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Visual Pinball - what front end do you use ?


Visual Pinball - what front end do you use ?  

13 members have voted

  1. 1. Visual Pinball - what front end do you use ?

    • PinballX
      4
    • Pinup Popper
      6
    • Hyperpin
      1
    • Other
      2
    • No front end
      0


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Vpinners,

 

for most of the last 6 or so years of virtual pinballing in a full sized pinball I've not run a front end. I'm starting to get annoyed with constantly handling keyboard and mouse (took me long enough eh) and am looking for a front end.

 

At the moment, there seems to be two major front ends people use - Pinup Popper and PinballX. I've not kept up with what's going on with either.

 

I've tried PinballX in the past and I used to have pinup player on the cab when it was first released (mainly cause i wanted to play Tron)

 

Just wondering of these two - which is the better option nowadays ? I don't want all the bells and whistles i just want something simple to use and update. most important would be the easiest one to setup from scratch without individual table handling - if that's even possible.

 

Cheers for your thoughts.

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Getting near to starting my vp cab. Im going all bells and whistles with pinup Popper but in your case I can highly recommend Pinball Y by mjr. Still looks polished and one of the easiest to setup. I played around with PinballY in a VM and really liked it compared to Pinball X. So much has changed in the last 3 months. As to Tron and the newly released Gaurdians...they do require more setup if not using 3 screens of 16:9 (ie DMD 16:9). The new releases are being set up for 3 screens. If youre using your same gear ...definitely try Pinball Y as it's not as resource hog as popper.

 

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Have previously used HyperPin (a long time ago) and it was cool, but Pinball X was faster and less of a resource hog. HyperPin hasn't been supported for a long time and has really dropped out of the race.

 

Pinball X was fine, I didn't have any problems with it. The disadvantage that I was was put at on my (old) system was that it wouldn't open the GUI for Pinball X as I had too many games. I don't know what it could handle, but I had to configure it all in the .XML/.INI files.

 

I went to PinupPopper and found that it operated much faster. Loading tables was still loading tables, that's not the front end speed, but the snappiness of exiting a game back to the front end was awesome. There are some really cool things such as transparent loading so once you've recorded your own screens for a game, you launch the game and from the front end until the game is loaded, you don't see a black screen you only see your video/image of the table and backglass which is really nice (but I turned it off on my cab as one of the settings was potentially causing micro ball stutter in game). This front end is genuinely nice to use. Understanding how to configure it is a bit confusing to begin with but it's very flexible, there is a lot of documentation about it and it works well with minimal issues.

 

I've never used Pinball Y. Mainly because I went to Pinup Popper and I don't see a need to move. It's interested that @acejas said that Popper is more of a resource hog than Pinball Y as I hadn't read that anywhere previously. I'd be interested to know more about what resources it's better with and if people find an increase in speed when using it as I didn't think Popper was resource hungry at all, especially when compared to HyperPin and even Pinball X.

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Have previously used HyperPin (a long time ago) and it was cool, but Pinball X was faster and less of a resource hog. HyperPin hasn't been supported for a long time and has really dropped out of the race.

 

Pinball X was fine, I didn't have any problems with it. The disadvantage that I was was put at on my (old) system was that it wouldn't open the GUI for Pinball X as I had too many games. I don't know what it could handle, but I had to configure it all in the .XML/.INI files.

 

I went to PinupPopper and found that it operated much faster. Loading tables was still loading tables, that's not the front end speed, but the snappiness of exiting a game back to the front end was awesome. There are some really cool things such as transparent loading so once you've recorded your own screens for a game, you launch the game and from the front end until the game is loaded, you don't see a black screen you only see your video/image of the table and backglass which is really nice (but I turned it off on my cab as one of the settings was potentially causing micro ball stutter in game). This front end is genuinely nice to use. Understanding how to configure it is a bit confusing to begin with but it's very flexible, there is a lot of documentation about it and it works well with minimal issues.

 

I've never used Pinball Y. Mainly because I went to Pinup Popper and I don't see a need to move. It's interested that @acejas said that Popper is more of a resource hog than Pinball Y as I hadn't read that anywhere previously. I'd be interested to know more about what resources it's better with and if people find an increase in speed when using it as I didn't think Popper was resource hungry at all, especially when compared to HyperPin and even Pinball X.

 

I'm definitely keen on a thin front end that doesn't use up much processing power, i'm only using a 660GTX in m Pincab these days, i removed the 970GTX and am using it in the lounge room for regular gaming. The 660GTX handles everything i have thrown at it so far table wise which is nice as i bought that GPU for $30 on gumtree when i removed the 970 from the pincab.

 

i think VPX is so much better optimised these days, in the early days of vpx you needed a pretty good GPU, it's good that isn't the case any more.

 

Edit - wish i knew how to merge posts, the old site used to do that automatically when you quoted another post ? Unless i am missing something.

