Thanks for the shout out on the podcast. I think you do bring up excellent and yes, very valid points with Visual Pinball and the complexity with installing these types of programs. The end-user experience, especially for those less technically inclined can be daunting and for some, the VP experience just won't be for them. To be fair, this is not limited to pinball sims, say hello to the modding community for games like Skyrim where you can choose 10 different types of skies

. Many out there just want to load up whatever game they want and play. This is one reason why, PCMasterRace members please forgive me, consoles will always have a place in our gaming society. But that ability to modify everything daunting it may be, also have many pluses and in my opinion your podcast would be better served to dwelve on the positives as well.
I mean, one of your complaints was that there are too many
T2 pinballs to choose from? That's a negative?? Choice is rarely a negative, I mean I'm certain in a perfect alternate world, Farsight didn't lose the license, but Zen did gain it so we would have TWO commercial choice to choose from, like on consoles sports titles, the best of times were always when we had competition between different devs (hello Madden and NFL2K series). Other positives of the VPX experience: physics that are arguably better than the commercial sims, ability to customize the tables as you see fit, tables that may never see a release that are unavailable on the commercial pinsims, etc etc. For sure, it can be a chore to find what you seek but... that's also the fun part of the adventure as well, the rewards are great and many, for those willing to plunge down the rabbit hole.
Still, we all have our opinions, no one is wrong here. Where you did kind of lose me was your points about complexity (rightly so) then you go on about your adventures in creating your pinsim controller, something that came off as extremely complex, convoluted and a royal pain. Yet you are still willing to go on that adventure... why? Perhaps because the end result is worth it

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… and don't get me started about your stances on VR! grumble grumble LOL