38 replies to this topic

[settingsons]

Managed to wrangle up a RTM version of Win8 from a developer friend of mine. The portrait mode PFX2 works just fine on a cabinet. Still plays like PFX2 of course *cough* but it works fine. The only bummer about it is navigating the menus you have to use the mouse/keyboard.

Managed to wrangle up a RTM version of Win8 from a developer friend of mine. The portrait mode PFX2 works just fine on a cabinet. Still plays like PFX2 of course *cough* but it works fine. The only bummer about it is navigating the menus you have to use the mouse/keyboard.

I have a full copy of 8 in a VM don't like the new UI and VM's are poor at 3d video.

I managed to do a clean install on a freshly formatted drive with the Pro Upgrade - it is possible with a lot of messing about. Have to agree with you. It's awful and so un-intuitive - the mix between desktop and tablet is a complete mess. It's seems like it was designed by the same person that designed the ribbons in office. I couldn't work out how to shutdown, launch the control panel, run a DOS cmd.... man I was lost.

I got FX running in the cabinet. No sound because the W8 drivers don't work for my onboard sound nor my Asus Xonar DS soundcard. I can now boot the cabinet in XP or W8 by changing the boot drive in the BIOS. The views could be better, plus the ball is far too small - like a marble. I will play some more the weekend and will report back.

[Joe]

In 8 the control panel is split into 2 one on the desktop and one on metro.

[BigBoss]

So I am sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I have managed to get this running very well on my cabinet moving it to windows 8. It only supports one monitor, so I put the DMD on the bottom left, out of the way. As for controls, I reprogrammed my ipaq to left/right arrows, and the 2nd buttons to up/down arrows. With the plunger being enter and the exit button being escape, this integrates extremely well into a cabinet. 

 

If you're willing to say ditch hyperpin and go fully pinball fx2, (or build a 2nd cabinet for this purpose), then you can have this boot up to metro, only have pinball fx available, hit enter to start it, and use the four buttons above to select games, navigate all menus, and even change in game settings. I even used joytokey to translate my analog nudge controls into key presses that pinball fx2 accepts and set joytokey to autorun.

 

There are currently a slew of games, maybe 20 or so. More will be coming. I bought them all. 

As for the quality, there really is no comparison between this and visual pinball or future pinball. The physics are really good. Shots go where you'd expect off the flippers and it even implements ball spin well. Most tables have 4-5 ramps, several lower (hidden) playfields you have to get to, changing ambiance such as moving characters, night to day transitions, etc. It's really pretty awesome. 

 

As far as a single cabinet that integrates both, it will be hard. You could add future pinball pretty easily. It actually supports non rotated 1080x1920 resolution in arcade mode. Visual pinball would probably do ok in this also if all the tables were redone lol. As it stands, you'd have to script rotating the monitor when hyperpin launches and exit hyperpin to go to pinball fx. It could definitely be done. 

[settingsons]

By pure coincidence I have also just got this up and running in a cabinet to, so it was interesting to hear what you think.  Like you I re-programmed my key assignments to accommodate FX.

 

I actually had an old spare drive so I installed W8 on that drive and then I flip the drive in the Bios for now to switch between the VP world and FX world.  I also installed Big Score under W8 and that works well.  

 

I switched on FXAA in nVidia and it improves the Pinball FX ramp wires considerably (they don't support antialiasing).

 

I am impressed enough to have bought 5 tables so far.  I am a bit sick of the marvel tables so are waiting for the other tables to show up.

 

Visually it's very impressive and much more enjoyable in a cabinet with flippers (with feedback) than playing on an Xbox.  I thought the physics are good, but for me not as the good average VP table, nor as good as Farsight's PA.  Having said that these tables are fantasy based so it isn't as issue have slightly unrealistic ball behaviour.  I also turned off the ball trails that seem to be in every video I have seen of Pinball FX2.

 

One thing that I would like is the option to have a more realistic looking ball, more views, and 2nd screen support of course.

 

All in all it is a nice addition to the cabinet and it shows what a nice lighting system can look like.  VP is still superior for me in terms of realism and table choice, however I will definitely buy more FX2 W8 tables.

 

As a footnote I forgot how good the lighting is in Big score.  it's a shame their plans didn't take off.

Edited by settingsons, 17 December 2012 - 07:23 PM.

[BigBoss]

How did you get bigscore to work? For me it just gave an error about "unsupported video mode" and quit. I assumed it couldnt run at 1080x1920. 

 

As for the physics, I think there is no comparison between visual pinball and pinball fX2. Pinball fx2 physics blow it away. The flipper physics in vp are very bad. In pb fx, the ball goes where you expect it to go.You can live catch and the physics engine takes ball spin into account. Yes, the game plays very arcadish, but the physics are really great. Also way better than farsight's.

 

I have 31 real pinball tables in my house. So I'm pretty particular when it comes to virtual physics.

[settingsons]

Hey big boss.. I will take your word about the physics as I hardly ever get to play real pinball, so it may be that I am conditioned to way VP (and PA which I find similar to VP) behave.  For me it feels like the FX tables lack bounciness quit severely and sometimes it feels like the ball hits the flipper and sticks to it.  The tables do seem to vary somewhat so I will be downloading a few more over Xmas.  Is there one table in particular you would recommend?

