Real Life Pinball Comparisons

Hello all!

After devouring all the tables on my iPad, I sought out a nearby arcade which has many of the actual tables (TotAN, CV, BOP, TOM). I had not played an actual pinball table in at least fifteen years.

I noticed that the real tables I found seemed to play drastically different than on Pinball Arcade. I'm assuming that some of this is the condition of the tables I played, and some of it is the imperfection of simulation. As someone with no experience, I come to you all to ask a few questions...

(1) How different can one real pinball table be from another? For example, if Arcade A has CV, and Arcade B has CV, how differently could the two machines play?

(2) Assuming two tables can play drastically differently, just how close to accurate is Pinball Arcade as a simulation? Also, does Pinball Arcade try to emulate them in pristine, brand new condition?

(3) In real pinball play, how much of a factor is the force with which you hit the flipper? On my iPad, it seems that no matter how gently I touch the screen, it propels the ball forward at full force, which was clearly not the case in the arcade.

It was an interesting experience. TotAN played nothing like the digital version. It felt almost as it the flippers were old and without much bounce. Cirqus Voltaire seemed fairly close, though I didn't hit nearly as many ramp shots as on the iPad version. I'm not sure what was going on with BOP, but I couldn't hit a shot to save my life!

Thanks in advance for your insight. As someone new to pinball in general, I'm eager to hear what you veterans have to say.

Welcome to the forums!

Nafkert said:

(1) How different can one real pinball table be from another? For example, if Arcade A has CV, and Arcade B has CV, how differently could the two machines play?

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Depending on maintenance and the amount of play each receives, they could be night and day. Besides obvious mechanical failures and issues, a dirty playfield will slow the ball down (greater friction) relative to a clean, freshly waxed field. Then you also have differences in operator settings (difficulty, extra ball/replay percentages, etc.), playfield slope, tilt settings, etc.

Nafkert said:

(2) Assuming two tables can play drastically differently, just how close to accurate is Pinball Arcade as a simulation? Also, does Pinball Arcade try to emulate them in pristine, brand new condition?

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FarSight actually restores their tables to a pristine condition before disassembling them for photography and 3D modeling, and according to their kickstarter video, they have a full-time person just for table maintenance. In terms of accuracy, it's the closest I've ever seen in a simulation, but of course there are differences. TPA's ball is a tad bouncy in some cases, which makes some ball control techniques unusually difficult, and some tables have isolated spots of weirdness in the physics - you sometimes get some pretty wicked acceleration on the ramps in Medieval Madness, for example - but I'd say 98% of the time the ball is doing more or less what a real pinball would do.

Nafkert said:

(3) In real pinball play, how much of a factor is the force with which you hit the flipper? On my iPad, it seems that no matter how gently I touch the screen, it propels the ball forward at full force, which was clearly not the case in the arcade.

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It's more a matter of timing than force (except on machines like Whirlwind with two-stage upper flippers), and this is TPA's chief area needing improvement. There are little flick passes and other nuances you can do with the flippers by quickly releasing and repressing the button, and thereby not allowing the flippers to travel all the way down and back up again. In TPA, even the slightest release and repress of the flipper controls will cause the flipper to travel its full distance, thereby launching the ball into the stratosphere. On a real machine, you wouldn't get that.

Thanks for the response.

Just an example from the Funhouse I played. After hitting the Mystery Mirror, the ball shoots out at the flipper. In Pinball Arcade there is almost always some kind of bounce, which i use to transfer to the left flipper. On the real table I played it immediately drained down the middle. I'm assuming that would be a table maintenance issue as opposed to simulation error?

Nafkert said:

Thanks for the response.

Just an example from the Funhouse I played. After hitting the Mystery Mirror, the ball shoots out at the flipper. In Pinball Arcade there is almost always some kind of bounce, which i use to transfer to the left flipper. On the real table I played it immediately drained down the middle. I'm assuming that would be a table maintenance issue as opposed to simulation error?

