1002 replies to this topic

[Arcade4]

If anyone is interested - here is the new physics version of White Water:

 

https://www.dropbox....New Physics.rar

 

I also improved the graphics a lot (cleared all plastics, reworked the playfield, a lot of color corrections, some small changes in the GI).

 

I only can not shoot into the whirl pool. There is some problem I can not solve. Any ideas?

And I can not solve the problem with the distorted texture on the insanity falls ramp - so if anybody could help...

 

One thing to the new physics: I can not fully nail it down but somehow I'm missing the raw power of the flippers.

Awesome. Thanks clarkkent.  This is just what I have been waiting for. It will be nice to try out a real table.

[Swisslizard]

Just tried the Whitewater table.

 

This is phantastic!

 

With the new physics it feels now much closer to a real pinball machine. Thanks for doing this mukuste!

 

Just as a sidenote: I also cant shoot the whirlpool.

[mukuste]

I've had a look at the two problematic shots: the right ramp on AFM and the whirlpool shot on WW.

 

In my opinion, these are simply places where the table authors will have to update the geometry. For instance, if you compare the AFM ramp to photos of the real thing, there is definitely a difference: the real one looks more rounded at the top while the VP one is quite "pointy". Or it might be that the ramps are too high, but it felt to me that the ball traveled up the ramp just fine but then got rejected by the shape of the U-turn. The whirlpool ramp probably has a similar problem, it's also quite a sharp turn. In the worst case one might have to lower the friction on those ramps (which you can't do just yet, though).

[mukuste]

If anyone is interested - here is the new physics version of White Water:

 

https://www.dropbox....New Physics.rar

 

I also improved the graphics a lot (cleared all plastics, reworked the playfield, a lot of color corrections, some small changes in the GI).

 

I only can not shoot into the whirl pool. There is some problem I can not solve. Any ideas?

And I can not solve the problem with the distorted texture on the insanity falls ramp - so if anybody could help...

 

One thing to the new physics: I can not fully nail it down but somehow I'm missing the raw power of the flippers.

 

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "raw power", but this might be a good time to explain the working of the new flipper parameters.

 

The one still called "Speed" actually has nothing to do with speed, I just didn't relabel it yet -- it's the mass of the flipper (where 1 corresponds to standard ball mass, 80g). The heavier you make the flipper, the less the movement of the flipper will be inhibited by colliding with the ball. On the other hand, if you make it very light, the mass of the ball will slow the flipper down significantly. From the Judge Dredd video and the "painful" calculation I linked above, I estimated that 1.25 (slightly heavier than a ball) is a reasonable value for this.

 

"Strength" is much more straightforward: it's just the force (actually, torque) with which the solenoid accelerates the flipper. The higher, the faster it will move. But be aware that this is directly linked to flipper mass: if the flipper is twice as heavy, it also needs twice the force to move it at the same speed.

 

The force of the return spring which pulls the flipper back down is currently fixed at 1/10th of the solenoid force, but in the future you'll be able to tune this to get slower/faster returns. Again, 1/10th is a value which I estimated from slow motion videos.

 

"Elasticity" is well known from previous versions, it's basically the bounciness, but there's a twist: from checking several scientific papers, I found out that real rubber is less bouncy when it is hit at a higher velocity. So I introduced a term which makes the elasticity lower if the collision with the ball happens at a higher speed. The exact amount of this falloff will be configurable in the future. I want to introduce this elasticity model to all rubber objects in the future, it allows the proper bounciness at low speeds without making the ball go completely crazy if it hits at high speed. This falloff is the reason you should set the flipper elasticity higher now, I found 0.8-0.9 to work well.

 

There are some more parameters, like how much the flipper rebounds off its stoppers, which will also be exposed in future versions. Friction is an important one, it's responsible for the better aiming and the fact that we don't need oblique correction anymore. It's fixed at 0.8 currently.

 

----

 

So, if you want a very powerful "brick wall" flipper, set the mass high, but scale the strength up by the same amount. I don't think it's very realistic to set the mass very high, though, based on the videos I watched. The ball does have a significant effect on flipper speed in real life.

Edited by mukuste, 11 April 2014 - 08:00 PM.

[naboodiver]

 

Download a test build of the physics mod and the accompanying default table below.

 

Press F11 to get a visualization of ball spin.

 

Old VP tables will not work with this version unmodified!

