Zen Pinball FX3 Williams Pinball Volume One

[Zaphod77]

Also, more fish tale bugs.

1) G.I. dimming not in yet.
2) slingshots and bumpers still fire even during end of game kickout. they shouldn't fire at all then. (TPA does this too. it ruins gladiators kill pops feature because they still fire even when killed by holding flippers)
3) no carryover between games, even if you play it out. the rom resets after every single game. so light extra ball keeps showing from first fish finder.

 

[Tabe]

Tried the beta. A good effort but a few really nice to haves:

- Lighting is disappointing but it might be due to the room being too light to my tastes.

I would be surprised if they do much to darken or adjust the lighting. The vast, vast majority of their audience is going to want tables that are well-lit and not the "playing in a dark arcade" feel.

 

[Citizen]

I'd be more surprised if they didn't have more lighting options in the full release, or at least add them shortly thereafter.

They're trying to install a completely new fanbase for their game. It wouldn't make sense to ignore the fact that many recreation fans take lighting options seriously. Especially for a company like Zen who have a history of being very responsive to their customers. I have to believe they're aware of something like this. Either way, having the options doesn't hurt the people who choose not to use them. If they want to appease their existing fanbase as well (which they certainly still should), all they have to do is make the default settings well-lit. And then let the rest of us tinker with them.

 

[Trackball]

I'd be more surprised if they didn't have more lighting options in the full release, or at least add them shortly thereafter.

They're trying to install a completely new fanbase for their game. It wouldn't make sense to ignore the fact that many recreation fans take lighting options seriously. Especially for a company like Zen who have a history of being very responsive to their customers. I have to believe they're aware of something like this. Either way, having the options doesn't hurt the people who choose not to use them. If they want to appease their existing fanbase as well (which they certainly still should), all they have to do is make the default settings well-lit. And then let the rest of us tinker with them.

That reminds me of a question that a new customer like me really needs an answer to.

The PC version of Pinball FX2 had a very poorly-worded EULA that resulted in lots of backlash, because it sounded like installing the game gave them carte blanche to data-mine your computer, including various passwords. This resulted in a massive wave of negative reviews on Steam for the game.

Given that Zen Studios is so responsive to customer concerns...have they learned their lesson? Has the EULA for FX3 been cleared of this problem?

This is important to me because I've had my identity stolen before.

 

[mystman12]

Also, more fish tale bugs.

1) G.I. dimming not in yet.

I noticed this as well, but just wasn't sure if Fish Tales had dimming or not so I didn't bring it up. Hope this gets fixed.

 

[The loafer]

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

https://youtu.be/OuHhujozH6Y

 

[jaredmorgs]

I noticed this as well, but just wasn't sure if Fish Tales had dimming or not so I didn't bring it up. Hope this gets fixed.

When you're playing torpedo video mode and you get a direct hit on each of the boats, do you notice that the lights flash whenever you get a direct hit?

I never noticed this on pinball arcade

 

[jaredmorgs]

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

https://youtu.be/OuHhujozH6Y

I had no idea what that setting was for and now I do. Thanks for sharing this.

Chris and I will make mention of this in the podcast this weekend.

 

[The loafer]

I had no idea what that setting was for and now I do. Thanks for sharing this.

Chris and I will make mention of this in the podcast this weekend.

You are welcome, credit goes to another user on another board (apparently persona non-grata with Zen, which boggles the mind, he's one of the great contributors to the virtual pinball scene). Anyway, politics aside, they really need to rename this feature though because how would we know? I just thought it adjusted the overall brightness to everything LOL

It's seriously made me go from "hey, this is fantastic but seriously lacking" to "well, I can't seem to find much wrong with this thing, WOW!" Did you give it a try? It's incredible!


On the nitpick front, it seems having the shadow set to the highest setting causes some slow down, so it needs to be set to medium. I swear I had everything running on max (except for antialiasing which is turned off because I'm running in 4K. At medium everything stays smooth thankfully but I would have though i7 @ 4GHZ and a 980 would have done the job at max but I guess it's true that at 4K that's a lot of pixel to push around.

 

[Zaphod77]

Fish tales is unique in it's ability to gradually dim all incandescent lamps on the field including the G.I. during the bonus countdown. it does this by pulsing at different rates. changing the on and off times in the pulsing pattern to get it to dim. LED mods tend to have issues with this.
while the insert lamps do seem to fade, the gi stays on.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Fish tales is unique in it's ability to gradually dim all incandescent lamps on the field including the G.I. during the bonus countdown. it does this by pulsing at different rates. changing the on and off times in the pulsing pattern to get it to dim. LED mods tend to have issues with this.
while the insert lamps do seem to fade, the gi stays on.

