Thanks for the info on your experience with Xtreme. Iam looking at ordering one from them soon. but good to know about the wait time. I know they have expanded to US opening a business selling their Arcade Multicades. but not sure if they are selling the Virtual yet. the plus side buying from Australia is the US dollar is worth more so you get the machine cheaper then buying it in the US.

They have no plans to build Vpins from their US business side, that will be multicades only unfortunately. The wait was worth it for the build quality and programming that goes into these machines. Typically it costs $1600-2k for sea freight shipping from Australia to USA, something to keep in mind when comparing prices.

12+ month wait is honestly only thing holding me back. If we were talking 6-8 months I could patiently wait but damn 12+ is tough. Interest can wane in that amount of time in favor of a new real pin.

With you being in PA please look into Lab Arcades as they are very close to you. I am sure Patrick's wait time is up there as well, but local support to me would be huge plus and he involved very much within the VPIN community.

Thanks for the lead, product looks nice and just reached out!

Journey into the world of Wipeout HD in this table brought to life with incredible sound design, and flow in Zone Fury.

I thought you were referring to 1993 Gottlieb Wipeout - such a fun pin. I expect that the VPX version is fun as well.

Relatively short lead time but told me 10k-14k. Yikes

I built mine from a Lab Arcades flat pack (laminated birch, not MDF), but there are plenty of resources out there to save a lot of labor costs yourself. Just depends if you wish it to be turn key with all the bells and whistles or not? For me I did not do all the LED arrays or solenoids, just SSF and basic DOF control. Researching and finding what you want will help you fine tune your number a lot.

I got a great deal on a Ultra, give Roland a call-he is a great guy and fun to talk to. May ask if he has any 6.0 units on sale now that 7.0 is out.

https://www.recroomworld.com/UltraVP_Info.html

We are trying a new content to help you get up to speed on the history of pinball. Up first, our creator series starting with the legendary artist and pinball contributor, Python Anghelo.

this place out of Canada builds some nice machines. the guy will customize how you like it. might buy from here since closer for me than the long wait and shipping costs from Australia.

http://www.woodstockcustomarcades.com/

Says link is not available?

I have to say, that's pretty scandalous, in my opinion. I've been building these for over 13 years now, and I know what goes into them.

If you're good with doing some of the work, which I suggest you do, so you know how to maintain and fix it, from VirtuaPin, you can get a professionally scratch-built cabinet to your specifications, FULLY TRIMMED OUT with genuine parts, tempered playfield glass and backglass, speaker panel with acrylic, AND your monitors installed for you (you provide) for about $2K. That $8K - $12K difference is for what exactly? WOW.

For the record, UltraVP cabinets are just the China-built you've all been warned about gutted and new components added.

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Yeah I agree, thought it was outrageous with how inexpensive all the components are these days.

didn't Brad from VpCabs sell his company to Ultra Vp.? Ultra Vp offers 1500+ tables on their machines. their just as guilty ripping off the vp community.

Correct, he did.

I think I'm the only one that actually takes the time to walk people through the installation process these days. I network with their cabinet and SHOW them how to do it. It's the only honest way, and it takes time. Everyone else, to my knowledge, has been shipping with everything already installed for years. It's lazy, and it's BS.

Thanks for the info. good to know you offer that service. I know how to install the tables and software it's just puppacks stuff I don't get how to do. do you show how to install that? I sold my cab a few years ago. so been out of the loop and haven't been up to date with all the new cool tables.. the most frustrating thing with VP is the constant table updates. you download a table then there's always updates or someone modding or putting their spin on the table. if your able to build a machine like Xtreme. I would be interested in buying from you. I like the bigger dmd display screens. whats the wait time on your machines? don't you run the VpF site as well? its ok if you don't wanna say.. Thanks

I help with frontends, too. Just downloading your frontend of choice and having it ready is all I ask.

Not sure what you mean by build like xtreme? Lol I've been doing this longer than anyone, and we can build anything. We do LCD DMD displays, if that's what you mean. We're running 4-5 months at the moment.

Yes, I'm the administrator at VPForums. I've been active in this hobby for almost 19 years now.

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here's my homebuilt virtual pin I'm 98% done. I just need to wire up more stuff to the coin door (like service and test switches, and coin drops) and then cut my backbox monitor bezel. it's been in my basement waiting to be built since the beginning of COVID back in 2000 but I just started playing weekly tournaments and figured this would be a great way to learn the rules on all the games I never played before, works great for that and plays pretty nice in general I was surprised how well the Virtual pins played.

