Request Darker room lighting. Matching that of Stern Pinball Arcade

I've posted this a couple of times in the patch update areas, but its either going unseen or there isn't much interest in it.
I just think the lighting looks so much more impressive when the table gamma is set lower. Otherwise it just looks a bit washed out.

So would it be possible to make the room ambience go a bit darker, as seen with that of Stern Pinball?
With it set to the lowest amount it ends up looking too bright and a bit washed out. This changed a few versions ago.

Here's a comparison of Ghostbusters, both with room brightness as low as possible (the PA version doesn't look much different from the full brightness version!)

Stern (version 1.04NA)


Pinball Arcade (version 1.24NA)


Also, after playing both one after another, it's become quite obvious that the Stern version of Ghostbusters feels much more responsive in comparison. The flipper action on the Pinball Arcade feels a bit lagged compared to the perfect Stern version.

Videos...
Stern version [1.04NA] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e7pcdQgmqM
Pinball Arcade [1.24NA] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KQQJ0DBMFA

Thanks.

Bump.

Nobody else wants the lights on Pinball Arcade to look more like Stern Arcade?

It's always +1 to have the slider have a better effect and "dark" should indeed mean dark.

You have no idea how many times I have asked for the room to be essentially lights off when the slider is at zero. We need [MENTION=7069]FarSight_Matt[/MENTION] to take a look and see this post.

Hello. I can make specific tables look darker, but as far as making PBA look like Stern - I don't have control over that.

FarSight_Matt said:

Hello. I can make specific tables look darker, but as far as making PBA look like Stern - I don't have control over that.

Click to expand...

I think the main thing is having the ambient light on all tables at complete black when slider is set to zero. 50% should be a room at night but with lights on, and 80% should be daytime with sun shining. As it stands now, I don't have a single table turned above 50% and on most the first thing I do is crank the slider down to 20% just so I can get the effect of lights even happening.

When it comes to the bulbs slider, at 50% the image on an insert should still be legible and not blown out. At 20% the GI lights should actually let you see the glowing filament, while at 80% things should look like LEDs on blast. The one thing that messing with the bulbs should not affect are the strobe flashers on say Attack From Mars or the neon tube of Cirqus Voltaire. Those are tables that with the light slider set to zero and the bulb brightness as 50, it should be difficult to play as that is the whole point of those modes in the games.

I've noticed that after the last update, many tables are actually lighter than they were before. Where I was around 40% room brightness, now I have to set them around 10-15%.....and some are still too bright at 0%.

I remember playing many of the tables in dark arcades and theaters and bars. I always like to make all the tables look like I am in those darker environments. Brings out the nostalgia in me.

FarSight_Matt said:

Hello. I can make specific tables look darker, but as far as making PBA look like Stern - I don't have control over that.

Click to expand...

Awesome. Darker would definitely make them look better.
Tables like Stern's Ghostbusters table are absolutely gorgeous when the gama is correct, the colors are vivid, and the room can be set to dark.
Let's put those GlowBalls™ to work!

Use this as a template.

I've said it countless of times, the lighting is off when it comes to the console versions. I can't speak for Xbox One, but i'm sure they have the same issue...

Truth be told and I'm sure they will never admit this as I've tried asking straight up, but I really do think the PS4 and XB1 versions are simply ports from the last gen console versions, just slightly updated...

I think that's why all the issues and maybe the reason it took longer to update the console versions... Especially the newer tables because they didn't have ports of those versions from last generation....

They probably could have saved more time and more importantly got the current console versions looking more like how the PC and Mobile versions look if they would have just taken a little extra time to build a whole new version of the game from the ground up that utilizes the current consoles superior hardware versus just gen consoles...

This is why Stern Pinball Arcade looks a little better then the regular PBA on PS4 and XB1. While I'm sure they used as much coding as they could so they could cut corners, but for the most part, i'm sure most of it was new... Even the physics are a tiny bit better and the lighting and graphics are a lil better and more closer to the PC version...

