79 replies to this topic

[Fleep]

The priority should be filling the screen and seeing all the playfield and apron to maintain the illusion of real

I just incline the table so it looks good to me and then I stretch or shrink the table to fill the screen completely

If the ball looks out of shape I just stretch x or y some more to get the ball back to a shape that is roundish enough to fake out my eyes while keeping all or most of the apron to fake out my eyes and keeping the sides touching the edges of the screen again to fake out my eyes as much as possible

I think it is more important to see the apron, shooter lane, the entire playfield and see the ball get kicked out of the trough and rest again the plunger stop than to maintain 1:1 size comparison to a real pinball machine

Good discussion though as I think my new approach will be using HFs approach and then tweaking if needed to make sure it fills the screen

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Great discussion indeed.
I think, besides replacing the visual bottom apron with a real one, a real plunger spring/shooter lane could replace the visual so nothing gets lost; in return you get almost full scale of a standard SS table

[gtxjoe]

Touché. That would work too

[thewool]

Loving this thread!

 

Am experimenting with using the 1,1,1 and then the Z offset to dial it in. Finally adding 5% to the Y scale to fill up the screen a  touch more. It seems my eyes can be fooled up < and = 5% 

[Fleep]

Just wondering...

I want to follow HF approach in keeping X/Y scale under 1... But doesnt adjusting Z axis offset accordingly afterwards in practice implements kinda digital zooming ? Which actually defeats the approach of keeping X/Y scales under 1?

Edited by Fleep, 27 July 2018 - 01:43 PM.

[batch]

If you replaced the visual bottom apron and the plunger spring/shooter lane with real ones

 

You wouldn't have those of each table, isn't it important for the "look" of the table ?

Edited by batch, 27 July 2018 - 03:41 PM.

[Fleep]

"I think, besides replacing the visual bottom apron with a real one, a real plunger spring/shooter lane could replace the visual so nothing gets lost"
 
But you wouldn't have the real apron and shooter lane of each table !

That is true. Fortunately enough, my favorite tables are standard SS Bally/WMS and not too many either...in most of them the shooter lane looks and placed roughly the same. As for the apron, only the card area will be cut, and again, I dont mind having generic cards in there that could nicely fit all my fav tables.

But with visual pinball, like in real life situations, you cant have something for nothing :-)

There will always be a trade off.

Edited by Fleep, 27 July 2018 - 03:40 PM.

[BorgDog]

You could put a couple small lcd screens where the cards go and then figure out how to change them to match the table. Something like pupplayer might be able to handle that for you.

The only real thing I see you missing is not being able to see the ball in the shooter Lane.

Sent from my PH-1 using Tapatalk

[Fleep]

Actually the amount of apron I cut is just below the ball, its like cutting half of the apron length from bottom.

So we are good here. The ball is visible and the shooter should be an actual real one via a real plunger.
It should come out nicely and perhaps provide even more true feel when launching the balls.

One exception might be for tables where there is no plunger and instead there is a micro switch button to launch the ball. I could live with that too.

Its a matter of priority as far as I see it...

[BorgDog]

will be interesting to see how that turns out.

[hauntfreaks]

Just wondering...

I want to follow HF approach in keeping X/Y scale under 1... But doesnt adjusting Z axis offset accordingly afterwards in practice implements kinda digital zooming ? Which actually defeats the approach of keeping X/Y scales under 1?

 

aaahhh.... this is a great question, 

here's the answer

so yes correct the scaling is like a digital zoom or any type scaling... just like if you go into photoshop and UPscale a photo.... it looks like balls
 

but the offset is different.... remember programs like this use a simulated camera.... so lets stick with this example being a camera

lets say you have a 50mm prime lens on your camera (no zoom its always 50mm)  so how can you zoom with a prime lens, you cant.... you must move closer or farther away...

so what the Z offset is doing is just moving the VP camera lens closer or farther away... no loss quality like a prime lens

[Fleep]

Woah... good shit :-)

That explains a lot.
Thanks for clarifying!

[Fleep]

BTW - how is FOV implemented? Is it the same as Z axis offset ?

