Dialed in Flippers should be cranked way up left & right. Upper flipper is tough though becasue too much and it will make the sim shot even worse

Oh cmon Derek that’s a lot of hassle man!

So is Pinside but here we are.

That makes them stronger, sure...but they still have a different feel...

Well they are diff'rent; just like going from Stern to your TZ or SS

I'm not dogging JJP (I love my Dialed In), but I still feel the flippers on that machine have a much different feel than my Stern, CGC, or Bally games (Alien is too new to give an opinion).

Yup.
They are not good right out of the box. We had a GNR that was just pathetic to shoot, didn't even want to play it. Quick crank up helped a ton.

I hope that's not true, Joe cannot be that clueless or shameless. I've played a ton of virtual pinball and it's not even in the same universe of lag as Tiki pinball. I'm one of the crazy people who really like TS4 but there is no excuse for that lag. And if Joe really did say that then hey Joe can you please delete the part of the code that adds the crappy lag? Thanks

It has to just be a (terrible) cover story for bad programming that resulted in the lag. The physics are pretty awful, too.

It was someone from JJP that said that in this or the other thread, but he pointed out to me that the remark was just ment to be a tongue in cheek remark. He reached out because I really questioned this remark of him as it is very difficult for even a very good virtual machine to have no lag and I thought that JJP was just saying that to cover up the fact that they do not use a PC that can handle that.

I do not know how bad the lag is as I did not play the game yet, but I know it is not easy to get little or no lag at all, not without proper hardware. And just forget about the physics without some proper programming of the missing hardware.

What do you guys expect for the price of TS4

The lag is atrocious. Not bad, atrocious. It looks like poor/non-prioritized programming to me. But whatever it is, it really should be addressed.

I really thought it was mentioned in Flip N Outs launch video. But, I scanned through it quick and didn't see it. I'm close to 100% I hear that it was intentional, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

My guess based on previous titles is that they will fix that with a downloadable update

Given how long they've had to work on it with the pandemic delay, it's lame they launched it with the virtual pin being so sad.

This is true.As long as we waited for this title I thought it would be the Lawlor flagship?

Someone from JJP said it earlier in this thread:

Not sure if it was a joke.

Yeah hope that's not the case either. Many high end virtual pins now offer 120hz displays that along with the powerful enough PC hardware pretty much eliminate any sense of lag or loss of frames per second. Tiki Party pinball not only has bad flipper lag but the motion of the gameplay itself comes across as running below 30fps.

I'm not getting all the angst over it. The game is clearly not setup to be some real simulation. The game play is consistent and easily adaptable.. and you play for like 20 seconds. I feel like your beating on it for being something it never tried to be.

Just a rough edge that should be easily addressable. If you're going to DO it, do it right. That's all I'm saying. Instead of looking forward to it, or even just enjoying my 20 seconds with it, I'm annoyed when I get it.

IDK about easily addressable.. don't know about the capabilities of the SW framework, but suspect it is typically geared for pinball and media playback. A working virtual pinball is new for sure.

Given how much people complain about it, I went into it expecting it to be particularly painful.. but it's totally playable.. I hope they can improve it for sure.. but I still found it fun when it came up... really not that_ bad.

The power of lowered expectations going in.

Lol.. fair enough!.. like waiting until Tuesday to see a blockbuster movie everyone is really excited for.. lol.. eehhh.. it's pretty good!

that‘s kind of the elephant in the room isn‘t it? Owning and playing pinball machines is a lot of fun, but is it 10, 12 or 15K fun? That’s an awful lot of fun to be expecting. In the last few years I just haven‘t seen anything to say yes to. Or maybe I‘ve just been seduced by Visual Pinball. I think Toy Story was the easiest new pin ever to say no to.

Good points. I’m actually going with a high end 120hz 4K virtual pinball machine as my next “pin”. The content being put out lately for Visual Pinball is crazy good. Have you seen the new Stern Iron Maiden by VP Workshop? Damn does it look incredible. With the right hardware Visual Pinball is getting pretty darn close to the real deal in 2022.

I have. I need to spend more time with it.

Totally agree. I own a virtual table that I run off my gaming PC, the experience is amazing. This is the main reason I was so shocked how bad tiki pinball is. You can get 100x better virtual pinball experience on an iphone.

Someone needs to send up the bat signal.We need either Keefer or Katz to give us more info

Pinflation is crazy, that's for sure. I have the luxury of having almost every new pin now to do the temp testing and mods on, but I only get to have them for a month or two before sending them on when I'm done testing/modding or I'd have too many pins. That said, when it comes time to move a pin out, I have to decide which one I'm done with has to go, and GnR has survived 5 rounds (GZ Pro, GZ Prem, Elvira, JP Prem, and Mando Prem up now) with the other pin leaving instead because I really enjoy GnR as a great pin to just pick up and play a game or two whenever I have time. So if I were KEEPING pins, I could totally see keeping GnR indefinitely.

I’m gonna leave this here…. a reminder even this custom device can handle virtual pinball with zero lag. Sure it’s not the same emulation as the Tiki party, but dammit… it could have been executed better.