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Could be, although if it were my machine I'd first look at the condition of the rubber on the flippers. If the rubber is old and soft, the ball may just slide down the flipper into the drain rather than bouncing to the left.

That's the other difference between TPA and real tables - if something works in TPA, it almost always works all the time. For example, in Arabian Nights, you can hold the right flipper up and the eject from the Bazaar scoop will land in a perfect trap (after some bouncing) every time. On the real TotAN near me, that is by no means guaranteed - sometimes it works, sometimes the right sling brushes it and fires it off into the left outlane.

Just to be clear on the flippers....

Flippers on pinball machines are electro-mechanical beasties.
The buttons are either ON or OFF... there is no variable strength depending on how hard you press the buttons.

HOWEVER, the actual mechanical motion of them is controlled by an electro-magnetic solenoid coil.
Press and hold the button... the solenoid activates and the flipper moves to the "up" position.
It takes a certain length of time for this to happen.

If you QUICKLY press and release the buttons, the solenoid might not make the complete stroke of movement before the power is cut off again.
This is how on a real machine you can control the "strength" of the flip.

The speed in which a real machine's flippers respond to the power being on and off will vary considerably from machine to machine, with wear and tear and physical adjustments being made to the mechanisms. Some flippers will respond fast and strong, while others will be so weak as to hardly propel the ball up the table.

Without seeing the code behind the flippers, I can't say just how they have accounted for quick button-hits and short solenoid strokes.

In various posts by the FarSight developers, they've mentioned that they wish to make some improvements in the way the flippers work.
I believe they wanted to get all of the platforms released properly before they were going to go back and revisit some of the physics improvements.

you hit the nail on the head RetroDude. And likewise, if you're holding the flipper button down, and you release it briefly, and the press it again before the flipper goes all the ways down, you can perform some really useful taps, and short bumping to gain control of the ball. It's the subtle ability to do short/fast flipper taps that still seems to be missing from the current TPA. I too hope they can make some improvements to make the flippers feel like you're playing real pinball.

You bring up some very good points. Once thing I've notice in playing at the arcade near my office, is that when I play the ball catches air quite a bit. I've never seen this happen in TPA. I'm guessing that is just something that would be very hard to program?

Regarding ball speed....I've noticed that the 8 tables at the arcade I visit are pitched very high in the back, causing the ball to move faster and harder to hold with the flippers.

But still, TPA is probably the best simulation you can get! I love playing it

Second best - Pro Pinball, despite being over a decade and a half older, still has the most accurate physics around. TPA has come the closest to beating them, but haven't quite got there yet. PP also has a wide variety of sliders, including table age and condition. Though this does not effect the appearance, it does affect the ball performance.

Maybe it's my computer or win7, but I really don't think Pro Pinball is as good as TPA. I will agree that the flippers are a bit more realistic (except for the sound), but the ball physics aren't that great- VP is a tad bit better.And I guess since I didn't play it when it came out, there is no real connection to it for me, so the themes feel a bit generic. If TPA can just do some tweaking on the physics of the Flippers then it will be the best pin sim ever...

Animator_pin_fan said:

If TPA can just do some tweaking on the physics of the Flippers then it will be the best pin sim ever...

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This is so true - the flipper action is what is keeping it back.
VP physics, like the tables themselves, seem to vary from table to table. Uncle Reamus's Momentum Mod is especially awesome.

Richard B said:

Second best - Pro Pinball,.....

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When I win the EuroMillions jackpot I shall be purchasing the rights to PP and then having a word with Jersey Jack, imagine a real live Timeshock!

I just watched the RBION video on the PAPA blog, and the guy kept doing incredibly fine tap-passes during multiball, something that would impossible in TPA right now (at least, from what I can tell in the iOS version).