I bought the LoTR cabinet from someone about an hour away that had an empty cabinet that looked like it just came out of a box... I still am amazed to this day, not a scratch on that cabinet or any fading or anything. that was a lucky find as I think building the cabinet would have been way harder than anything else. besides decasing the monitor and making customer "lift/tiltable" monitor mount out of Steel tubes from home depot and 3D printed connectors for the tubes. really that was the hardest part.

I also need to find a front end, if anyone knows of a good front end please let me know.

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Well, it turns out that SIZE DOES MATTTER! Mine is this big...

Join us live for an incredible show, and be one of the first downloads as we release the table during the live stream! Staff from VPW team will be joining us to trash my play ability, and discuss the table development.

When: Saturday 3pm Eastern (September 16th 2023) Where: https://www.twitch.tv/gameclubcentral

I went down to try it, good guy, seems to make the pins in such a way to reduce failure rates. As such you aren't getting high end, there's no solenoids, so the feedback isn't great. I also think he put the screen in the wrong place, too high, so the pancake quality comes off a little too much.

Honestly speaking, it convinced me that buying a pre-built machine doesn't get you far enough to justify the cost. Having said that if you are set on buying pre-built just be ready to modify what you get.

Thanks Stubborngamer for your review. very helpful. I think with any company or builder you buy from you will always find something wrong or want better. Has anyone seen the new Atgames Legends 4k Pinball coming out. it looks more like a pinball than their first production. but could use some more improvements.

Noah what I was asking you if you could build a machine like Xtremes? I would like a 22" display dmd HD Monitor. just look at his site . he lists all the components in the machines. premium model

https://vpuniverse.com/files/file/15933-godzilla-sega-1998-vpw/

No problem.

Interesting that Zen is partnering with atgames, jumping ship from arcade 1up. Wonder if the update debacle that opened up a way to easily mod the machines has something to do with it.

Honestly I think these cheap options are a good starter points for vpin. These expensive high end builders can't really compete with what atgames is doing. Having said that, probably will still have bad flipper lag and bad feedback by default. But you can always mod it and hook up your own computer to get around that. I'm assuming Atgames will still make that process easy to do.

Thanks your opinion. interesting points. i kinda feel bad for the people that bought the 1st production of the ALP. all the extra money spent modding the machine. I would have been interested in the machine if the dmd display would have been bigger. . not a bad price . but would rather have a full size machine

We've built a backbox to house a 43" monitor. Yes, you read that right. A 43" backbox monitor! Lol

Pretty sure we could handle a 22" DMD monitor.

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Nice! Wow 43". never seen that big of screen for backglass.

Love it

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If you are not aware, we do a virtual pinball news show every week on YouTube. We cover the new weekly topics for VPX/FP and more, but also bring you table releases for the last week in a recap.

This week we tackle the AtGames 4K hype, New Tables for the week, and more:

Join us on an adventure far far away with Episode 1, it was the second Pinball 2000 table, the first being Revenge from Mars. Ryguy and others have recreated this the best they could in VPX. 10.8 is required.

Freakin' classic fun!

It doesn't come with games on it. You have to pay an extra $300 for them so its not free? Also you get a very detailed and easy to follow videos on how to do the updates yourself even for people who don't use computers. They take you through step by step slowely. I don't see how building one is going to help you if something was to stop working which is rare? Not any more than a new real pinball machine which is way more complicated. I don't buy the argument.

You're missing context ... "Ultra Vp offers 1500+ tables on their machines. their just as guilty ripping off the vp community."

They're SELLING the community's FREEWARE.

It's that simple.

That looks quite a bit different than the Williams JPOP layout.

It has nothing to do with the actual P2k game. This is why I dislike virtual games. Why would the creator of the table call it something it is not, other than to mislead? This is NOT a re-created SWEP1 P2k game. Never mind the holograms that are missing - I get that this part would be difficult/impossible to implement in the current VPX framework. My issue is that the layout is completely different.

Come on.

Fellow Kentuckian . . . I've been seriously thinking of getting an Ultra VP pin but know absolutely nothing about them. For many years I had over 20 of the very best pinball machines out there and knew a lot about repairs, etc. A fellow Pinsider who is an expert at repairing pins said this is such a different animal, I would be making a mistake. He talked me out of buying one. He is also a computer expert. He said I will enjoy it for awhile until Windows decides to do an update and then mess it all up. He said it would take someone with his skills to go deep into the computer itself and restore everything and re-configure it correctly. Even though I offered to pay him if something like that would happen, he says he doesn't want any part of working on one of these. He thinks they are a rip off because in a few short months, you are up a creek with the computer changing things. I don't really understand it. It seems to me if you are not connected to the internet, there would be no way Windows could do an update. And if updates to the game would come out, I don't think I would really care to go through the trouble of updating anything.

