I used a gottlieb panthera cabinet to create the plans for my cabinet, so my lock bar and siderails were donated from that machine. My machine is the same size as the original game.
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Does anyone know any other websites that sell a Digital Plunger? I tried to order from Virtuapin but says they
are out of stock and on backorder and no idea when it will be available.. Thanks appreciate the help!

Nanotech. http://store.nanotechent.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=64 Actually looks like they are either on sale or they reduced their price. These kits used to be $140.

sold mine awhile back.....was tweaking more than playing...

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I like the look of yours bartoparacdes - very simple and to the point. That's what I want to do with mine when I finally decide to pony up the cash for the monitors!

Is that cabinet a complete rectangle with no slope to it?

Thanks Bub is that plunger just as good
as Virtupin? Hey BTA what did you get for your VP if u dont mind
sharing? I was interested in it along time ago.if it would have had a 46"
in it. i would have bought it.. Iam putting together
a williams widebody. like to give big thanks
to MAMEMAN for posting the cabinet plans.. thanks
everyone on here for sharing your VP builds and
info. its a great help

thanks to all for posting info on this. I have 13 pins at home at the moment, but would realy love to try out one of thes one day just for the variety. I own TOM and TZ, but still love to have a fiddle with the kids Ipad versions every now and again on pinball arcade.

So which soft ware is best do you all th ink for a cab version? i've downloaded VP to try so far.

VP is far and away the best simulator available in terms of physics. I can't stand FP myself because the shots are all terrible - none of the geometry makes sense.

I actually enjoy Pinball FX/Zen Pinball. I find them to be accurate in terms of shot geometry, however the ball physics can feel off at times. It sometimes feels like the ball is SUPER heavy. I've also noticed that the ball seems to get heavier as you make progressive shots. Like, if I'm hitting a loop 3, 4 ,5+ times, it seems like the ball starts moving slower as that number goes up (but resets when I miss). I don't know, some odd choices...But the tables are fun, deep, and super imaginative. The fact that it's videogame pinball means there are no limits. I definitely suggest playing them if for no other reason than to say you have.

Also, everyone already knows Pinball Arcade. As much as I love TPA, I have zero respect for Farsight lately. Also, some flipper physics that they deem impossible (drop catches for example) are clearly possible as you can do them in VP. Still, they've done an OK job of recreating some of the classics. I would much rather stick to VP, though.

nope there is slope

TPA can suck it

Never gonna see legit full screen from them

I built my cab in hopes to run TPA beautifully....but it's going to be a long while before I'll be happen with them.

Future pinball has some cool things going for it like BAM (better arcade machine) with its life like 3d visuals and head tracking. Although I've heard that with flipper tweaking FP is great, I've never really enjoyed it.

Zen/PB FX are all amazing tables that are totally un-build able in the real world and fun. It's worth trying them out. Unless you only want to play real machines.

VP seems the way to go. I've loaded 75 of the nicest tables and they all play well, add in analogue nudging, this can't be beat.

Pro pinballs timeshock looks real pretty, although I've never played it.

(Forwarded email via friend. Cabinet support will happen. It's halfway to being complete.)

Hello Rick,

So sorry for the long delay in answering this. I am the person you most likely talked to at the Expo. I have been away for a week and did not see this until I returned.

Here is the situation on the Cabinet support. As you know, Paul at Virtuapin has given us a beautiful cabinet to work with and we are actually about halfway through the process.

The schedule we have already set up, one table a month, already takes up a good deal of our time. The other projects we have on our plate (Pinball Construction Kit, Pinball After Dark and the Cabinet Support) all have to be worked on during hours that are not already scheduled for the regular releases of Pinball Arcade. When we got the VP table last year we did not envision having to spend so much time other important projects. The largest of them being Xbox1 and PS4.

The Cabinet version is by no means a dead project. This is something we will release when we can. unfortunately, like last year, we are just not sure when that will be.