There's so much interesting information coming out of this forum at the moment. So good!

 

[jaredmorgs]

While the folks at Zen will be checking this forum on and off, I would strongly recommend logging these bugs and feedback through that feedback mechanism in the steam game.

There's such a volume of comments in this thread already that some of these really good suggestions and bug Discoveries may get lost in the scroll.

 

[Zaphod77]

actualyl i had it backwards. WPC games can normalyl dim the gg.i, but few do it the way fish tales does. fish tales special trick is to dim the insert lamps too. and it totally confuses non dimmable led upgrades.

yet for some reasons currently fish tales is not dimming the g.i.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

While the folks at Zen will be checking this forum on and off, I would strongly recommend logging these bugs and feedback through that feedback mechanism in the steam game.

There's such a volume of comments in this thread already that some of these really good suggestions and bug Discoveries may get lost in the scroll.

I linked to them the specific post of my feedback while talking to one of the Zen people, so hopefully everything's fine on that front.

 

[Zaphod77]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv0ascvzAr8&feature=youtu.be&t=676 the dimming in action on a real non LED fish tales game.

 

[shogun00]

Fish tales is unique in it's ability to gradually dim all incandescent lamps on the field including the G.I. during the bonus countdown. it does this by pulsing at different rates. changing the on and off times in the pulsing pattern to get it to dim. LED mods tend to have issues with this.
while the insert lamps do seem to fade, the gi stays on.

Actually, Fish Tales isn't a unique case. Williams introduced fading lights (GI in particular) with the system 11 board. High Speed was the first table to offer the feature and IIRC, HS had 12 levels of dimming. The WPC board made the feature much more noticeable with over 24 levels of dimming and it increased even further with the WPC95 board.

I did some research on this after acquiring Rollergames. FWIW, if you are using LED mods, there is a special board mod you can buy that will properly allow the LEDS to dim properly.

 

[Palmer Eldritch]

I would be surprised if they do much to darken or adjust the lighting. The vast, vast majority of their audience is going to want tables that are well-lit and not the "playing in a dark arcade" feel.

If farsight was able to have that as an option than surely Zen studios is equally capable.

edit: didn't see about the option above.. nice

 

[SilverBalls]

You are welcome, credit goes to another user on another board (apparently persona non-grata with Zen, which boggles the mind, he's one of the great contributors to the virtual pinball scene). Anyway, politics aside, they really need to rename this feature though because how would we know? I just thought it adjusted the overall brightness to everything LOL

It's seriously made me go from "hey, this is fantastic but seriously lacking" to "well, I can't seem to find much wrong with this thing, WOW!" Did you give it a try? It's incredible!


On the nitpick front, it seems having the shadow set to the highest setting causes some slow down, so it needs to be set to medium. I swear I had everything running on max (except for antialiasing which is turned off because I'm running in 4K. At medium everything stays smooth thankfully but I would have though i7 @ 4GHZ and a 980 would have done the job at max but I guess it's true that at 4K that's a lot of pixel to push around.

That's more like! Thanks for pointing that out loafer. You are right a rename is in order .

 

[SilverBalls]

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.

 

[Jeff Strong]

You are welcome, credit goes to another user on another board (apparently persona non-grata with Zen, which boggles the mind, he's one of the great contributors to the virtual pinball scene). Anyway, politics aside, they really need to rename this feature though because how would we know? I just thought it adjusted the overall brightness to everything LOL

It's seriously made me go from "hey, this is fantastic but seriously lacking" to "well, I can't seem to find much wrong with this thing, WOW!" Did you give it a try? It's incredible!


On the nitpick front, it seems having the shadow set to the highest setting causes some slow down, so it needs to be set to medium. I swear I had everything running on max (except for antialiasing which is turned off because I'm running in 4K. At medium everything stays smooth thankfully but I would have though i7 @ 4GHZ and a 980 would have done the job at max but I guess it's true that at 4K that's a lot of pixel to push around.

Very cool indeed. It's interesting that it even effects the menu lighting too so it does seem like a simple gamma/brightness settings on the UI end, but once you get in game....WOW!