If you have the time, can you explain to me how you cannot keep the computer connected to Windows? Surely, you don't have to be on the internet to operate one of these pins? I guess the bottom line is, if I buy one of these, am I going to eventually not be able to use it because of Windows updates or some other kind of changes that happen that is out of my control and ruins how it all works?

Thanks so much!
Mike in Bowling Green . . . WAY down south of you!!!

An easy way to describe it simply while admittedly not being the full picture: Take it "offline" disable windows updates, turn of wi-fi, etc Then it would be a snapshot in time of whatever is on it.

Or figure out how to load things yourself, learn about tweaking, changing the POV, adjusting various things line ROM volume vs SSF volume, update Visual pinball, future pinball, FX, etc. This is the only way you will be able to stay on top of all the new stuff constantly happening. See all those videos that Marty (Smaug) posts? All the cool stuff in there will require doing. Not many people are going to want to just do all this for you. It takes time.

That is what I was thinking . . . just take it offline. What a thorough and great response! Thank you so much for posting that!!! I'm beginning to understand . . .

Mike in Kentucky

Mike,

If you can find a well built machine locally that has SSF installed I suggest you give it a try. I'm very impressed with how immersive the experience is. I have a real EM sitting next to a full size pincab and switching between them feels like moving from one machine to another in an arcade.

This is just my opinion but without SSF virtual pinball is a video game about pinball. With SSF it is a pinball table (potentially several hundred pinball tables) that happens to have a video based deck. Flipper control, nudging, ball spin, tactile feedback and more are there in a pretty realistic fashion. Sounds and vidoe can be better than the real counterpart.

Two of the best benefits are:
1) I get to play games that I would probably never see in the wild. I ended up purchasing a real Capersville as a result of playing it virtually. I never would have discovered that table otherwise.
2) I feel less need to own every cool machine when I can get a feel for them, close enough to real to scratch the itch, at the click of a few buttons.

As for your concern about updates you have some options.
1) Get the games you want installed and leave it offline.
2) Find someone who will maintain the software for a fee, they are out there. I haven't had any experience of updates causing me to lose anything in the six months I've had mine. I play it every day, download and install new games nearly every day.
3) Learn to load games. VPX games for the most part involve downloading and unzipping two files then adding them to your tables folder. Total time required less than three minutes per table.

Whichever way you go you'll have one machine that many find close enough to real on which you can play your top 50 tables at will. A win in my book.

Thanks for typing all of that!!!

I'm so new at even understanding the different forms of this machine, I'm afraid I might buy the wrong thing. Obviously, I'd like to keep the price low, but of course you get what you pay for. I'm looking at a used one right now here locally for $3,100 and all it says is it is a Virtual Pinball machine with 900 games on it. There is nothing else in the ad, so I'd have to call.

ABVIDEOARCADES Virtual Pinball is priced close to what I'd like to pay, $3,999. It says: 1300 PINBALL Games in 1 AND 307 classic 80s games with trackball. The lockdown bar is FILLED with buttons and all kinds of things used in those arcade games of old. I'm not interested in a trackball or all those gadgets.

I see one on eBay for $6,000 but it doesn't appeal to me visually, and I sure don't like that price!

I saw one real cheap but it only had Gottlieb games on it and I absolutely do not like those pins. I'd love to have one that has 1990 pins and up, like Williams, Sega, Data East, Jersey Jack, and especially Stern. I have owned Fish Tales, Junk Yard, Medieval Madness, Walking Dead, Dracula, Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, Goldeneye, Lord of the Rings LE, Wizard of Oz Emerald City Limited Edition . . . so you can see what I like. If you can steer me to any reputable manufacturer and pin title, I'd appreciate it. I don't know if it is even permissible on here for you to recommend one to me, but I wish you could just steer me to a brand name with that SSF you mentioned. If you don't want to do it on here, then you can PM me on Pinside and I will certainly see it come in.

That was very nice of you to write all that information.
Mike in Kentucky

Mike if you can manage the DIY approach, you will get a much better quality product and learn at the same time.