 

 

Crash course to adjusting physics parameters for this version:

1. Set your Gravity to 1, and keep it there.
2. Make sure the table slope is correctly set (6-6.5 on most modern tables)
3. Select the flippers and adjust the first two physics parameters: Speed (this is actually flipper mass) should be around 1-2, and Strength should be somewhere from 1000-3000. I like 1.25 and 1500 as starting values for experimentation. You'll likely also want to bump up the Elasticity to 0.8-0.9. The other parameters do nothing, ignore them.
4. Due to the extra energy needed to get the ball rolling, plungers, slingshots, bumpers, etc., typically all need to have their force upped by 20-40%.
5. Tables which use BMPR or other physics scripts like the light tap script probably won't give very good results.

 

 

Sorry for the dope of a question but what exactly does the VP_physmode.exe do when executed?    Does it update VPinball.exe or is it a process that runs in the background or does it change the table script and have to be done for each table or what?    Does it need to run during startup?   Inquirying minds want to know.   LOL

[mukuste]

Just run it and you'll see It's just a special build of VP which has the magic physics sauce inside. It doesn't do anything to your old VP installation.

[slashbot]

Can u please compilte another version of the Physicsmod with a new registery location so i can tune my nudge settings for the new Physicsmod and not always have to change them again.

Thnx alot

[teppotee]

Had some time to play around with this and I must say this is a major improvement. And with some future tweaks I'm sure it has huge potential to be even better!

 

The ball spin feels very natural and the mass and feel of the ball is hugely improved. Although I did have some problems getting all shots lined up in AFM for example. I can easily make the center shots and the wide shots but hitting the ramp angles seems a bit problematic. Probably just couldn't dial in correct values yet.

 

Which brings me to my next question: Does VP's export and import physics settings have all required parameters included to make a table playable with the "new physics version"? That would be a very simple way to share physics "mod" without doing official releases or mod's before the final version is out. People could just list a tablename -> and attach the exported settings for that version to be used with physics.mod exe. I think this should cover the basic physics but not slingshots and bumpers... maybe those could be added still to the export/import values? 

 

The other problem is that (like already mentioned) that once you start to enjoy the new enhanced physics... there is no way going back to the vanilla VP physics I have zero interested to do any work on VP until I can make it with the new physics because I don't want to spend time setting up BMPR lite and flipper tap codes etc. tweaks since all those will be obsolete with this version. So I hope you still plan to do the "unofficial VP9 build with the new physics" for us who can't wait for VP10 and are a bit more adventurous and like to tweak the tables for our personal use

 

Thanks for all your work!

[mukuste]

slashbot: I think I'll rather try to fix the nudging first, there's probably something off there. Keyboard nudging seems to be the same, so I'll have to look into analog nudging.

 

teppotee: I wrote a bit about the AFM ramp above, I think it's a geometry problem. Another thing I haven't mentioned yet: are the flipper start and end angles on VP tables generally true to the real thing? I can see this being quite important to aiming, too. I read that at least on some tables those were tweaked to work better with the old physics.

 

The physics export will correctly save the three flipper parameters I described, but as I mentioned there are more to be exposed to the GUI in the future. Bumpers, slingshots etc would be too messy since you can have arbitrarily many of those with different settings on a table, so there's no way to store those in a generic physics export file. Also, some tables will need geometry tweaks, so this wouldn't be enough in many cases anyway.

[teppotee]

OK. Thanks for the comments. I was actually referring to shot angles and not the ramp geometry but anyway... now that I got the flippers configured better -> I noticed the ramp geometry problem too

 

Been playing with it for an about an hour and can't get the it to work... I have made it wider, and less sharp turn, removed the invisible top ramp etc. but still only about 1/10 shots get through. I will keep looking and let you know if I come up with a solution. Next I will just copy that ramp to an empty table and see how it behaves. At the moment it seems that it depends a LOT about the angle of hit. If the ball hits the ramp in a wrong angle the ball bounces from one ramp side wall to another and loses momentum even before the curve. 

[mukuste]

It may be that friction is too high on the ramp walls. Unfortunately this is one of those settings which you can't tweak yet through the GUI.

[teppotee]

I created a small test table to try to fix the ramp curve.