On a sidenote, I love the relative reliability of the physics in TPA compared to real life. As much as I love actual pinball machines, I think the added randomness would annoy me in the long run. I mean, pinball can be random enough on TPA as it is It sometimes blows my mind how unbelievably complex a real pinball machine is, and how much it relies on always being in the most pristine condition possible. I´m not really playing for score yet (I´m at the phase where I totally enjoy just playing with the ball, practicing shots and learning the table), but even though TPA might not be completely realistic yet, at least the conditions stay the same in the game... that is, until an update changes things. For instance, I don´t think my old scores on CV are comparable on the post-update CV, the way it just got a lot more drain-happy

A little bit of randomness wouldn't go amiss. I notice it particularly on scoop kickouts. It's still 90% consistent behaviour.

Flippers vary a lot from table to table. There are different strength coils for a start and a whole host of mechanical elements to take into account. Flipper coils also have two separate coils - a power coil and a holding coil. When you hit the flipper button when the flipper is down, the power coil snaps it into the up position. Once in the up position the power coil shuts off and the holding coil switches on. The holding coil is much weaker and often if a fast ball hits the up flipper it will move down a little before springing back to the up position. This can obviously cause the ball to bounce off the flipper in a slightly unpredictable way.

If the holding coil is very weak, a fast ball can even push a flipper so far down that the power coil re-triggers. It's this juggling of power and holding coils that the best players can use to trap and precisely control the ball.

Raven said:

You bring up some very good points. Once thing I've notice in playing at the arcade near my office, is that when I play the ball catches air quite a bit. I've never seen this happen in TPA. I'm guessing that is just something that would be very hard to program?

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I really don't think this should be that hard to program with a proper knowledge of physics and a well implemented physics engine. There are numerous open source physics engines, simulations, etc. available online as well to everyone.

It's all a matter of physics. If you know physics, and your tables are properly programmed to abide by these laws (and are actually correctly modeled in 3 dimensions with respect to several physical properties), then the effect you're discussing should be relatively easy for a physicist/programmer to implement in full.

I played last weekend at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show and I couldn't do anything right. TPA is so much easier....

IMO, I'm not even sure if TPA's engine is actually computing the z coordinate of the ball at all. The whole game feels extremely linear; like a game of air hockey where the puck never leaves the table, not even for a brief moment.

It's one thing if the processing power of the iOS devices is limiting this computation (which I kind of find doubtful anyways), but the truth is that it's all the same on the PS3 as well.

Meh.

starck said:

IMO, I'm not even sure if TPA's engine is actually computing the z coordinate of the ball at all. The whole game feels extremely linear; like a game of air hockey where the puck never leaves the table, not even for a brief moment. It's one thing if the processing power of the iOS devices is limiting this computation (which I kind of find doubtful anyways), but the truth is that it's all the same on the PS3 as well.

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The engine has to determine the z-coordinate of the ball - otherwise the ball would never roll back down a ramp after a failed shot, and the up-kicker on RBION wouldn't work.

As far as why the ball very rarely leaves the playfield (the occasional airball does happen on TPA), look at the making-of video on YouTube again, specifically the part where Bobby is showing the collision meshes for various parts of RBION. Note that they are simplified compared to the actual objects. They have to do this simplification to avoid making the collision detection calcs take too long and slow down the game, but the side effect is that all the little projections and complex geometries of real objects that cause balls to catch air on real tables are gone.

PinFreak68 said:

I played last weekend at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show and I couldn't do anything right. TPA is so much easier....

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Yep, nudging a physical table is a lot different than tapping a screen or shifting an analog stick a few millimeters. If it makes you feel any better, the high scores in my signature are about 10x what I can do on the real tables, although part of that is due to the specials in TPA being extra balls instead of credits, which inflates scores. And then there's the question of how the tables at Northwest were setup - the tables on TPA are mostly on their factory settings with outlanes that as far as I can tell are about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way open (yes, even on the new CV). Your tables may have been on harder settings with the outlanes wide open, especially if there was a tournament being played on those same tables.

