Ask HN: Why is there no modern successor to the 3D Pinball games of yesteryear?
I recall games like Full Tilt! Pinball and the 3D pinball game included in Windows were pretty popular and good showcases for the speed and quality of computer graphics back in the 90s. Then it occured to me that modern GPUs like the nVidia 4090 would be incredible for simulating a pinball machine with insane fidelity using RTX ray tracing and the optimized physics simulator (PhysX) they have. You could probably end up with something that truly looks and feels like the real thing. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but after doing a quick search on Steam, I don't see anything like that on the market. Why do you think that is? Would it really be so hard to do? Wouldn't that be popular?
I know I'd love to see it just because it would be such a great showcase for the power of modern machines, especially the integration of super realistic physics. Imagine bumping the machine hard to cheat? Or being able to smash the glass with a hammer and then put objects in the case and see what happens to them while you play? Could also be an amazing physics education thing if you could see real-time free-body diagrams overlaid on the ball that you could freeze in time and study showing all the forces acting on it. You could turn a dial and see what it would be like to play pinball on the moon! I hope someone sees this and makes it!
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but it's getting old but it is out for the quest
https://www.meta.com/experiences/1995306573932043/
like it or not the quest is the mainstream of VR, I kept away from it because I didn't want to log in with a Facebook account but I am likely to get a Quest 3to support 3D software development, stereogram viewing and stuff like that.
Concerning physics, we're using VPX's engine, which is very well tuned to pinball. Not sure if the breaking the glass is going to be a thing, but PR welcome if you think so. ;)
[1] https://github.com/freezy/VisualPinball.Engine [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CfZImFl1ME
https://www.ravarcade.pl/
Fun fact, originally, the resolution of the depth sensor was 640x480 but was nerfed in firmware to 320x240. Why?
The makers of Rock Band wanted to make a Kinect version. But, with a Rock Band mic, bass, two guitars, and keyboard plus Kinect, the Xbox 360’s USB bus couldn’t handle it. So the Kinect got nerfed.
The company behind Rock Band either shut down or went bankrupt before the Kinect went on sale. At that point, way too much of the tooling (not to mention pose estimation modeling) around the Kinect had been built with the 320x240 resolution constraint so it wasn’t feasible to “unlock” the full res.
When the Kinect 2 sdk was windows only it was a huge turd in the punchbowl and a clear sign that microsoft was not serious about making it a real tool to do real work with. I did do one project with the kinect 2 and learned just enough of the sdk to write a shim in c# to run the camera and pipe the data out over the network to a box that was actually doing the rendering.
The kinect 2 also was excessively picky about it's usb3 port, I remember going through about half a dozen usb3 cards until I found one that worked.
We're still doing lots of work on the core parts though, so these things will come later.
A long shot, I'm sure, I just never really see this one get any love anymore. Volley seems pretty similar though, and looks like they're only a year apart from each other.
Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COiudbUYN1k
When authoring a virtual version of these older tables one of the challenges is getting a decent scan of the bare playfield. Fortunately, there are a lot of EM collectors who acquire and restore physical machines and they tend to be quite supportive of virtual preservation efforts - so they can be a great source for playfield scans (since they take it all apart when restoring anyway). Finding a hi-res scan or a potentially willing source for a scan will put you a good ways toward getting your virtual table made.
Saw one guy who made VR version of these and made a physical stand which was just the plunger and buttons for him to hold onto. In VR it looked like he was playing a full thing. Tactically it felt that way too. Almost dumped 3k into that mess when I saw that before I came to my senses.
There are also large collections of them out there you can get. Most of the popular tables are recreated in some way. But in varying conditions of 'done'.
https://virtual-pinball-spreadsheet.web.app/game/x6-6z6GA/
BTW, folks like phreezie that work on the engine and the like are often not the folks that develop the tables. A lot of work goes into each side of it and they are doing it in their free time.
But before we dive into more table builds, we'll be focusing on the engine work.
