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Virtual pin options in the UK

Action Andy said:
this is link once you're ready. Involves updating future pinball but isn't too hard. Everything is explained in the many included guides Terry has included.
vpuniverse.com

Masters of the Universe - Collector's Edition (PinEvent V2, FizX 3.3)

Masters of the Universe - Collector's Edition (PinEvent V2 - FizX 3.3) Created by TerryRed Version 1.3 (Jan 2025) Masters of the Universe - Collector's Edition" has been a passion project of mine for a good 18 months. I started with Rom's classic table from 2013, and then proceeded to do a comple...
vpuniverse.com vpuniverse.com

if you like star wars as shown by your cabinet gfx his star wars table is also amazing
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Ace, I do like Star Wars which is very fortunate considering the cabinet art as I didnt get to choose that.

I asked the guy who sold it to me what his favourite table was and he said this (galactic assault), definitely going to give it a spin tomorrow. This table in particular took an age to load when he demoed it!
 
ballsports said:
Ace, I do like Star Wars which is very fortunate considering the cabinet art as I didnt get to choose that.

I asked the guy who sold it to me what his favourite table was and he said this (galactic assault), definitely going to give it a spin tomorrow. This table in particular took an age to load when he demoed it!
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Out of interest why did he sell it?
Presume the interest just wore after a year.
I've only really been playing stranger things and attack from mars. I haven't played much pinball before so just looking to master my favourite tables, ball control accuracy etc first
 
That galactic assault table is one of the longest to load, along with MOTU, but they're massively complex tables so is understandable. Future Pinball is an older 32bit program and originally only allowed 2 GB of ram. More recent updates allow up to 4GB memory so decreases loading times which helps. You might have this memory patch though as was released 2022/23, but if not is included in the most recent update.

An update to the colour dmd for Attack from Mars was released today Ant, one of the best tables regardless: https://vpuniverse.com/files/file/19896-attack-from-mars-serum-colorization/page/6/?tab=comments
 
antlet2 said:
Out of interest why did he sell it?
Presume the interest just wore after a year.
I've only really been playing stranger things and attack from mars. I haven't played much pinball before so just looking to master my favourite tables, ball control accuracy etc first
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He said he moved house and needed funds.

So ive got one issue my audio crackles at higher volumes, if i put my ear up to the speakers theres always some level of noise but its not audible from a distance.

I managed to reduce it by messing with the amp a bit and moving the speaker wires in the backbox.

Hoping its not a speaker wire because the wiring is very complex in this.
 
Action Andy said:
My audio cable can crackle at certain positions, is annoying and takes a fine touch to set it properly. If you're having distortion it may be certain table have their specific rom volume levels too high. Make sure you don't have them set above 28. https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=tutorials&cat=9
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Thanks i think i might have just resolved it, i moved it earlier and the power cable got taut and must have unseated. I reseated it properly and havent noticed it since.

Maybe I messed up the grounding.

My partner is loving it. This thing just overwhelms your senses and shes always loved arcades and flashing lights. Shes scrolling through finding the naffest games to play
 
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sounds like the problem I have, literally just think the audio cables and connections they use are a bit dodgy. Sometimes when you move the cabinet it buzzes a bit until you give the cable a little jiggle.
 
Went to set up a bluetooth keyboard and mouse was surprised this motherboard had no bluetooth or wifi.

MSI B550 Gen 3.

Did you guys add one via PCIe or a dongle or do you just use it wired or do the newer ones have it built in?
 
yeah is bare basics.
I run a USB extension cable out the back of one of the air vents on the rear of the Cabinet. Into that I have a 4 way USB splitter hub which I velcro underneath the cab.
Into that I have a Bluetooth dongle for the keyboard track pad I have. For internet I use a wifi dongle but I don't have it plugged in all the time. Suppose you could go PCIe if you have space on your board but just make sure you have the network disconnected and only turn it on when you need it after exiting steam. I like having access to a USB port for backups without having to go into the back of the cab each time.

