Configuring Button Inputs and Outputs

One common enhancement to make Visual Pinball more realistic is to add buttons to emulate a real Pinball machine. These buttons provide inputs to your visual pinball table, and can also accept outputs to display lights and other effects. This is handled in two parts: an Input Controller to pass inputs from the buttons to the computer and an Output Coontroller to accept commands from the computer and pass them to the correct lights. There are multiple different Input and Output Controllers available but they all require the same basic steps to configure once they're wired up.

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1. Confirm Windows sees the Input Controller as a device
2. Configure VPX to accept button inputs from the attached device
3. Setup DOF to know how your Output Controller is connected
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Confirm Windows sees the Input Controller as a device
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Once your Buttons are wired up to your Input Controller, connect the controller to the computer so they can communicate. The Input Controller connect to the computer via USB and emulate keyboard or joystick presses. This works well, as Windows natively supports auto-discovery of these devices. You can check that your computer sees you Input Controller by looking at the list of connected devices. Most Input Controllers come with software to debug button inputs too, which is helpful for both ensuring all buttons are working and determining which button is which input for the next steps.

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Configure VPX to accept button inputs from the attached device
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Once you have your Input Controller connected and recognized by your computer, you need to tell VPX which buttons are which. Your Input Controller's debugging tool is the best way to figure out which physical buttons map to which internal buttons, but if all else fails trial and error always works too. Below is a list of most of the buttons a Pinball machine can see, simply map the ones you're using in VPX's settings (Preferences -> Config Keys, Nudge and DOF).

Plunger
Flippers (Left and Right)
Magna Saves (Left and Right)
Start
Coin
Extra Ball
Exit
Launch Button
Fire
Service Buttons:
- Door
- Enter
- Cancel
- Up / +
- Down / -
- Vol +
- Vol -

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Setup DOF to know how your Output Controller is connected
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Now that your inputs are working in VPX, you can configure outputs to them if they have lights. This is the same process as all output devices, in that VPX communicates with your Backglass server to control your outputs via DOF. Once you have your backglass server and DOF installed, you can use the DOF config to map buttons to their lights. All you need is what port the button's light is connected too. Typically, this is written on the Output Controllers terminals, but if not most output controllers have debugging tools.


After this, you should have physical buttons that work with VPX and lights that respond to Pinball events. And be ready to go further down the rabbit hole of adding physical device to Visual Pinball!