But at the end of the day, this is a hobby, and Unity is an awesome engine to work with. I'm following Godot more closely than ever, but too much effort to still be able to call it fun would be necessary to port this over.
Even if Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Flight Control, Subway Surfer, Candy Crush, Temple Run, and their thousands of descendants are not anything like actual pinball-based games, I expect that they're occupying much of the mindspace that would be filled by pinball in the market.
Even indie games trying to do pinball-y things are having to build considerably on the formula to make a "big" enough game, eg turning it into a Metroidvania a la Yoku's Island Express.
1 - https://youtu.be/ue-1JoJQaEg?si=hlZxp2yI-BSTYmOY
2 - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/sphereCollision
3 - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fingerPool
For software he mentions both https://store.steampowered.com/app/238260/Pinball_Arcade and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Pinball . They both looked quite good even back in 2016. Not sure how they've aged.
> but I plan to play only fully 3D pinball sims and the 1050 Ti gets excellent reviews for $140, so I went for it
That's $ 450+ for the 4050 Ti now...
Windows Vista and 7 were peak in that regard. Then with Windows 8, no more fun allowed.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/263/epic-pinball/
Maybe for these virtual pinball tables that use a screen instead of an electromechanical table, but with all sorts of stuff to give some tactile feedback and actual mechanical sounds. There are typically accelerometers and tilt sensors in there too, so you can bump the machine and the software simulates the effect on the ball.
PICO-8: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
WASM-4: https://wasm4.org/
I’m not saying the market is zero though, but small enough that even most indie studios wouldn’t see any profit.
I note that Full Tilt! released in what is often referred to as The Dark Ages of Pinball. There was a slump there in the 90s where every manufacturer of pinball tables folded, except for Stern, and they subsisted on making a pretty thin, bog standard sequence of tables. Pinball would resurge in the mid-to-late '00s.
I think the 90s was a moment where there was a group of people who enjoyed pinball, but it was hard to find venues that took care of tables. You certainly weren't getting very cool new tables every year. Full Tilt may have filled that gap.
Nowadays, you can just look up your area on pinballmap.com and find tables near you. That wasn't an option in the 90s. If you didn't know of an arcade with good tables, your only option was digital.
Stern releases a new, awesome, KME-designed table every year or two. Multiple other manufacturers have emerged to answer the increasing demand. A new company just announced a Labyrinth that I am so, so stoked to try.
Personally, I don't much care for digital pinball. The physical nature of the game is core to it. The simulated nudging doesn't do it for me. The consistent kickouts on many virtual pinball tables makes it a bit samey. I think they're great for learning and internalizing the rulesets of classic tables, and certainly there are things that a digital medium can do that the physical medium just can't. That's just my two cents.
stuff like this guy's build https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxilHoceiNo&list=PLrqlHbqP7F...
https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualpinball/
they sell pre builts. I can't attest to the quality. https://www.amazon.com/Multiple-Games-Licensed-Invaders-Blue...
edit: apparently there is kinda like "MAME" for pinball. Its called "Visual Pinball". Its a pinball emulator and people make tables for it. A world I didn't know existed.. "Simulates pinball table physics and renders the table with DirectX or OpenGL"
And its on github.
https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball
A website thats mostly forums.
https://vpuniverse.com/
"VPUniverse is a site dedicated to digital pinball simulations and anything pinball in general. Our primary focus is on Digital Pinball formats including Visual Pinball, Future Pinball, and many more pinball simulators. All content is provided on this site for free to all registered members."
Visual Pinball is the visual rendering and scripting engine that runs on top of PinMAME, which is based on MAME, and dedicated to emulating the ROMs, inputs, lights, etc of real pinball machines. As far as the ROM code knows, it's running on real hardware and connected to physical solenoids, relays, switches and lights. Visual Pinball turns all the outputs into real-time rendered visuals. All the best real pinball machines have been lovingly recreated by the community and there are a growing number of entirely original virtual pinball tables being released which never existed as physical machines. On a graphics card from the last three-ish years or so, VPX can render 120fps 4K HDR and beyond.