Another heads up, https://vpuniverse.com/ has download restrictions (I think its 15 downloads per day) but when/if you ever decide to start wanting to get involved a yearly $10 donation allows up to 150 downloads per day with much shorter waiting times.
 
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Ah interesting I was wondering whose account FX was attached to for the games to be there didnt realise it was a cracked version.

Ordered a PCI wifi bluetooth card

You could use windows firewall to block steam from internet
 
The VPW tables are something else, they look real.

Really enjoying World Cup Soccer. Ive noticed though a lot of my tables and images are too washed out, when illumination turns on in the table, you can see it in Iron Maiden when I start a game here, most of the previews suffer from it.

i expect its just some misconfiguration and i wont be able to play around until Friday when my wireless card arrives, but did anyone else have the same issue?
 

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You can adjust the lighting etc for each table, but I try not to get too deep. Basic lighting adjustments are easy enough by opening the table in VPX and pressing F6 but options are limited. There might be a global PC monitor setting you might want to adjust, you sound pretty confident with PCs.
There is a lot of variety in quality in each table as they're all labours of love. The VPWs are top tier quality, others are either "lesser" quality without downplaying the effort put in by a lot of talented people to make them in the first place, but also you may be playing on versions that are a couple of years old compared to more recent versions.

The previews in the pinup popper selector are usually pretty off as pinballia has loaded them through the media centre and there're only so many available. I record them in for each of my screens for more accurate representation of the tables I'm loading up but this is time consuming so wouldn't recommend it.
 
Yeah - they do used cracked pinball fx3 in their cabinets. If Microsoft found out they would have a hell of a fine as they have been doing this for some time. I wonder if the windows is legit or a cracked serial?

Pinballia are treading on thin ice. In the past I have set up pinball fx3 for people so when they log into their accounts (and if they own the tables) they will be playable.

You would expect the price they charge the tables will be licensed.

The whole of the virtual pinball world is pure theft of IP and copyrighted material. Then the table authors get hissy when tables are sold on Vpins. It is a strange community. For instance most authors charge for pin2dmd colour files for real pinballs, and give them away to the vp community. Surely it would be better practice to charge everyone say $2 a file.
 
So in terms of washed out, i managed to find a working trackpad and play with Nvidia control settings.

I used my phone and images in vpuniverse as reference for tables and tuned it until they matched the preview screens, lowered gamma, increased contrast.

But then I realised the biggest issue is that the screen is VA and its not on a big enough tilt, so Ive lowered the front down (the guy who sold it to me was a very tall fella, and im not short), waiting on some lift jacks before i raise the back and put it at a steeper angle to reduce the crushing from the oblique viewing angle.

Already looks a lot better.
 
ballsports said:
He said he moved house and needed funds.

So ive got one issue my audio crackles at higher volumes, if i put my ear up to the speakers theres always some level of noise but its not audible from a distance.

I managed to reduce it by messing with the amp a bit and moving the speaker wires in the backbox.

Hoping its not a speaker wire because the wiring is very complex in this.
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I had that issue and was caused by three things.
1.) I was getting vibration from the speakers on games like stranger things. The intro is crazy boomy and it was only that part of the song. I took the speaners out and put a putty like bluetac (made from plastic for car door surrounds) to isolate the speakers from the cabinet. This fixed that.

2.) I was getting a bit of crackle or one of the speakers fading in and out. Found the audio cable had very poor connection and would instantly come off the rca on the amp. I replaced that cable with a new one, fixed that issue.

3.) Some table volumes were set to max. I.e attack from mars was set to 32 and caused crackle. I pressed end (or whatever open door is in vpx) and reduced it to 27 and that fixed that.

I get micro stutter ball lag, very sporadically i.e like for 0.1- 0.5 sec 3x times over playing it for 30 minutes. It's livable but would like to find a fix one day to make it perfect.
It usually happens few minutes in to playing and much rarer after a while. Feels like a caching issue (i.e cache not built) doesn't happen due to load even with crazy multiballs etc
 
antlet2 said:
I had that issue and was caused by three things.
1.) I was getting vibration from the speakers on games like stranger things. The intro is crazy boomy and it was only that part of the song. I took the speaners out and put a putty like bluetac (made from plastic for car door surrounds) to isolate the speakers from the cabinet. This fixed that.