But we will... I promise.

Thanks for liking our game and being part of our pinball community,

Norman Stepansky
Producer
FarSight Studios

Here is a question for people that have a bought or made their own Virtual Pinball Machine. What software is the easiest to get setup and working on your cabinet?

Right now I love Pinball FX2 and will definitely be wanting that once I decide to buy/build my own. However, I really want to put some money for TPA tables while they are one sale in the Steam Summer Sale. Can you have TPA running without a frontend? The ease of use with it seems fantastic if you could. I don't mind spending money on pinball software like FX2 and TPA if it makes my life easier in just wanting to play a lot of tables with ease.

Or should I not bother and go with whats free instead?

I have tried getting PinballX frontend setup just on my desktop computer but see no way as to get TPA or FX2 tables to come up. I tried some future pinball tables (just to make sure I wasn't completely doing it wrong) and have been able to get some up and running. But then there is always something like Hyperpin.

Visual pinball from everything I have seen says its setup is lengthy and not intutive, and now with the new version I don't know what to pick.

Any thoughts?

VP is not nearly as hard to setup as it seems. It's a long process (read: 20-60 minutes depending on how many times you've done it), but it's SO worth it. I don't know how Hyper Pin or whatever the front end software integrates with VP and FX/TPA, but I'm sure someone knows how to get those to work together with no issues.

To answer the other part of your question - I would get VP installed on your current computer, download a table you may already have in TPA or have played recently in person, and see how you feel about the physics. I prefer VP to every other simulator for realism.

Visual Pinball & Future Pinball with Hyperpin are indeed quite lengthy to setup and if you aren't a "computer person" you'll likely be banging your head against a wall when you see what all is involved in file placement and naming scheme. I'm not a programmer, but I am a computer person and I really don't like new setups or adding things to a build.

I would definitely recommend the VirtuaPin plunger kit over the Nanotech (a.k.a. Pinball Wizard) kit. In fact I just swapped out the Nanotech from my pre-built VirtuaPin cab with a new VirtuaPin v2 plunger kit (I actually had to wait a couple months for it, though - seems like they are selling out frequently).

The Nanotech sucks to configure for the accelerometer input - in fact there are long threads over at vpforums about just trying to get it configured the best way. Even if you do get it so its input is centered properly, it is still unreliable. The input constantly "jiggles" a little bit, with periodic big spikes every few minutes or so. For TPA and PBFX2 I had to map it to the digital keyboard "hard nudge" keys because it was too unstable to map it to analog input. And then even with a fairly substantial deadzone set up, it would still randomly trigger a nudge because of those spikes.

Now with the VirtuaPin plunger, it auto calibrates at start up and the input is rock solid. I can map it to the analog stick of an Xbox 360 controller (emulated with x360ce) and get decent analog nudging with no random input (I think I had to crank the anti-deadzone up to increase the strength of my nudges relative to what the game is expecting from a regular analog stick).

The input on the plunger also seems better. I think it uses the full range of numbers more or maybe sits at a lower position at rest or something. I mapped it to the right trigger in PBFX2 and it seemed to work fairly well the first time I tried it (haven't had time lately because I've been playing my first real pin which just came!). With the Nanotech, I could never get the plunger to work reliably with PBFX2 or TPA and eventually gave up and disabled it.

Hopefully in the future if these games finally do a full cabinet mode like they've been talking about for a long time, native joystick control support will be better so we don't have to rely on key-mapping programs and stuff. But nevertheless I don't find the Nanotech's nudge input to be very reliable. That's the reason VirtuaPin created their own in the first place because they used to just use the Nanotechs.

