Coming VERY soon for streamers, X-Stream!!

Someone had asked about JJP POTC results with Pin Stadiums. It’s tremendous and so good that many are taking out the 4-5 factory spotlights to clean up the playfield even more since they are no longer needed. I have finally decided that the factory spotlight trigger is the best for the GI and then the shaker motor is the ultimate for the UV+Glow trigger. I hope this helps and this should make an easy decision of you have been debating on Pin Stadiums.

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And now to the past!

Install “Before” of Sterns Pirates of the Carribean (POTC)

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And the after!!

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For JJP POTC I suggest having the GI settings on the color wheel in the Pin Stadium app set to "Gold" and at 100%. For the white lights I run them at 80-85% which seems to do really well with the look of the artwork and presence of the theme in that machine. Plus when the UV+Glow goes off (triggered by the shaker motor) it's a perfect contrast. I hope this helps you guys as a lot of POTC collectors have been ordering the Pin Stadiums to bring that amazing artwork alive. Visibility on the game is insane now!!

Here is the link to the Fusions which are accessible after you click on "Order Now" and then click on Home/Products just below the Pin Stadium logo: https://pinstadium.com/product/pin-stadium-fusion/

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Update on shipping methods, recently over the last couple months the post office has been off and on inconsistent with shipments creating delays that I feel were not along the lines of what I see has timely for Pin Stadium's expectations. Since then Pin Stadium has partnered with UPS for our shipping needs and we have converted over to most all of the shipments now going through UPS for very amazing reliability and delivery time!!! Always trying to improve the operations here and shipping is VERY important. Pin Stadiums and Fusions are in stock and now shipping.

I would like to again thank everyone for the tremendous support and all of your orders. It has been extremely busy around here and I am loving every bit of it. It's neat to see old games from even the 70s and new games (Like DP, Munsters, and BK, etc) constantly getting Pin Stadiums!!!

--
Scott
Pin Stadium
www.pinstadium.com

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I can then tell you it will for sure arrive on time! lol

For Stern POTC I suggest using the gold color also but using the small RGB granular controls on the top left of the color wheel to dial in some blue. It really brings out the artwork. Many don’t know that if you tap on that “RGB” it will bring up an entirely new menu in the Pin Stadium app. It opens up tons of possibilities not possible with the color wheel.

I have received some messages asking what menu and where it is located. Posting it up here.

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Once you tap on that you get a new menu that gives you granular independent control of the Red, Green, and Blue spectrums.

So here are some tips. The Pin Stadiums come with high quality warm whites that I custom designed and have engineer to insane specs. The reason I chose warm white is that it does the best with most all artwork in general since most has reds and oranges in it. There are some games that have a majority of purple and blues that do better with cool white.

So what you do is just turn the warm white at whatever brightness you want in the app and then tap the RGB menu. Next move the Blue slider to the right and that will give you any level of cool white possible. Normal LEDs pick the cool white level for you and it's static, but this let's you choose it. You can do the same with getting Sunlight White, or Natural White etc but instead you add more Reds and Orange etc in the color wheel and Red in the RGB. I hope this helps!!! You basically the summary of this is that you can make all spectrum colors of whites possible.

Warm White
Cool White
Natural White
Sunlight White

Yes one of the big advantages to having Pin Stadiums is not only the powerful illumination but the fact that the playfield is so well lit that in most cases it’s completely removes or heavily reduces the glass glare. The reason for this is that the light under the glass is brighter than the backglass and ceiling reflections etc.

Here is a great example of it. This customer has LED lights in his game room on a white ceiling. I will let the pics speak for themselves. I hope this helps. Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you need any more questions answered or want to talk.

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Another thing that is a new topic to talk about with the Pin Stadiums is playfield glare (NOT glass glare!). So basically with every pinball machine we always are fighting glass glare, but part of what you are seeing is the glare off of the clear coat of the playfield into your eyes. We don't notice it because the glass glare is so intense that it just all seems to blend in. So another layer deep under the glass is the shiny playfield and no version of anti-glare glass can help with that. If you get a chance next time, take your glass off and you will notice how powerful that is. If you have anti-glare glass you don't even have to remove it to see. The Pin Stadiums help with that dramatically too which is what many attribute to the "HD" look of their machine once they install the Pin Stadiums.

Here is a quick graphic that demonstrates the "Before" how your machine is now.
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And with the high quality illumination on your playfield from the Pin Stadiums, this is what you can expect. I hope was a useful post that helps to educate us all on the benefits and levels of glare. It's something I have learned a lot about over the last couple years being a pinball lighting company manufacturer. Many of these benefits were brought to my attention from customers afters seeing the product in their machines. Pretty cool!!