I get the PC version is going to always look better, BUT, let's be honest, the current consoles are not that far off from how games look on PC right now... Plus all you have to do is take one look at Pinball FX 3 and you can right away see a HUUUUGGGGEEEE difference...

I will admit that Pinball FX 2 on current gen consoles didn't look all that much better from last gen... It was kind of like how PBA is now compared to last gen and current gen... It had slightly improved graphics and lighting/shading, etc... but for the most part it was about the same.... Then they worked on a whole new version of their game actually utilizing current gen consoles and utilizing what they can do and perform and it's 100 times better than the last version and shows just how much better Pinball can look on current consoles...

I would say PB FX3 looks just as good if not better than what PBA looks on PCs and Mobile...

Like usual it comes down to money... Zen obviously cares about the product they produce and about their fans and customers that they took the time and money to build a whole new version to utilize current consoles power.... Farsight just figured they could port over the game from last gen consoles and upscale the graphics... Then ran into trouble when some of the newer tables wasn't already out on PS3 or 360 and had to kind of make them for current consoles, but I hace a feeling that just used ports from the DX 9 version on PC, whichever is the version that's a lower graphics on the PC side and tried to add lighting to it and that's why when you adjust the lighting it's not really making a difference...

I guarantee Farsight wouldn't have lost as many fans and customers as they have if they just put more time and money into making a whole new version with a new UI, etc... for current consoles and actually learning how to utilize the hardware to its fullest potential on current consoles just like how Zen did... Not only would they have gotten back the people that left and gave up on Farsight, but they must definitely would have gotten more new customers and they would stay longer which means they would end up spending more money buying the tables from the past and the newer ones coming....

Then now with the loss of the license of the biggest and most popular tables on PBA, we'll never get better versions of those tables... That SAY they are going to continue to update and fix bugs on those tables, but that say a lot of things and I definitely wouldn't hold my breath waiting to see if they actually do what they "say"...

It's really hard to see farsight completely waste what they had... Pinball is just getting more popular and now when people start getting into it and learn about the being digital versions of real life tables, they are only going to get a fraction of the tables and majority of them are going to be the god awful Gottlieb ones or other mediocre ones... Plus when they look up reviews or look at Pinball FX3 vs PBA, those new people are going to go with Zen... Just one look at Farsights Facebook page and you can clearly see there are more disgruntled upset fans/customers then there is satisfied happy customers....

I know I definitely won't be getting PBA on any other platform going forward because we know we won't be able to transfer our currently owned tables from like say PS4 to PS5 and even if they did, it'll probably just be the tables they have the license of at that time and if it's still like it is now, then that means none of the Williams or Bally tables will be able to come over or go over I should say... And more importantly it would probably be a port of the PS4 hybrid version they have now just like how they ported the PS4 from the PS3 version...

Though I've been wrong before and I would love to be wrong about this and would love for Farsight to show how wrong I was... I honestly don't think I'll even get any of the season 8 tables since most of them are going to be ports from Stern PBA which I already have and as we've seen, the SPBA versions will be the better looking ones...

That's why I haven't posted as much because I don't really play anymore... I used to play daily and was a part of a Facebook group that has weekly tournaments I guess you could say and if you looked at my Facebook uploads you would see tons of screenshots uploaded to show my score to post in the group.... I was even going to give it another shot when the new season started because I just couldn't play when the lighting was so bad and the bugs, but it's still frustrating to play and I spend more time pausing the game trying to adjust the lighting to make it look as good as I can...

Oh well, if only Farsight actually listened and cared about their fans/customers...

spoonman said:

Awesome. Darker would definitely make them look better.
Tables like Stern's Ghostbusters table are absolutely gorgeous when the gama is correct, the colors are vivid, and the room can be set to dark.
Let's put those GlowBalls™ to work!

Use this as a template.

Click to expand...

It would be nice... While the glow balls kind of helped, they just didn't have that "glow" punch to them like they do on PC... That's why it's frustrating because we KNOW the PS4 and I'm sure XB1 can look 100 times better than they do now...