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giphy.gif?cid=35e4938dz1cw4j13wldics45oc75vcxnd9e5x8nfirq5pres&rid=giphy.gif

 

PupPacks aren't used in Popper, PupPacks are for PinUp Player. They are the videos etc. that play during a game. There's bad juju for those that share them as well. There was a big thing about it too.

 

As far as what you need for popper, pretty much all you need once configured is wheel images (unless you want other things) but you can set Popper to record all of your Backglass and Playfield videos for you so that it looks identical in the front end as it does when you load the game. It does take a while for it to record each game if you have a lot but I just walked away and left mine to do it.

 

Edited by JustAnotherRat
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wish i knew how to merge posts, the old site used to do that automatically when you quoted another post ? Unless i am missing something.

 

Yeah, it's just a change in how the site works. New comment is a new post. If you want to put information in a previous post you need to edit it.

 

I prefer it this way as at times I wanted them to be separate and there wasn't a way to do it.

 

 

 

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giphy.gif?cid=35e4938dz1cw4j13wldics45oc75vcxnd9e5x8nfirq5pres&rid=giphy.gif

 

PupPacks aren't used in Popper, PupPacks are for PinUp Player. They are the videos etc. that play during a game. There's bad juju for those that share them as well. There was a big thing about it too.

 

As far as what you need for popper, pretty much all you need once configured is wheel images (unless you want other things) but you can set Popper to record all of your Backglass and Playfield videos for you so that it looks identical in the front end as it does when you load the game. It does take a while for it to record each game if you have a lot but I just walked away and left mine to do it.

 

 

Hmmmm, well again I am just assuming what's in the pack. i'll have a look at it when it's downloaded. it does say 'pinup popper' installation so i could be wrong about the pup packs. (i am not sure on all the terminology for pinup so i could be saying the wrong thing :unsure I'm a long way out of date with things generally.)

 

I don't see anythiing in the comments in that video about noses being out of joint, and that video has been there for more than 12 months, so i hope it's legit. I'll have a look at the contents of that pack once it's down, and if it is "contraband" i'll remove.

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@ Clint your original comment is correct :) Hyperpin - forget it. Pinball X had a lot of problems like yours - not sure if theres still an issue as everyone seems to be using pinup popper - not that I'm a follower and they are all correct but it makes sense when I'm doing all the extras and theres a plethora of info (too much?) on the setup but thats why I decided to go that way. When I used Pinball Y it was p*** easy (IMO) compared to reading the book on popper. MJR is very succinct and to the point and following his instructions made teh setup very easy. I only used half a dozen tables and was testing DOF. IF I make a mini cab, I would definitely use Pinball Y. I hope that all makes sense.

 

 

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Lost my first post...which said I put you in the wrong Jed, as Clint was right. There is a bit of confusion with all the parts of popper (videos, extra screen, etc, etc). You can use Pinup PLayed as stand alone but there is a lot of reference to the other parts which I wasnt interested back then. I visited that 6 months ago and now everything is a lot clearer. If I wanted an easy simple front end then Pinball Y is excellent for simple setup and still looks polished. Now just to find the time to build. Have all the parts ready to go - been saying that for 5 years! LOL

 

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Lost my first post...which said I put you in the wrong Jed, as Clint was right. There is a bit of confusion with all the parts of popper (videos, extra screen, etc, etc). You can use Pinup PLayed as stand alone but there is a lot of reference to the other parts which I wasnt interested back then. I visited that 6 months ago and now everything is a lot clearer. If I wanted an easy simple front end then Pinball Y is excellent for simple setup and still looks polished. Now just to find the time to build. Have all the parts ready to go - been saying that for 5 years! LOL

 

I reckon might be longer ya slacker ;)

 

Brad

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Lost my first post...which said I put you in the wrong Jed, as Clint was right. There is a bit of confusion with all the parts of popper (videos, extra screen, etc, etc). You can use Pinup PLayed as stand alone but there is a lot of reference to the other parts which I wasnt interested back then. I visited that 6 months ago and now everything is a lot clearer. If I wanted an easy simple front end then Pinball Y is excellent for simple setup and still looks polished. Now just to find the time to build. Have all the parts ready to go - been saying that for 5 years! LOL

 

LOL yeah mate i remember you saying this about your machine in some of the earliest Vpin comps :lol

 

What good is a global Pandemic if you can't isolate with your machine and get the thing done at last :D

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When I first started off in the world of virtual pinball back in 2011, it was slim pickings. Your front end choices were either Hyperpin, which was extremely underdeveloped and seemingly held together with used string and happy thoughts, or adapt an arcade frontend which meant only having it display on one screen and then trying to work out how to rotate everything.

 

Hyperpin improved VERY slightly over time but as soon as I found out about PinballX I jumped on it and still use it today. I've tried out Pinup Popper but got turned off when I discovered that the only way to remove anything from the database was to write your own SQL commands. When I raised the issue with the developers I was more or less told that this is how it was and I could move on if i didn't like it, so I did!! It's probably a lot different now, but I'm not in a hurry to find out.