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Does this help and make sense with the diagrams?

So the simply condensed summary is that on ALL pinball machines you have two levels of glare:

1. Glass
2. Playfield

Both are due to the lighting under the glass being insufficient (dimmer) than the light source (where the glare is coming from). The reason the Pin Stadiums work to remove glare is as a result of the amount of lumens they were designed with and this exceeds the light source.

Okay great I am glad that was helpful. You gave me a great chance to verbally and visually demonstrate it which should be helpful to others since this is a new topic of discussion that we can talk about because now there is a solution for it. In many of the pics you see, the brightness of the Pin Stadiums is not turned up all the way. They are purposely over-engineered to give you more than what you need to take over control and remove the glare. Also in situations in the day when you have cracks of sunlight coming through or lighting up your ceiling and walls, the Pin Stadiums can be cranked to 100% to beat that out also. Maybe I should set a photo electric eye in the room and have it auto sense how bright they need to be? Lol

*****WARNING ANYTHING YOU READ PAST THIS POINT MAY LITERALLY CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE YOUR MACHINE. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING ANY UNHAPPY EXPERIENCES AND WE PROMISE THIS IS FOR YOU VIEWING PLEASURE*****

After reading all of this you may need to ask yourself if it is really "Play Better" or is it "See Better" ?? Or maybe both but one before the other.

This brings up another discussion which I have talked about several months ago and it has to do with the very reason Pin Stadiums were created:

The first thing to mention is that insert/inlay lighting does not assist with lighting up the playfield contrary to some beliefs. It's the desire for us to bring more light onto the playfield. What happens when we get that machine and add in LED's into the inlays we create more contrast from bright to dark (inlay to artwork contrast) which makes visibility even harder. How do I know? Because I used to do it all the time years ago and I finally realized I was making things worse. Ball tracking and visibility degrades heavily as a result.

GI Illumination on machines is only able to light up small regions with limited range simply because it's almost flush with the playfield (maybe 1/4" above). A good comparison would be sitting in the highest seats in the stadium and viewing them game with lights shorter than the players (ie: physical ball to GI bulb elevation height).

You can then add spotlights which creep a little above the playfield but they end up creating hotspots of visibility. This causes more contrast to the areas where they are not thus worsening things further. Most spotlights will reflect off the backglass or LCD/DMD back into your eyes which is a big bummer. They also are not very attractive and can cause ball stops at in opportune times.

Trough lighting around the flippers does increase illumination in those areas but again it make for a hotspot of lighting when the ball comes from down a dimly lit playfield to your flippers. While playing it can become tiresome to the eyes since you always see the brightness at the bottom of the playfield even in your lower peripheral. Also the most difficult effect is the LED casting a shadow on the playfield (since they are being lit from behind and below/at level of the flipper) but the ball reflects the LED bulb sources straight back into your eyes no matter where it is. Once you see it and realize this then it's impossible to be unseen and the ball looks like a dark silver sphere with bright dots on it.

So effectively all of these upgrades like LEDs for inserts, GI, and flipper lighting do produce light but without the Pin Stadiums there to evenly light the playfield 100% you are going to make things harder to see. In addition the Pin Stadiums balance out the dark spots while removing shadows (since you have light from two sources up and down the entire length of the playfield).

Bottom line is I am explaining the thought process of what drove me nuts over the last 20 years of collecting and playing which motivated me me to create the Pin Stadiums. I finally realized I was chasing my own tail with installing these and putting strips everywhere that I could. Some games had 8-9 spotlights in them with dismal results.

To this day I still use LED's in the older games for inserts and GI as they are definitely a must, however I look at factory GI lights as decorative lighting where you can really make nice islands of color accents on the playfield. So great places to get these items are from Comet Pinball for example which is where I do my shopping for those. They have very high quality lighting and great service, there are others that do the same but Comet is my preference.

Take a look at the diagram I put together as it will help to visually demonstrate the light mappings and coverage discussed above from those items mentioned. Imagine all of those gaps filled with vibrant artwork in HD along with the ability to adjust to any color and brightness level with the Pin Stadium app.

I hope this helps!

--
Scott
Pin Stadium
www.pinstadium.com

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Just to clarify the yellow circles represent the factory GI bulbs and the rings around then is the throw distance of the lights. They sort of looked like pop bumpers so I wanted to clarify.