As for software, I'll point you to a previous post I made: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/should-i-buy-a-virtual-pin/page/4#post-1621717

Sounds like the plunger kit is problematic: http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=28155#entry270417

I also endorse the virtuapin plunger kit. The analogue nudging is great. In virtual pinball I've been playing a game of Jurassic park, the ball was moving slowly and got stuck in the gate to the right of the pop bumpers. I know, WTF a ball getting stuck in a computer game!?! Well, the only thing to do was shake the cabinet and wiggle it free. I KNOW, WTF. Shaking the cabinet to move an object in a computer game. It was a very weird thing the first time it happened. I have a plumb bob for detecting a tilt, so my ball ended and rolled straight down the middle. Just like a real machine. It's great knowing that I can nudge the machine and save a ball from going down the Outlanes.

I do notice a difference when I go back to play real machines. I tilt real machines more often then the virtual machine. This could just be a setting for sensitivity for the virtuapin plunger, or that games out on route have tighter tilt limits. I just plugged in the plunger and it worked out of the box.

I'm not a computer geek but managed to follow the numerous walkthroughs to install the virtual pinball software. I did it twice, my first install had files in the wrong place, ect. And after a day or two of mucking with it; it finally clicked, now that I understand all of the files and where they go it is pretty simple. I can load in new tables in a couple of minutes.

I don't like to download all of the tables, I keep it under 100. I think that it's overwhelming to pick a game some times.

Yea.. adding a table or 2 now and then isn't the end of the world, but setting up 150 or so on a new build isn't fun... especially if you are getting all the files for the first time.

I think that is the biggest problem. I have well over 150 tables on mine but I really only play about 20 or so. I got caught up in the, "must have everything" phase. Now I'm going back to just having a dozen or so active at a time.

Thanks for all the Info ROO! I'll wait for the Virtuapin Plunger when they stock them. Anyone know what the ideal
tv to have for the playfield. I wanna try a 46" but heard that it makes the ball look huge and doesnt look right and really a pain to mount too. any help is a appreciated..

The 32's are a great size, but not for a regular size cab. If I build a bigger one for myself one day I'll prolly likely use a 37" playfield and 27" backbox. Currently I do 32" playfields with 23-24" backboxes. This would be a custom cut cabinet for the monitor though... Monitors in standard cabs all depend on bezel... bezel... bezel... or rather lack of one.

I'm pretty sure 37's and 39's are pretty common to fit in a regular cab, but a 37" with a tiny bezel might be a bit small where a 39 with the same bezel might be perfect. A 37 you might not have to decase where most 39's unless it is extremely little bezel around the monitor you'd likely need to decase. I think I heard somewhere where someone got a 40" in a standard cab by routing out some of the thickness of the plywood sides near the top. If you build the cab the sizing is up to you.. if you have a standard cab you'll have to shop around with your measurements.

I believe a 37" you'll have a good 7" or so of blank space at the end of the cabinet... with a 39" prolly 4-5". Only a custom cut cab will have little to no slop. I usually have about 1/2" - 1" free around the edges of mine so I don't have to re-measure cab dimensions for each specific playfield..

Thanks for sharing.. helps me out alot. Iam building off a williams widebody. specs based on a TZ pin. Would a 42 work.

I'm putting this into an old Time Fantasy cabinet

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/panasonic-39-class-38-1-2-diag--led-1080p-60hz-hdtv/3621011.p?id=1219092581808&skuId=3621011&st=categoryid$abcat0101001&cp=1&lp=11

Might buy the monitor tomorrow

Just gonna install PinballFX2 as I agree with Markmon... On everything but the Metallica Newton ball

Anyone have video of a virtual pin using leaf switches to show the difference in lag/response? I want to build one still, but I'm really worried about lag. The "you'll get used to it" excuse simply won't hold for me.

E: That TV you posted looks awesome and cheap. I kind of want to grab one, too...

If you have a good pc, great graphics card, and the right settings for your pc, then there is no noticeable lag. Although I do use leaf switches in my build.