 

For Big Score to work you will need to rotate the screen in windows back to the default landscape setting so it's 1920 by 1080 rather than 1080 x 1920.  There is probably a way to do this via the command-line.

 

I also applied the patch 1.2, added the arcade view to the cfg file, and launched the bigscore.exe directly from explorer rather than through the shortcut or tile, because using the shortcut/tile crashed the exe... bizarrely. 

 

I only had a quick play of Big score after I got it working the weekend,  but tonight I had a longer go and I noticed the ball movement isn't as fluid as normal.  It will be interesting to hear if you get that issue too.

 

Cheers

[settingsons]

I added a video to by Virtual Cabinet Build thread which shows a few Pinball FX2 tables running in 'cabinet mode' for anyone that is interested.

 

http://www.vpforums....e=3#entry205202

[pinballlooking]

Ok I added FX2 win8 to my cab
here is a video of FX2 Pinball Running on my virtual pinball Cabinet running win8 (Portrait 1080p)

 

I made my own HDswitch.
http://www.highonsol....le-switch.html
The switch is no longer in stock but you can buy it from this link.
http://www.digikey.c...17&y=14&cur=USD
 

This will make it easy for my kids to switch between FX win8 and VP XP.

VP runs so good on XP I did not want to mess with VP setup that has full feedback shaker…

If you put this switch in to run win XP and Win 8 on two different SSD drives.
You will only need to wire the red and two black wires the 2.5” SSD only use 5V.
That will make it a bit simpler.

You will need to do auto login in win 8
http://myitforum.com....for-windows-8/

Then you need a shortcut to shutdown
http://blog.laptopma....just-one-click

Unpin everything from Metro menu except FX pinball and shutdown.
http://www.eightforu....ndows-8-a.html

VP with full feedback is much better but this is still fun.

The physics are comparable on VP and FX2 but that is a good thing.

Edited by pinballlooking, 17 January 2013 - 06:17 PM.

[Slydog43]

wow, great idea for a hardware switch (I have only used a bootmanager before to switch os's)  Thanks I will be incorporating that into my machine shortly.

[pinballlooking]

I was using the bios menu then I looked at some different boot menus.

When I booted win8 with XP hard drive hooked up XP would do a scan disk each time.

This takes care of that and is the easiest way for my boys to switch back and fourth.

At some point I might be worth trying to get win8 to work seamless with VP and the LED wiz with no shutter.

I have my XP setup stripped down and it works very well with VP so I am not going to mess with it for now.

I do need to add a Opticoupler so I can at least have flipper feedback

 

They do make hard drive switches but this was cheap and easy to do.

Edited by pinballlooking, 17 January 2013 - 08:41 PM.

[settingsons]

I was also reluctant to lose my finely tweaked XP setup so I also have stuck with the two drive boot setup.  Not having the knowhow I ended up buying a Hard Drive power switcher which works a treat, but doesn't look at cool as the homemade variety. Here it is:

 

http://www.ebay.co.u...984.m1497.l2649

 

Same situation for me, this allows the kids to switch easily between XP and FX2.

 

I already have an Optocoupler for feedback and it does add a lot to the FX2 experience (as it does with VP of course).  Recently I wanted to get a Ledwiz but having spent so much money on the cabinet including the quite expensive Optocoupler, I couldn't justify the cost knowing that the Optocoupler would have gone to waste.  But knowing now the OC is put to good use for Pinball FX2 a Ledwiz seems more likely to happen now .

 

Here are a few other tables in action (its the same video I posted elsewhere)::

Edited by settingsons, 17 January 2013 - 07:48 PM.

[pinballlooking]

It was your post on another forum that inspired me to configure mine.

Thanks for posting.

[settingsons]

Thanks! Can I ask you what you think about the Zen ball? I am finding it way too bright particularly on some tables more than others. I don't have the same issue on the XBox in the 3D view mode. In the cabinet view it seems that the ball is reflecting way too much light from the environment.

I posted about it over on the Zen forums to see what they say (as allmodcons). How do you find it?

[pinballlooking]

I have not played it that much. My kids have played it more. I have not bought all the tables yet.

I wanted them to play the ones they have for a while then I will add some more.

That way they will keep getting some new things to do this will keep their interest up.

I play VP mostly all the feedback/flashers spoils me.

[ringorian]

I like it and play it often. I dont have every table so i dont know about reflections on some tables. I chenged the slope and ball saver settings and its much better than the standard settings and even with that shitty dmd makes lots of fun. The smoothness is superb.

[extra]

the tables are only for win 8 ?

 

or it is possible there are running in Win 7 ?

 

thx

[ringorian]

No, 29 Euro s for an update key and 2.5 Euro per Table which are great ..

no problem at all running both over boot menü

[settingsons]

the tables are only for win 8 ?
 
or it is possible there are running in Win 7 ?
 
thx

As ringorian said only win8, and the cost is low. If you don't want the hassle of setting up Win8 then you could wait for the PC version which Zen say is out this year. I play FX8 a fair bit, but VP is still my favourite.

[Clarkkent701]

What settings do I use to get pinball backglass to work I am extend displays for screen two ? I have activated cabinet mode but can't seem to get backglass to work 😩😩 using window 7