It's easy to download everything necessary for free to try it out on any decent PC with just a keyboard or USB game controller, although adding some dedicated pinball controls does elevate the experience to another level. Another good site in addition to the ones you mentioned above is https://www.vpforums.com.
Additional Note: ROM code from real commercial pinball machines falls into the same legal gray area as MAME video game ROMs and thus aren't bundled with the open source engines. However, full ROM sets are downloadable from the same kinds of places (torrents, www.archive.org, community sites, etc.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko
Historically this has been windows only but support for Linux, MacOS, Android in work and shaping up very nicely. https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball/blob/standalone/standal...
Then check out the incredible multitude of tables for it here. Some of these are phenomenal: https://virtual-pinball-spreadsheet.web.app/
And then when you decide you want to build your own table, you go here. But be careful, it is a slippery slope, and before you know it, you're buying a 42" OLED TV for a display and a pretty capable gaming PC to run the show http://mjrnet.org/pinscape/BuildGuideV2/
https://discord.gg/B7pG7pRD
1) PC Pinball games have basically been done to the platonic ideal, unless you're intent on recreating something in like VR which would truly change the experience. The reason PC pinball games emerged early is because the physics of a solid, heavy sphere of uniform density are pretty well known from classical mechanics. The fact that a ball is a sphere means that it can be rendered as a circle, and the fact a pinball machine can be rendered entirely without the need for 3D processing means that you can build a large degree of fidelity into that physical simulation. Adding more 3D gimmicks or raytracing BS does not improve the core pinball experience (and is more likely to detract, truth be told).
2) The market for a "high-fidelity PC pinball" game is not large enough to justify development costs. A 3D game is significantly more complex than a 2D game. A modern AAA game has artists specialized down to making materials that other artists can then put onto geometry. All these people need to eat and pay rent in order for the game to exist, and it's a hard sell to get people to pay $40+ for a pinball game when the platonic ideal has existed from the 90s.
I guess the ultimate step there will be the introduction of this to augmented reality, where you can have a box where the front looks like a pinball machine and it just projects the image over it.
I was impressed enough to set up a virtual pinball table of my own and now that I have extensive experience with both - I like playing them both. Playing a virtual pinball vs a physical pinball is simply a different kind of experience. Neither is a replacement for the other. When played on a high-end, perfectly-tuned table, virtual pinball is like a cross between a pinball game and a video game. It shares similarities with both but is its own distinct thing that's different and (IHMO) quite enjoyable.
I won't be buying that any time soon, but I can absolutely grab a $20 pinball simulator for my $300 VR headset.
There are expo's and stuff, people love this shit. In pinball there is a real strong connection to a physical (either with LCD, or mechanical) machine, it just isn't nearly as good on a computer, phone, tablet or in VR.
lots of indie games today are becoming more arcadey and pinball-like in many ways, if you squint.
in many ways, pinball is the original "roguelite"—I fully expect indie pinball (both in video game form and even in physical form) to take the scene by storm, any day now, as soon as someone makes the Vampire Survivors of pinball games.
It is already surging to the moon. In the last three years prices for good, used pinball machines have roughly doubled and many newly built machines are sold-out and on back-order. They simply can't make them fast enough. These days you're lucky if you can find a new one at only MSRP. My wife fell in love with the new Stern Godzilla pinball and we finally just got it after a year and a half on the waiting list (and it cost >$10k).
I wonder why games like "where is my water" disappeared. It is probably one of the best mobile games.
There are hundreds of VPX format tables available online including original works, replicas of physical tables and replicas of existing digital tables. I've played dozens of hours of Stern's Tron Legacy both on a physical table and in Visual Pinball X, and I prefer VPX over the real thing.
There's also a high quality remake of 3D Space Cadet [2] available. Playing that one in VR feels like stepping into a PC in the 90s.
[1] https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball [2] https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16...