Flat pack (birch/maple ply) + cabinet parts (if you do not wish to go flat pack they offer trimmed cabs as well):

Lab Arcades, https://labarcades.com/
Virtual Pin, https://virtuapin.net/

Hardware/Interface Parts:

Cleveland Designs, https://www.clevelandsoftwaredesign.com/pinball-parts
Arnoz, https://shop.arnoz.com/en/

PC and Screens are the last thing you would need to get going and start putting it together.

Follow the bible, http://mjrnet.org/pinscape/BuildGuideV2/BuildGuide.php

Even if you want to buy an all in one system, reading the bible to learn all the terminology and options is a good idea. The companies above will help you realize the value in quality products and the support that comes with them. There are more out there but for my personal vpin I went with flat pack from lab arcades, cabinet parts from pinball life, and hardware from Cleveland Designs. Good luck!
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EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT RESPONSE!!!

I'm in no hurry, so that will give me plenty to study and understand how these pins work.

I left out some things in my earlier posts. I was a pretty seasoned pinball owner and repair person, and the reason I sold off all my pins in a big hurry was because of a sudden serious heart condition. I am 76. I figured it would be best to unload all my pins (at a nice profit, too!) and not leave them to my wife to dispose of. She would have known NOTHING of their value and would most likely have been ripped off.

I had two heart procedures exactly this week, one year ago. I have now recovered very well and am out of the danger zone. I've regained a great amount of my health and I'm strong. I'm back to 98%. But now I am SEVERELY missing my pins! I don't want to go back to buying pins again. I keep thinking this virtual pin thing would satisfy all my pinball itches and would only leave just one to sell in case I quickly "departed".

I am looking forward to researching all those things you posted!

Wonderful info!!!!!!!!
Mike in Kentucky

wow I never saw that build guide before, very cool. Though I was lucky enough to get an empty cabinet from someone, building the cabinet by far would be the hardest part and it's great that others sell pre made kits.

That said the hardest part of building it in my opinion was actually physically mounting the monitor. I built a cab like 5 years ago and the monitor mount was just awful so I ripped it out and it sat unused and unfinished until a few months ago when I built a really easy to build mount. I didn't see any info in that guide on how to actually mount the monitor so I though I"d share my solution.

it is something I made of basically just steel tubing from home depot and a few 3d printed connectors and 3d printed jigs for drilling and 4 cabinet shelf tabs from homedepot.
If you have trouble mounting the monitor I'd be glad to share my info for this (would be wiling to even print t he 3d parts for you)

good luck, as subseamonkey mentioned you can get a really nice crazy high end system for next to nothing if you build it yourself.
If you have computer issues and don't feel comfortable, find the local community college or regular college and post a note for help from a computer science or Information technology student, you can probably pay them something like $20-425 a hour for a hour or two to get you setup or help you if you have problems.

Vpin news for the week! New tables, Pinball FX news, WIP tables, and more.

https://vpuniverse.com/files/file/16101-guns-n-roses-vpw-edition/
https://vpuniverse.com/files/file/16100-g-sound-guns-n-roses-data-east-1994-vpw-special-edition/
https://vpuniverse.com/files/file/13182-guns-n-roses-data-east-1994-alt-b2s-with-full-dmd/

VPW 50th table is out!

Wanna see a new table tonight? Join me with VPX author TastyWasps live, and make sure you eat your spinach!

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So this is a pretty big deal, and yes it worked for me. Huge performance improvements. I'm running OTG Vpx on a slighly modded ALP and it's made a massive difference in play. Games look better and the flipper lag is highly mitigated by using this, seriously more people need to try it.

Essentially run 10.8 VPX and set it to use Frame Pacing, the new feature added in 10.8. Set renderings both to 0. Also make sure your running the 64bit GL version of VPX. It totally worked for me. Now TOTALLY no flipper lag, of course not, it also seems to depend on some tables which means they likely need some graphic tweaking, but games that felt unplayable due to lag on the flippers, now play like a dream, super snappy flippers. I'll load up 10.7, runs like crap. Run the 10.8 64bit GL version with Frame Pacing on (turn off VR, its on by default), and it's night and day difference between em now.

To note, 10.8 is still beta, I had a couple crashes in some games, but the improvements in performance were huge for me. Frame Pacing is gonna be a huge benefit for those with slower performing systems.

Beat Bluto in the face for me will ya? TastyWasps brings us Popeye Saves the Earth!

https://vpuniverse.com/files/file/16143-popeye-saves-the-earth/