Hey everyone,

Just thought I’d pass on some info for those who’ve not played with this PC pinball sim of late (or ever…).  The main program (Visual Pinball) has been upgraded to VP9.05 recently which finally added support for ATI owners (less/minimal graphic glitches). If I recall, older versions of VP worked ok with ATI cards but since VP9 was released, those were no longer supported, that is, until this week.  This is a pretty big update, seems many ATI owners are pretty happy with it.  One of the reasons for this support is Destruk (a long time contributor of I don’t know, half the VPM tables ever done?) has been helping with the development of the program itself and he’s providing something many VP fans have been longing for: ongoing support.

For those not aware, if your PC rig is strong enough, VP9 added improved physics, less bugs (no more ball-through-flipper) and I believe increased texture support so the tables look a heck of a lot better.  Some new authors (and old timers  ) have been creating fantastic versions of VPM tables.  Recent titles such as Whirlwind, TTSP, MM, LOTR, etc have been great.  There have also been some nice visual wonders such as the TTSP “night” mod version by Uncle Willy which may be my new favorite (and yes, makes me wish I had the real thing ).  VP9 also added FS support for those who’ve been making the pincabs, which we’ve seen a few links at maaca, but 4:3 tables are still getting released regularly.

Note: Strength of PC Rig: my desktop pc is a 2.4ghz and it does a solid job on most tables with my cheapo AGP 512mb Nvidia 6200 (a $50 card).  For VP9, a key here is the video card, which if you want to run the table with the higher textures, needs to have a lot of video memory (some load in 256mb, but 512mb seems to run just about anything).  It doesn’t have to be a powerhouse card, for my pincab, I just bought a 1 gig 9400 GT for $65 including shipping (from Ebay) and all tables have run ok though for the desktop PC, there are a few tables I had to run in a lower resolution.  If you plan on running Future Pinball, that’s another story, my pincab runs it pretty good, but it could look better.

Anyway, if you used to be interested, have a look, the upgrades have been worth it.  In no way will this EVER replace the real thing, but the new additions certainly have improved the overall fun factor of playing video pinball.

Sparky: Remember how we talked about how it would be cool to add solenoids to improve the immersion on a virtual pincab?  Well someone’s done it and it sounds pretty good. I can’t access the link from my work, but check out Chriz’s pincab on the hyperspin forums for an example of how he did it (including a youtube vid of how it sounds compared to a real pin when using flippers).  The experience is getting better and better.

A google search reveals it’s near the end of this thread:  http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?p=50666