 

The table contains the ramp from AFM (slightly less curved and wider at top). And then the script shoots balls up the ramp with increasing strength. Always 2 balls with the same strength. The two lights on the table tell if it's the 1st or 2nd with that strength. 

 

Anyway it's interesting to see that even with the same strength and angle -> sometimes the ball makes it and sometimes not. 

 

In this test I even removed the right wall completely but still the ball gets stuck many times on the left wall and doesn't make it up. I think a similar bug has been present in VP already before when a ball just shoots back from ramp without any apparent reason but it just seems more visible with the new physics.

 

No idea if this helps or not but check it if you want. 

 

 testtable.png   124.23KB   31 downloads

Attached Files

•  default-table-physmod_ramp_curve_Test.vpt   132KB   15 downloads

[ClarkKent]

If anybody "fixes" a table for the new physics, can you post it here?

[slashbot]

I just did the Abracadabra table imported the global physics from the whirlwind table posted here before.

The only other thing to change for perfect gameplay is set the slope from 5 to 4,2.

i also noticed a strange ballmovement when the ball lands on the rubber of the inlane, like its a little blocky when it hits the rubber.

 

Popbumbers and slingshots don't have to be changed in Abracadabra they all seems perfect also the ballmovement seems much more realistic and a little bit more relaxed gameplay then DX.

 

On the DX version my analog nudge for X is 1250 and for the physicsmod i have to change it to 125 to be realistic (using sidewinder freestyle pro)

So it would be nice to see a version with a new regkey location so i can keep seperate nudge settings for DX and Physicsmod.

[StevOz]

slashbot: I think I'll rather try to fix the nudging first, there's probably something off there. Keyboard nudging seems to be the same, so I'll have to look into analog nudging.

 

Keyboard nudging was/is broken ever since analog nudging was introduced, so being the same is just as wrong and it would be a sham if left the way it is within VP9.

Edited by StevOz, 12 April 2014 - 10:28 AM.

[unclewilly]

If anyone would care to mod monster bash to the new physics model, I'd be more than happy to provide them with the most recent update for vp dx9. And they could post here.

I would do it but I'm knee deep in the fire! Build. And trying to get a decent playfield put together and randr and I are trying to learn blender enough to make some models.

The test tables play really good. I'd really Like to experience this on a real table.

Anyone interested let me know and I'll get you the table update

[melon]

 

 

"Elasticity" is well known from previous versions, it's basically the bounciness, but there's a twist: from checking several scientific papers, I found out that real rubber is less bouncy when it is hit at a higher velocity. So I introduced a term which makes the elasticity lower if the collision with the ball happens at a higher speed. The exact amount of this falloff will be configurable in the future. I want to introduce this elasticity model to all rubber objects in the future, it allows the proper bounciness at low speeds without making the ball go completely crazy if it hits at high speed. This falloff is the reason you should set the flipper elasticity higher now, I found 0.8-0.9 to work well.

 

 

Yep, that's something that I have noticed long time ago. That applies to all the rubbers in the table.

What I do in my tables is set the elasticity lower in the rubbers which are going to be hit at a high speed (ball will come directly from the flippers), and raise the elasticity of the rubbers that are going to be hit at a lower speed (ball will come and hit them because of the gravity, ie: lane rubbers...)

[mukuste]

teppotee: Thanks, that test table will be useful.

 

slashbot: The factor 10 for analog nudging makes absolute sense since that's just the factor between the new and old physics timestep, so that should be an easy fix.

 

 

slashbot: I think I'll rather try to fix the nudging first, there's probably something off there. Keyboard nudging seems to be the same, so I'll have to look into analog nudging.

 

Keyboard nudging was/is broken ever since analog nudging was introduced, so being the same is just as wrong and it would be a sham if left the way it is within VP9.

 

 

No worries, it's on the list. How did it used to work? I have a pretty good idea how it should be done, but it seems it used to be better?

[mssmison]

I played around with a few tables last night, but my most successful was the "rolling stones" table. I don't have the settings handy at the moment but can confirm it felt much more authentic with the physics mod. I do think that in general the friction seems to be a little too high on the playfield itself but It's awesome to see the ball hit a bumper now when it's got some spin on it.

[faralos]

can't even load in the table using anything but rev 9.2

and then the ball moves so slow it does not work anyhow

sucks that I have to rely on the older versions of vp just to continue to build my pins

nothing newer than rev 544 can be used by me for anything even demo tables!