Here is an extended labeled and updated version that shows flipper and backboard lighting along with led strips.

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I hope this explains the science behind factory playfield lighting. This is something that I scientifically study continually and observe as a personal interest (love this kind of stuff) which of course leads to my R&D behind the Pin Stadium products. The effectiveness of the products have many aspects that I take into consideration into to create the performance of what you guys love and appreciate about them is dependent up location, elevation, mounting, positioning, lumens, voltage, amperage, WiFi broadcast range/communication which then gets us just to the phone and from their the world of the app technology is where all this is handed off to so that you the collector or operator have unlimited controls of your lighting based upon your our needs or personal preferences.

But next up let's talk about Pinball Lighting and I literally mean the "pinball" itself

And here we are the beautiful shiny ball that is every essence of a mirror and MORE! Don't worry it gets better than this, but for now we have just the factory GI bulbs that sit lower than the ball itself which you can see the light sources from the left and right. This represent a pinball machine by itself with no other lighting but what it provides. So no overhead lighting or natural sunlight coming into the room. This should be fun and what you will start to see may surprise you as we progress through this journey of what our human eyes sees from the reflections on the pinball surface and why....

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So when I used to add flipper lighting (pre-Pin Stadium) and I still do add flipper lighting on some machines because it can add nice accents to that area. These were the results of what I would get if I look closely at the ball. Notice the bright LED source lights and the dark contrast of the areas around it in relation to the flipper lighting.

I remember playing WOZ and LOTR of the Rings like this (again pre-Pin Stadium) and I could not figure out for the life of me why it was so darn hard to see the ball. But man did that flipper area look nice!!

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Here is what you see at the ball travels continually back down to the flippers as it passes spotlights. Notice the bright glare coming from the middle right. This further contrasts the darker areas of the ball until it reaches back to the flipper lights. Lots of changes going on here and it doesn't just happen one time, but EVERY single time before you flip. So hundreds of times each game and some into the thousands if you are playing really well or a long ball time machine.

Then add on top of the fact that this glare moves continually as the ball travels, even though it's relative state on they playfield is still. This causes minor repetitive distractions to your eyes as you try to track the ball. To put it in perspective, imagine if professional baseball players saw light reflecting on a silver ball (instead of white) into their eyes as they go to hit each pitch.

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Have you ever seen a picture someone takes up close of a pinball and you find yourself looking to see what is in the reflections?

Many times you can make out a face and body, and likely many parts of the surroundings in a room. If you get a chance to check out the amazing artwork of Pinball Photos, he uses this to perfection as he too see's how much is reflecting on the pretty silverball. Go to this link and it will answer any questions you have about pinball reflections: https//www.instagram.com/pinballphoto/ Love this guys work!! Here is his homepage: https://www.pinballphotos.com/ Ask him about his opinion on this topic

See you do notice it but during a game it's not deliberate but subconscious. Our brain stores everything and is constantly calculating and re-calculating. When there is less variable to see, there is less to process and the more efficient we can focus on one task. We only have 100% energy at any given moment and how you use and store that is invaluable.

Take competitive pinball players, most of all of them wear earphones just to keep the sounds from distracting them. Imagine if you could do that with your eyes? Well you can, but we will get to that later....

Let's see what happens when the ball passes by a spotlight and heads towards the flippers lighting....

So the factory GI lights are what you see on the bottom since they are raised no more than a 1/4" above the playfield they sit low on the ball.

Pin Stadium loves these guys so at the intermission I recommend check them out: https://themodcouplepinball.com/

Nothing looks better under Pin Stadiums lights than The Mod Couple product line. Highly recommended!!!

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Now back to our regularly scheduled program...

Excellent to see another LOTR get a Pin Stadium install. Thanks for posting up the pics and coincidentally they are really great examples of what I have been discussing. Your machine looks incredible and thanks for your support for the product too @snaroff !!

This example shows the furthest factory lighting can usually reach on the pinball itself. It is highlighted in green and accounts for about 40% of the ball.

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And here is the part that the factory playfield lighting system can reach. So any thing you do or don't do on your machine displays here when playing.

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Keep in mind that unfortunately factory lighting only reaches certain areas withing this highlighted region at certain times depending on the ball location in relation to lighting features (GI, Spotlights, etc).

Here is the point where most of the pinball cabinet lighting capability and outside of the cabinet environmental lighting meets. We will call it the "Equator".

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Thank you very much and glad you are liking the changes. Lots of updates and improvements in many aspects even beyond that website. Wonka and BK will look so good with them and I am looking forward to doing the same.