Quoted from Wiggles:At least from personal experience, 9 times out of 10 I feel like me liking or disliking of a specific virtual pin carries over to when I actually play the real thing.
This hasn’t been my experience at all, I feel the difference between a real pin and the virtual version are so great that it’s impossible to get a good impression of a machine by just playing the virtual version. Mind you I only play virtual pinball on gaming consoles and don’t have a lot of money soaked into something like a VR setup, but I still feel the results would be similar. But I guess if you don’t have any opportunities to play the real thing then it’s better than nothing.