My experience with both Baller(VPX) and Pinball FX on a rebuilt Arcade1Up Cabinet..

[mkarasek]

Now that the dust has settled from my rebuild of my old Arcade1UP (AFM) Cabinet. (Display backlight went out)  I thought I would share my thoughts on both installing VPX (via Baller) and Pinball FX (via Steam)

 

Pinball FX :

Positives:

1.  Very easy to get setup and running. (Especially now that it no longer requires you to send in a picture of your cabinet.) 

2.  Easy DOFinx/B2S support 

3.  SSF Support is also easy to setup.

4. Do not need to be technical to get things working. 

5. Built in online tournaments, leaderboards, etc. (if you are into that sort of thing)

Negatives:

1. Table support is limited to what is/has/will be released by Pinball FX team. 

2. Amount of "customization" very limited.   You can move the tables to different views but does not have any fine grained controls for this or other options (difficulty comes to mind for example)

3. You get what they release...  Example:  Elivra Scared Stiff does not have the spider wheel spin on the Backglass. (Same table in VPX does). 

 

VPX:

Positives:

1.  Loads and loads of tables "freely" available. (https://virtualpinballspreadsheet.github.io/tables) 

2. Most tables have many options to configure size, position, etc.. 

3. Using Baller for install:  Very easy to get things up and running. 

4. Community support, This forum and others.. 

5.  Editor available in case you want to start modding/creating your own tables.

Negatives:

1. Most tables have many options to configure size, position, etc..  (For someone who just wants to play this can be a bit of a hurdle to get over, so it is both a positive and negative) 

2. Not a simple process to just "download" a new table. 

Need to know where to put the table, remember to rename the backglass same as table, get the correct rom,  setup the table for your playfield, etc..  (Shrink it and adjust the size, etc..).  Add it to frontend, etc.. 

Both can live on the same cabinet with either Pinball FX under Pinup Popper or as separate programs.  

NOTE: I chose separate as I did not want to muck with adding my Pinball FX tables to Popper.