2.) I was getting a bit of crackle or one of the speakers fading in and out. Found the audio cable had very poor connection and would instantly come off the rca on the amp. I replaced that cable with a new one, fixed that issue.

3.) Some table volumes were set to max. I.e attack from mars was set to 32 and caused crackle. I pressed end (or whatever open door is in vpx) and reduced it to 27 and that fixed that.

I get micro stutter ball lag, very sporadically i.e like for 0.1- 0.5 sec 3x times over playing it for 30 minutes. It's livable but would like to find a fix one day to make it perfect.
It usually happens few minutes in to playing and much rarer after a while. Feels like a caching issue (i.e cache not built) doesn't happen due to load even with crazy multiballs etc
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Thanks dude, my audio issues went away completely for now just by properly seating the power cable not heard any crackle since, I'd messed up the grounding for sure. The audio placement is so damn good too, the rail grinding etc all sounds so real.

I have seen some lag now, some tables are laggy in general, e.g., Data East Jurassic Park, although I've noticed a lot of the tables aren't the best versions (non-VPW when VPW exists) so I'll get to replacing those.
 
Ive noticed my speaker leds arent firing correctly does anyone have files from Pinballia which show how they should be hooked up?

I notice there is an empty male connector on the right speaker and they appear to be daisychained.

I can see theyre configured in DOF but theyre always either just putting out random colors or not showing when I expect them to (never in the menu or before starting a game)
 

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Just spent 5 hours standing infront of it sweating and swearing upgrading everything so it can run 32bit and 64bit.

Was on such an old version of pinup baller installer that the incremental upgrade file links on the pinup site were all dead and they make you do it incrementally.

Also learned that Windows inbuilt backup is less than useless so that was fun (use mac and linux normally)

Anyway everything updated and running dual 32 bit and 64bit VPX 10.8/DOF and all my peripherals still working thankfully.

Also installed Vpin Studio so I can manage it all remotely from the comfort of my mac.
 
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Just ordered a 4080 MSI SUPRIM X to go in this.

Yes I know the 50x are coming out next week but the 5080 will start at £1180 and isnt that much better (no DLSS for visual pinball). The 5070 ti may match it for about what I paid (we will see) but I think theyll be hard to get for a while.

On some tables I was getting 50-60 fps with max settings and I decided I wanted 120 fps regardless of settings.

Ive also updated the PSU because the one that came in it was really cheap and I dont trust it. 1200w overkill but they arent that expensive considered.
 
Action Andy said:
is that just for future pinball? I have a feeling it looks a bit beyond where I'm at with the software side at the moment!
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Nope thats VPX in the video, thats the VPW twilight zone table.

You have to configure BAM inside future pinball, but then VPX GL can use the BAM config for headtracking.
 
Ok so just updated to Windows 11, everything broke. Pinup wouldn't load. My C drive was flagged as dirty and couldn't be repaired.

Booted into safe mode, repaired the drive.
All tables running at 10-20 FPS, disaster.
Clean installed GPU drivers, now my displays got reordered, fixed that but now I had no rom sounds, found a setting that put them back ("enable audio enhancement" in windows sound panel) but it took away table sounds. Couldn't have both. Restarted, display order fixed, sounds back, everything worker.

Aaaand everything is running waaay faster than before. Tables with pup + popper that sat at 60-80 FPS before, now 120 FPS. Colors are better on the monitor too (windows 11 has improved HDR support).

It also fixed lagging on my pup videos and DMD that was happening (I believe this is an issue that was fixed in latest Windows 11 but still an issue in Windows 10 where different monitors at different refresh rates wreak havoc).

So happy and I haven't even installed the 4080 yet, everything is running like butter now regardless, the ball is moving smoother than I've ever seen it (I'm seeing 80 FPS 1% lows so no stuttering).

I've got one solenoid out and my bass shaker isn't working (my amp is not showing bass signal going to it) but those are problems for another day (they existed before I updated).
 