[fuzzel]

BTW - how is FOV implemented? Is it the same as Z axis offset ?

This http://www.walkerb.net/blog/cameras/ explains it quite well without all the math behind it.

[Fleep]

fuzzel,

That website explains FOV in a way I have never thought about... thank you for enlightening me :-)

Is there a number that can be used constantly in all tables when configured to be used in a cabinet?

We can treat it as the view angle the pinball player has towards the playfield....it should be a fixed number but what number could best represent it? Is the FOV number in VPX is actually the angle ?

[hauntfreaks]

this is my way of looking at the FOV without the math..... when looking at a table in FS, uumm...man this is hard to describe 

there's an example, in one direction it helps to show more flipper back and also compensates for the angle of the upper PF where the bumpers are.... or vice versa

 

Attached Files

•  temp.jpg   18.88KB   19 downloads

[Fleep]

I will be glad to have a better technicality-wize understanding about LB and Inclination...like FOV technical info provided by fuzzel and HF...
Rather than existing tutorials of what they cause to playfield

[jamos]

same example XYZ all set to "1"

 

​

here is Roller Disco (its an extra wide body table) at XYZ all at "1"  this is a true 16:9 table

 

Great stuff! How did you get the dimension settings without going into the playfield screen?

[jamos]

Haunt, I agree with you and your povs for 99%. Actually, I love them and if they come from you, I only correct exactly 1 thing (and that's the remaining 1 %). The y-scale. I reduce it, because aspect ratio is for ME something like the holy grain. I'm pretty sure, this is a "you love what youre used to" thing or personal preference, so I don't want to blow it up to some dogmatic discussion.

So you would go under 1 in Y to make the ratio closer but even if you did that your still fighting with x so sometimes your not going to get a ratio that's 1:1 in a 16:9 table unless you fill the sides in with black or cutoff the apron (I do not mind curtting of some of the apron some like to see the full apron but it hampers the 1:1 ratio.

Edited by jamos, 01 February 2021 - 01:14 PM.

[gkusa]

 

same example XYZ all set to "1"

 

​

here is Roller Disco (its an extra wide body table) at XYZ all at "1"  this is a true 16:9 table

 

Great stuff! How did you get the dimension settings without going into the playfield screen?

 

 

 

In VPX, when the table is open, select the backglass and options button on the left side window.

Edited by gkusa, 02 April 2021 - 09:50 PM.

[gkusa]

I'm new to virtual pinball, and once i learned I could change the camera view I have been non stop tweaking things.  I think it was in another forum thread where someone mentioned that they use the X/Y scale in place of the Z offset.  After experimenting I kind of agree this this philosophy.  I don't want to ruffle any feathers here but what I find frustrating with the main philosophies that I've read is that when the z offset is as low as it is in these snapshots that I've seen in this forum, anything you change including x offset has big changes to key areas of the extreme ends of the fields.  I actually find it easier to get the table looking more natural everywhere when the z offset is high and then I scale the X/Y to fill the screen to my liking.  When the camera is effectively like 5 inches off the playfield I can get the flippers to look right but the back posts were huge.  I could get the posts not as huge but then the flippers were off.  Then I read someone's analogy about taking a picture of a car.  Take it close and everything is distorted, take it far enough away and things look normal.

 

For grins, I've set the z offset to a really high value and then chose to use the x/y scale to blow everything back up and I don't see the zoom effect that is talked about in this forum as bad.  Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see it.  If what this forum is saying is true about how the program handles "digital zoom" then having a X/Y scale in like the 5/5 range should be really bad (with a really high z offset to compensate), but the playfield image looks the exact same it did when my X/Y scale was in the 1/1 range and the z offset was in the negatives to compensate.  Meaning it doesn't look pixelated at all.

 

Just my two cents.  I'm happy for someone to convince me that I'm wrong, but here are my flinstones vpx settings.   Yes, my apron is gone as I'm try to maximize my x/y scale to be more natural.

Inclination 17.8

FoV 30

Layback 28

XY Scale 1.154/1.154

Z Scale 1

X Offset 73

Y offset 0

Z offset 40

Edited by gkusa, 02 April 2021 - 10:04 PM.