam library. Tried Sorcerer's Lair and it worked fine, just seems to be the Williams tables, which is annoying.