Otherwise, it's just a matter of practice and experience. Doesn't take all that long, and your play of TPA will help a little on the corresponding real table by giving you a basic idea of where the shots are, how the table generally behaves, etc. I've been putting a couple hours a week into the local TZ and my average score has gone from about 100M to 400M over the course of two months. Last game I had 12 of the door panels lit, hopefully I'll be able to crack Lost in the Zone soon and get a 700M+ game in.

agreed

you just cant knock around the reall pinball machine as much as you can a virtual... plus methinks that the nudge in TPA really moves the machine far and doesnt even give you a warning... i know if i moved a real table like that i'd probably tilt it

but ya, thats not really an issue if its easier than rl pinball... and i do hope that the tournament settings are harder with no extra balls, less/no nudging and so forth, tough

now just fix the bugs, and eventually improve the physics engine coz its a little too predictable now

Good point Serenseven; though the abilities of current consoles/computers (as opposed to mobile phones/idevices, etc.) should be able to handle more than a simplification of the playfield objects, if the engine is designed and implemented correctly, IMO.

(Edit: I see I've repeated some of the answers already given. Should have read the whole thread before replying.)

Nafkert said:

(1) How different can one real pinball table be from another? For example, if Arcade A has CV, and Arcade B has CV, how differently could the two machines play?

Click to expand...

Depends on the complexity of the table, but any two tables could play quite differently depending on their state of repair. It can also be affected by something as simple as getting the table angle right. Newer tables have built-in levels with marks that indicate the table is at exactly the intended angle (it's around 6 or 7° on the handful of tables whose manuals I've skimmed through).

A lot of modern tables (built after 1990 or so) are extremely complex beasts, and there's a ton of stuff that can go wrong with them. For example, I've played on Medieval Madness tables where the drawbridge is broken and won't open, or the ball keeps getting stuck in the Merlin's Magic saucer. That particular table actually even has special settings that can be used to make the game playable when some part like the drawbridge is broken (so you can still "destroy the castle" even when the castle is completely hosed — this actually makes the game easier, as it's quite a bit easier to hit the drawbridge when it's closed than strike the gate or enter the castle when open.)

Nafkert said:

(2) Assuming two tables can play drastically differently, just how close to accurate is Pinball Arcade as a simulation? Also, does Pinball Arcade try to emulate them in pristine, brand new condition?

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Farsight has a guy whose full time job it is just to maintain their collection of real tables. I'm sure the simulations are based on well-maintained tables where everything works properly. That's really only a small part of getting the simulation right, though. Aside from the machine itself (and the rules that govern the table), it seems incredibly complicated to get all the physics right. Generally speaking, it gets progressively more expensive (CPU-wise) to get a physics simulation closer and closer to reality. You have to impose some constraints to keep the resource usage under control, which means trying to find the sweet spot between absolute accuracy and reasonable performance. It's a hard job, and I'm glad I don't have to do it.

I do notice there are a few expert techniques that don't seem to be possible at all in Pinball Arcade, such as drop stops or flip stops. I also have a lot of trouble doing a rapid release-and-retrigger as the ball rolls toward the top of a raised flipper in order to give it the tiniest little pop and bump it over to the other flipper. The flipper response seems a little different on each table, though I can't be exactly sure.

Nafkert said:

(3) In real pinball play, how much of a factor is the force with which you hit the flipper? On my iPad, it seems that no matter how gently I touch the screen, it propels the ball forward at full force, which was clearly not the case in the arcade.

Click to expand...

I think this is just your imagination. Flipper buttons are just on/off switches that supply voltage to the flipper mechanisms. The buttons have no way of sensing how hard you're hitting them. The force with which the ball is propelled is entirely a matter of timing. There might have been some early, purely-mechanical flippers before the advent of electrically-controlled flippers, but then you're talking about games produced before the 1940s, which you've probably never seen in any arcade.

That said, if you really whack the buttons hard, you're also bumping the table a bit too, and that can affect play (though it won't affect how hard the ball is being hit). There are expert techniques that involve hitting a button really hard to perform a simultaneous nudge & flip. With Pinball Arcade, you'll just have to practise triggering the flipper and doing a nudge at the same time (easiest if you switch to "shake" for nudge).