 

IMO the one redeeming feature of Pinup Popper is Pinup Player, which is an add-on and can also be used with PinballX so I have that set up as well.

 

PinballY looks good and apparently overcomes some of PinballX's foibles. The main one of those is the apparent performance lag you can get in PinballX if you have a lot of tables in your game list(s) - I'm running VPX only and have around 330 tables and don't have any performance issues at all, but if you are wanting to run multiple programs and have as many tables as possible it would have an impact on performance.

 

I think what also helps for me is that i don't use the Game Manager that is built into PinballX. Instead, I use a text editor called Notepad++ to edit the XML format "database" file whenever I add or alter tables. Otherwise, using the Game Manager results in a file with a lot of bloated and unnecessary XML code that PinballX has to read through every time you start it up or resume after playing a table.

 

The clincher for me with PinballX though is an excellent third party program called PBX Recorder, which can be used to generate all your media images/videos based on the contents of your Visual Pinball XML database file(s). It is fully configurable to do images and/or videos for your Playfield, Backglass and DMD and it will let you set which media files you require, their file format and length of video(s) then automatically rotate them correctly, name each file and then save it in the appropriate media directory for PinballX to use next time you run it. The recorder can be set to do media for just a single table (handy when doing updates), all tables, or just search for and generate missing media. It can go online and grab a wheel image for each table as well, however i prefer to do that manually as it will just grab the first matching file it finds.

 

So needless to say, my vote is for PinballX.

 

Now having pushed all of that on you, what I ALWAYS say to my customers is that frontends are definitely a case of horses for courses, so try PinballX, PinballY and Pinup Popper and see which you prefer. They can all be run on the same PC and won't compromise each other in any way - just uninstall/delete the ones you don't wish to use and you'll be right to go.

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Good advice Ozstick.

 

Currently rebuilt a replacement PC for mine as the MB died. It was old anyway. I'd cloned my original Hyperpin setup anyway and that just works for me but I'm checking out replacements. PinballX looks the goods

 

Brad

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The clincher for me with PinballX though is an excellent third party program called PBX Recorder, which can be used to generate all your media images/videos based on the contents of your Visual Pinball XML database file(s). It is fully configurable to do images and/or videos for your Playfield, Backglass and DMD and it will let you set which media files you require, their file format and length of video(s) then automatically rotate them correctly, name each file and then save it in the appropriate media directory for PinballX to use next time you run it. The recorder can be set to do media for just a single table (handy when doing updates), all tables, or just search for and generate missing media. It can go online and grab a wheel image for each table as well, however i prefer to do that manually as it will just grab the first matching file it finds.

 

PinupPopper does most of this also. It will let you download online from within the configuration menu and you can record all screenshots or videos.

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I only tried Hyperpin and PinballX, i couldnt work out Hyperpin and i thought PinballX was easier to work out for newbie.

I espescailly like the game manager tool that adds tables as easy as uploading a photo.

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PinupPopper does most of this also. It will let you download online from within the configuration menu and you can record all screenshots or videos.

 

The thing to be wary of when downloading is that you don't know if the media files you are grabbing are the same file versions as what you are running.

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I only tried Hyperpin and PinballX, i couldnt work out Hyperpin and i thought PinballX was easier to work out for newbie.

I espescailly like the game manager tool that adds tables as easy as uploading a photo.

 

If you use a text editor such as Notepad++ you can open your XML database file(s) and do some editing/tweaking to get rid of a lot of "fluff". Every table that you add via Game Manager is inserted into the system's XML file with every XML tag. Many of those tags are not required and can be removed, which then means the file is read more quickly so the front end runs a little quicker.

 

Feel free to PM me a copy of your Visual Pinball.XML file and I will clean it up for you so you can try it out and see if your system then runs more efficiently.

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The thing to be wary of when downloading is that you don't know if the media files you are grabbing are the same file versions as what you are running.

 

You can view the files before using them so that side of it is fine. I always record my own tables from within Popper so it's a smoother transition anyway, but I download most of my wheel images through the downloader.

 

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If you use a text editor such as Notepad++ you can open your XML database file(s) and do some editing/tweaking to get rid of a lot of "fluff". Every table that you add via Game Manager is inserted into the system's XML file with every XML tag. Many of those tags are not required and can be removed, which then means the file is read more quickly so the front end runs a little quicker.

 

Feel free to PM me a copy of your Visual Pinball.XML file and I will clean it up for you so you can try it out and see if your system then runs more efficiently.

 

Is this something that could be scripted or does what needs to be cleaned up vary?

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Is this something that could be scripted or does what needs to be cleaned up vary?

 

It's just as easy to do manually using the "Find and Replace" feature in Notepad++. The idea would be though, that once you've culled the XML file you would then not use Game Manager again, otherwise it will just replace all the same entries you just got rid of!

 

I find it far easier to use Notepad++ to add/edit table entries as the XML file is very easy to read and each table entry has a very clear and rigid structure. It has just become another step in the process.

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