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I like having neon lights on while playing pinball in the dark otherwise. Something about neon and pinball that goes great together. And Pinstadium lights are awesome for playing in the dark and letting you see the ball prefectly, even better than in a fully lit room.
Quoted from MK6PIN:Man, kool-aid runs deep, even outside the main thread....we are now defeating physics with these things. Come on.....
Not defeating physics but using it to our advantage. The intensity or brightness of light follows an inverse square relationship as a function of the distance from the light source.
Having two strips of bright LEDs positioned just below the glass close to both sides of the playfield ensures bright uniform illumination of the game with the additional benefit of little or no glare which makes tracking the ball much easier. Compare that to overhead lighting which will be more diffuse since it is further from the source, probably less uniform unless it is directly overhead, which would cause reflections.
This thread is about playing pinball in the dark and in my opinion these lights are the best way to do that, and it’s not even close. I was skeptical too until I saw them in person at TPF. Seeing is believing.
Quoted from MK6PIN:Inverse square law is something I use daily in both the Audio (primarily) and Lighting (much more involved than 1 formula) design realm. You seem to miss the point that the LED strips positioning (on the side) are actually brighter on the edge, then diminishes the closer to the middle of the playfield, not to mention the inherent pronounced shadowing caused by prior (nothing uniform about it, but a cool mod). No way can (2x) led strips, w limited throw patterns, come even close to uniform, evenly distributed overhead light (leaving the rainbow ramps out of it)
You've made some great posts, but inverse square is irrelevant here. Proper placement (overhead in this case) of correct luminary device to distribute uniform color temperature across entire playfield is the relevant point.
The thread is dark or lit room, and I stated I preferred a properly dim, overhead lit one. I own a set (or 2) and have relegated them to other purposes.
This is a friendly discussion and I appreciate that. My initial comment was that I think the Pinstadiums let you see the ball more clearly than a fully lit room. I stand by that. Thinking about this some more I remembered that Scott had his games under a tent or canopy at TPF. You can barely see that in the top of this photo from Pinball News. His games were more enclosed than any others that I recall seeing at the show, probably in an attemp to exclude overhead lighting. Scott is a smart guy and I’ll wager he went to that extra effort and expense to contrast his games to those that were in the fully lit open room. The comparison was definitely to his benefit. He had an Addams Family which looked amazing with his mod as you can see in the photo. There was another one nearby. The difference as far as being able to see the ball was night and day, no pun intended.
And I think the inverse square law definitely applies here. You can see how close the Pinstadiums are to the playfield. Very little brightness is lost due to distance. On the other hand the convention room at TPF has a very tall ceiling, which is where the lights were located, so by the time the overhead light reached the playfield much of the luminance had diminished, which is why most games looked relatively dark in comparison.
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Fort Worth, TX