Convert pinball to virtual pinball

[BillyCarpenter]

I'm mocking up the back box. That piece of wood at the bottom is where the 2 speakers and laptop monitor will be mounted. I'm gonna wait til they arrive before I cut the holes.

See below:



backbox2.jpg

[BillyCarpenter]

acdc3.jpg

...

[BillyCarpenter]

I'm still waiting on my graphics card and some other stuff to come in. This is what's been delivered thus far.

Lot of work ahead of me.



pb2.jpg

[BillyCarpenter]

Some of my parts were delivered today...others are running late. While I'm waiting on parts, I continue to customize what I can. This is a picture of DMD cover that I cut out and covered in faux leather. I ordered the 5 inch speaker grills from Harley Davidson. The skulls should fit in nicely with the AC/DC theme.



hd2.jpg

[BillyCarpenter]

My graphics card was delivered today.


Here's my gaming PC on a budget.


Dell Optiplex 9020
500 Watt Power Supply
1TB SSD
16G Ram
I7 CPU
Nvidia GTX 1060 Graphics Card

It actually performs quite well to my surprise. It should be more than enough for virtual pinball @ 1080p.

While some parts are still due to arrive later in the week, I can now get started setting up virtual pinball.

[BillyCarpenter]

The shortage of semiconductors is affecting my ability to build my vitual pinball cabinet. And when I did find the chip I needed, it was 3x above the normal price.

With that being said, I have installed the needed software and have 2 tables up and running. Vitual pinball isn't real pinball, but it's very good. Ands this is without installing any tactical feed back by using a shaker motor, solonoids, ect.

There's about 10 pieces of software that need to be installed for a VP cabinet. That's time consuming. Fortunately, this process has been automated via a program called Baller Installer. For anyone thinking of building a VP cabinet, this is the way to go. A huge time saver.

When I can find the time, I'll be installing the tactical feedback hardware in order to make it feel like a real pinball machine. This is gonna be a long and time consuming process.

Wish me luck.

[BillyCarpenter]

I'm at the stage to where I'm learning to download and configure the different pinball tables. There are 3 different type files that are needed for each table. There's a ton of configuration that needs to be done after installing the table. And finally, you'll need to customize each table and work out any bugs.

And I didn't even mention getting everything to show up on the correct monitor. I'm using 3 monitors.

I'm doing this with the PC and monitors sitting on on work table. Once I get everything working and tested, I will then mount in the pinball cabinet. But there's a looooooooooong ways to go.


See below: the first pic is of the 2 monitors used for the backglass and DMD (keeps score). The other picture is of the playing field on a 40" monitor.


afm2.jpg


afmbg.jpg

[BillyCarpenter]

I made a lot of progress today. I got loading the tables down pat and it's now old hat. It's not easy by any stretch of the imagination but it's not rocket science, either. I downloaded more tables and they are freakin' awesome. Especially the AC/DC table. The Tron table is pretty awesome, too. It's not as simple as just downloading the tables and playing. Nope. You have to set them up and fine tune things. It was a lot to take in but worth the work.


I layed out all of my power supplies, step down transformers, contactors, solonoids and various other electronics. I need to get them to where they're being controlled by the code that was written into the games. Another mountain to climb.

[BillyCarpenter]

I took 2 giant steps forward today with my VP build. First, I discovered something called a "Pup Pack". These are software files that add music, video, and a bunch of other cool shit. Game changer. I don't even have the words to describe how cool it is.

I also learned how to map buttons to the corrosponding key on a keyboard. I played my first game of virtual pinball using buttons instead of a keyboard.

The hardest part is yet to come. I still have to install the hardware and get it communicating with the software. But I think I have a pretty good grasp on how to set it up. I hope.

[BillyCarpenter]

You know, every time I take on one of these projects, it never goes like I envision in my head. It's not necessarily any harder than I imagined...just different. There's a couple of forums on the internet that are devoted to virtual pinball. There are a lot of coders on the forums and I haven't a clue what they're talking about 99.9% of the time. And to be honest, I don't want to know. However, there are simple changes that I must make to the code. It's simply following instructions and that's it.

In one of the pinball tables, there are 77,000 lines of code. This was written by J.P. Salas and apparently he is king in the VP world.


Anyway, I've installed about a dozen tables and have them customized exactly the way I want 'em. It took a minute to learn how to navigate around the program.

I'm waiting on one more chip to arrive on Friday and then I can install the hardware.