Not shocking at all. I wouldn't expect JJP's in house programmers to compete with programming teams focused on virtual pinball for many years. Programming is hard, and tuning the virtual physics to feel real takes experience and iteration. Nevertheless, if JJP can't offer a competitive experience in a 12-15k game, they shouldn't even try!

Yup. It's as if a mini mechanical pinball machine would have been a far better choice versus a 10" LCD in a $12k - $15k pin. A real mini mechanical Tiki Party pinball machine toy would have been great to have in the game.

I just don't get this game. A Gabby Gabby pop up bash target, a back 1/3 of the game void of any mechanical toys, Forky standup targets, a laggy virtual pinball mini game...all for $12k- $15k? Easy pass. This game is the complete opposite of what I'm used to from JJP. It's a fun game, IMO it's just not worth anywhere close to the price tag.

My guess is they just couldn’t get the lag fixed. How could jjp remove lag when major video game companies can’t even barely get virtual pinball to not have any lag? They just couldn’t fix it, and I’m guessing it is what it is.

It seems to me that this post is more about complaining on the price than discussing game play on this machine.

“No corners cut” -JJP

Oh balderdash!!!

I know pinball shows flipper lag more than most other games, however, I can't buy into why Tiki Pinball would have significant lag. Yes, major companies fight it, but they are also delivering high resolution, fully featured virtual pinball. Tiki pinball doesn't even look as complicated as Space Cadet for the PC released back in 1995. Even 1Up was able to get acceptable flipper lag on their cheap hardware running full pinball machines.

Maybe I am oversimplifying, however, I don't think there should be any reason that you can't get acceptable flipper lag with minimal pinball programming skills on a table like Tiki Pinball on JJPs hardware.

I am not a negative JJP or TS4 person either. I played TS4 at SFGE and thought it was fun. However, price has me completely out for home ownership. I will gladly play more on location.

Has anyone confirmed how the physical flipper buttons connect/control the mini screen and digital flippers? If a control board is connected via Bluetooth there could be lag introduced in the signal conversion process. Or it could just be a really crappy off the shelf processor chip that can’t handle the compute requirement. What is the culprit?

There is no way they'd use Bluetooth for this communication. I'm sure it's the same tech that has been used since Lane Change was invented.

Most of the lag is likely due to the display. As others have mentioned, virtual pinball is pretty awful on consoles, because there is input lag, and that is with a TV in game mode. You can get a better experience with a gaming PC and a monitor, mainly due to monitors offering things like VRR.

There is no way that display isn't some cheap off the shelf product that probably that likely isn't setup to support a 'Game' mode. Hence, the input to the screen is likely taking over 100ms of time to render. And that is all just the time it takes from the display getting the input to actually displaying it. Which is a very noticeable amount of time. JJP can probably reduce the lag somewhat, as they're probably introducing some delay on their end, but it's never going to feel great.

IMO, if you don't like it, Go to the settings, and set it to not have any ball save. At that point it becomes one of the weaker rewards on the wheel and you can actively shoot a spin loop to avoid it.

Anyone get the JJP survey?

I did and you can let them know what you think their doing wrong and tell them what you think they can do to improve!

The survey is a nice gesture and all, but they already have access to a mountain of feedback here. I don't think it's any mystery at this point what bothers people about TS4. It's like, if you still need a survey to know what your customers think after this thread, yikes.

Yep, and I did that....they ask what JJP games you own (I've owned all of them expect TS4). I let them know why I will never buy another NIB game, which is mainly due to their lack of warranty on play fields.

Said I was interested to see what SR come up with but I will never spend 12k+ on a pinball machine.

I can see that....I actually didn't mention pricing as its all relative, and clearly an issue.

I think it's a good idea to do this poll.Especially being able to leave comments on the survey is a good thing

I did.

Filled it out.

At the end I put down get LTG : ) Back.

I hope everyone does this.

LTG : )

Just received the survey in my email.. I was gonna ignore it, but I’ll do what you suggest.

I mean, I still see you here responding to everyone asking help on their JJP games.

Crazy to me!! Didn’t JJP see the passion you have for your work? Why get rid of an individual like that whom the pinhead community like/respect?

Unless, cost has to do with it. Everyone always looking for ways to trim cost.

A boss I know fired the most senior position in his group to hire 2 new entry levels to replace him to save cost. And now his deliverable schedule has slipped and he wonders why? Some people are not meant to lead.

Gladly filled mine out. Lack of magic and choice of ts4 over the nostalgic 1st movie was mentioned as my reason for not buying.

Originally I wasn't going to. Until I responded to two posts where the people could do harm to their machine. I don't care about jjp. I do care about people.

Now if I do I occasionally add to get LTG : ) just to blow jjp some sh*t. Remind them what they lost.

Not to mention opening up games and showing them off and referring people to distributors to buy their jjp game. 12 plus hours day seven days a week and holidays.

I got the machine for tech support that was it. I even paid for my own internet phone to use for their tech support. So I cost them less than toilet paper.

LTG : )

Thank you !

LTG : )