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4080 installed, had to raise the height of the crossbeam. I was lazy and did it without removing the screen.

Removing, drilling, levelling and rescrewing through the hole in the back was fun 😂
 

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Hi All. 1st day here :)

Im on the lookout for a new custom Virtual Pinball machine and came across

32″ FULL 4K 3 SCREEN VIRTUAL PINBALL MACHINE​

£3,499.00

& Free Delivery

This is from Pinballia...... anyone got one of these / had one?

Thanks

Dave
 
SmoothStud said:
Hi All. 1st day here :)

Im on the lookout for a new custom Virtual Pinball machine and came across

32″ FULL 4K 3 SCREEN VIRTUAL PINBALL MACHINE​

£3,499.00

& Free Delivery

This is from Pinballia...... anyone got one of these / had one?

Thanks

Dave
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Email the manufacturer and ask him what's the average frame rate he gets playing VPW Metallica.
 
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thejefu said:
Craftsman ship looks good and the machine/specs look decent (as per their website). But for fear of sounding like a broken record (been saying this for years), the price of running 4K at high refresh rates is still madness. A vpin isn't a cinema screen, it doesn't benefit from a super high resolution given the nature of pinball and how your eyes perceive the play area during a game of pinball. The number one most important factor in reproducing a real pinball effect is a ridiculously high frame rate; your eyes can't perceive all the information of a 160+ frame rate, but what it can perceive is whether the ball looks like a real ball. What dictates whether it looks real or not is solely how many frames it generates over distance when played at high speed/how responsive it is to the quick changes in environmental light. I'd stress you try the difference on a home computer to see what I mean.

To get 160+ FPS you need to be at 2K, and to be at 160+ FPS in 2K you don't need a super computer, just a very good one. If you have the money to get 160+FPS in 4K then more power to you, but it strikes me as an extraordinary amout of money to achieve it. If I was in the market for a VPin I'd contact the manufacturer to take that screen down to 2K, go down 2 generations of graphics card and save myself atleast a grand for a much more realistic pinball experience.

Take this with a pinch of salt because I'm in the minority, but every time I see a 2 grand + PC rig running a huge 4K screen and the ball goes missing the second you plunge it - I despair. I have a small setup for my kids running 200+ FPS which cost me less than a grand and it plays more realistically than those machines.
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Thank you for this. I will have a look around and see what else i can see. I am just worried that i buy a VP and the ball lags so much its unplayable.
Appreciate you taking the time to reply.
 
SmoothStud said:
Thank you for this. I will have a look around and see what else i can see. I am just worried that i buy a VP and the ball lags so much its unplayable.
Appreciate you taking the time to reply.
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Hah I just edited out my message since I said this on page 2.

But yeah, find out what the FPS being offered is. Don't get me wrong, a super gaming rig at 4K won't run 'slow' or be laggy like an Amiga game, but it might look like virtual pinball as shown on Youtube which is capped at 60fps. Just play a game at 160-200 FPS in 1080p/2k before you make a decision because the difference in cost could be asmuch as being able to buy a Firepower.
 
If you read back through this thread you can see that a few of us are happily using Pinballia cabs. I'm on a HD 3 screen 32" and am happy with it, a couple of others are running full sized 4k. The cabs work well but to get the most out of them it helps to get familiar with the software to be able to update it, and update the tables to the latest versions. I also ask them to upgrade your hardrive to at least 1 TB. Pinballia tend to clutter their cabs with a load of older tables but you should think of it as you're not paying for the software, you're paying for the cab. The software is all community free software. In terms of the cab specs you can look to update the PC if you're more confident than me with that sort of thing like ballsports, or just have the table set up as it comes and you'll be happy.

I'm not really a video gamer, so I'm happy with my 60HRZ HD machine. I'd prefer 120HRZ over 4K but I also don't have any lag with mine so it seems smooth enough to me. There are literally 1000s of tables available but I've got just over 200 on my machine at the moment all playing very well and I'd say my wife and I only really play around 30 of them regularly. Higher quality with less table options is what's important.
 
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