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Two points: 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 chang
by Kapura 3y ago
Two points:
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.
- wincy 3y agoEven in VR, there’s already an excellent VR pinball game on the Meta VR store with fantastic pinball machines. You can buy new machines as DLC and put them in your virtual arcade. I think Pinball FX? 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.
- Kapura 3y agoThen it's just... a worse pinball machine. A pinball machine without the charm of mechanical engineering or physical craftsmanship.
- reaperman 3y agoMy favorite pinball game machine costs $7,000. https://sternpinball.com/game/deadpool/ https://sternpinball.com/game/deadpool/ I won't be buying that any time soon, but I can absolutely grab a $20 pinball simulator for my $300 VR headset.
- mrandish 3y agoI can understand that point of view and used to think the same. I even tried a little virtual pinball unit at some discount warehouse club and it sucked. Then I actually tried a really good virtual pinball cabinet running recent, high-quality open source tables at 120fps 4K HDR with haptic feedback transducers providing positional tactile feedback to the point where I could close my eyes and feel the virtual ball rolling across the table from side to side. It also had a 6-axis accelerometer allowing me to 'nudge' the table to influence the trajectory of the ball just like I do on one of the real pinball tables I own. 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.
- reaperman 3y agoNotably, that setup seems to cost the same as an actual commercial pinball table, ~$7,000. Granted you can play many different pinball games on one table, but it's not exactly comparable to an affordable software option.