This was the solution that I found to best remove delay . It was from the pinball arcade forums I believe.
http://www.pinballrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1986

I can do drop catches, flipper passes, all the same a a real machine.

nicoga.. I've used standard arcade switches and those are fine, but do "click" more than a leaf switch. I just recently used some new buttons for the flippers only that are internal leaf switch styles... where the switch and mechanism is built into the button and those work great. Both has equal response IMO.. just one is more noisy than a real pin.

Was gonna use some virtuapin leaf switch button mounts, but found out the buttons were too fat to fit in the holes I had drilled and hence haven't used them. (yet) Sucks because I got some cointaker color changing clear flipper buttons and now I can't use them. I had already put the artwork on the cabinet so... trying to ream the holes out bigger woud be a problem where trying to do it could botch my artwork. Maybe one day I might try using a dremel sanding wheel and do it slowly so I can use those.

BAM also helps with alot of the rendering and the physics settings, but the tables need to have the correct config file for it to work properly. If you aren't running BAM with FP, you're missing out. http://www.ravarcade.pl/

The head tracking is awesome but I've had some issues with the Kinect for xbox360 due to it's depth restrictions, supposedly Kinect for Windows works much better.

Unit3D Pinball is really where it's at though, even in their Alpha build. Development is slow right now but the dev's have been keeping in touch with the community and hope to have another update out in the next few months.
unit3dpinball.net

Well I bought the 1080p slim bezel 39" Panasonic LED

It fits without de-casing so that's reeeeally good news.

I'm stoked. Gonna have a sweet ass PinballFX cabinet soon!

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Hey. How is the input lag on this one? It looks great.

You definitely get a little less lag using leafs than micro switches since you can calibrate your leafs to trigger early. Make sure you set max prerendered frames to 1 in the vid card driver.

No there really is a small difference. A micro switch registers at the end of the press where a leaf can be set to register at the start. The small amount of throw helps in reaction time as well as in flipper tricks. I use pinball 2000 buttons which also engage early. The arcade buttons you mention may not register early enough and are not calibratable in this regard.

I had a lot of fun in the 90's so I'm not likely to notice a televisions input lag that exceeds my brain lag

Is lag really a problem these days? For some reason I thought that was behind us like rainbow DLP's or misaligned CRT images.

I don't agree. I think you'll notice. Pinball is an instant reaction game so if you go flip and find your shots late, that's lag. And a really powerful PC with nice video card can have great frame rates but still show input lag.

Well shit

How do I discover a TV's input lag? It that like the response time?

Unfortunately, it's not the same. Can you take the monitor you bought, install pinball fx2, set the max prerendered frames to 1, and test. If it plays well and lag seems ok, build your cabinet around it. If not, return it and get another and repeat. Don't forget to set game mode on the monitor.

My experience with monitors is that spots smaller ones seem to be faster or better because of minimal enhancements on small units. The bigger ones may require more tweaking. Either way....yea...might have to test out a few to know what is best regardless of price.

My office PC isn't suited for gaming

The PC for this project is but I can't find my MB driver disc & still need to load the OS

Looks like I need to get the PC loaded up instead of drinking rum & smoking cigars on my ipad lol.

So put the TV on game mode & set PinballFX to Frame1. Anything else for this initial test besides sobriety?

Close. Max prerendered frames is a video driver setting not a setting in pinball fx. Make sure you're not testing with a wireless keyboard.

Word, thanks man.

OS is 27% right now...

What video card you using?

N460GTX

Bought it 2 years ago when I decided to build a LCD pin that I never built lol.

Hope it works

Downloading PinballFX on the fresh OS now. Updated all MB drivers & bout to load GPU drivers.

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That video card should be fine.

Everything works great. No lag on the TV that I could notice & I tried lol. PC was butter smooth too.

Now I just have to build the damn thing

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Ok congratulations looks like it'll be a winner.

Nice work Curley, lol

Oops, ya just made your first mistake. The whole "I'll just test this out" never works. You'll be playing it and drinking rum all night.

Looks good though.

I really enjoy the pinball fx table Epic Quest, give it a try, it's worth playing for a bit