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Is Arcade2TV-XR Our Dream Pinball Controller? (part 1)

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 3m·held·May 11, 2025
View original

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

BlahCade reviews X-Arcade VR controller and discusses Zen pinball's multi-platform strategy.

Summary

Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discuss the Arcade2TV-XR (X-Arcade) VR pinball controller for Meta Quest headsets. They cover recent Zen pinball announcements (Tomb Raider multi-platform release, Williams tables coming to PinballFX VR), their assembly and first-use experiences with the X-Arcade hardware, the immersive VR pinball gameplay, and technical limitations around tilt/nudge mechanics and accelerometer responsiveness.

Key Claims

  • Zen is releasing Tomb Raider pinball simultaneously across all platforms (Steam, consoles, mobile, PinballVR) on the same day

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing Zen pinball announcements; confirmed via 'Pinball Bites' official announcement

  • Williams pinball tables (three complete volumes) are coming to PinballFX VR

    high confidence · Chris states 'Williams tables to PinballFX VR. The first three Williams volumes are coming in'

  • The X-Arcade hardware feels premium with good build quality, responsive flipper buttons with no perceivable lag, and thoughtful UX in packaging and instructions

    high confidence · Both Jared and Chris describe assembly experience and first-use impressions: 'flipper buttons feel responsive like instantaneous um like there is no perceivable lag whatsoever'

  • Tilt/nudge mechanics in VR pinball currently lack accelerometer support in X-Arcade (coming in future updates) and have latency issues on Zen/AtGames platforms

    high confidence · Jared discusses missing tilt feature and Chris notes: 'there's a delay when you push... it's like a half second delay you push and then it goes oh that's the difference between death and alive'

  • The X-Arcade cannot easily swap joystick gates without disassembling the hardware, creating friction for playing games requiring different configurations

    high confidence · Jared explains: 'you've got to do surgery on this thing to do anything of that nature' and describes needing four-way gate for Pac-Man but having eight-way installed

  • Zen's simultaneous multi-platform release strategy allows real-time data collection on which platform dominates player adoption

    medium confidence · Chris states: 'on the day of release they will clearly see which platform reigns the pairing' and notes they plan to ask Mel about this data at year-end

  • BlahCade A A Pinball Podcast was ranked #6 on Feedspot's top 20 pinball podcasts with a 4.6/5 star rating

    high confidence · Chris announces: 'they said that we were, congratulations, we were selected as one of the top 20 pinball podcasts, Jared. And they have us at number 6'

Notable Quotes

  • “flipper buttons feel responsive like instantaneous um like there is no perceivable lag whatsoever with it for me”

    Jared Morgan @ ~31:00 — Key praise for X-Arcade's responsiveness in VR pinball gameplay

  • “there's a delay when you push and then it goes oh that's the difference between death and alive”

    Chris Friebus @ ~44:00 — Critical observation about tilt/nudge latency issues on Zen/AtGames platforms affecting competitive play

  • “everything was really logical like you unpacked everything in a certain order there were three layers in the in the actual box for the stand and i love the fact that i've still got them on there”

    Jared Morgan @ ~17:30 — Praise for X-Arcade's packaging and assembly UX design

  • “I can't do that with my PC. I can't do that with the AtGames cab, but I can bring that. So, you know, not that I've done it yet, but if I was on a long flight, I could see myself playing some pinball.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~28:00 — Describes X-Arcade's portability advantage over other VR pinball platforms

  • “you've got to do surgery on this thing to do anything of that nature”

    Jared Morgan @ ~38:00 — Criticism of X-Arcade's difficulty swapping hardware components like joystick gates

  • “pick your poison right off the bat. Go. I think that's pretty gritty.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~10:30 — Approval of Zen's same-day multi-platform release strategy reducing platform fragmentation

  • “I still can't play Indiana Jones to save my life I don't know what it is about that table I cannot line shots up I can't get the angles”

    Chris Friebus @ ~13:00 — Anecdotal observation about specific game difficulty in VR vs other platforms

  • “when the ball was coming to the out lane, I shook the cabinet. And then I went off like that. I went, Oh, what a missed opportunity.”

    Jared Morgan — Highlights missing accelerometer/tilt feature in first X-Arcade use experience

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen Studioscompany[name withheld pending review]productPinballFX VRproductPinball VRproductTomb RaidergameWilliamscompany

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Zen Studios releasing Tomb Raider pinball simultaneously across Steam, consoles, mobile, and PinballVR on same day in June

    high · Chris states: 'they have us at number 6. And they have us at number 6... Tomb Raider pinball Coming out in June um yeah but the very interesting channel release every single platform it's getting it the same day including pinball vr which is rad'

  • ?

    product_launch: Nine Williams pinball tables (first three volumes) releasing to PinballFX VR, representing significant library expansion

    high · Chris: 'The first three Williams volumes are coming in' and Jared: 'nine brand new tables in vr yeah play i think people were expecting maybe a pack and they just go oh here you go have nine'

  • ?

    technology_signal: X-Arcade VR controller demonstrates strong hardware quality with responsive zero-lag flipper inputs and thoughtful UX in assembly and accessories, but lacks accelerometer tilt feature at launch

    high · Jared: 'flipper buttons feel responsive like instantaneous um like there is no perceivable lag whatsoever' and 'it was really easy to build for me and you just feel the quality of it'

  • ?

    product_concern: Tilt/nudge mechanics in digital pinball platforms (Zen, AtGames) suffer from half-second latency and accelerometer calibration issues, creating competitive disadvantage

    high · Chris: 'there's a delay when you push... it's like a half second delay you push and then it goes oh that's the difference between death and alive' and discussion of users accidentally tilting when scratching nose

  • $

    market_signal: Zen's same-day multi-platform release of Tomb Raider will provide real-time competitive data on which platform (Steam, console, mobile) dominates player adoption

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.190

0:00
This is the Blockade Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan hi everyone how you going look two hands waving that's how excited i am it's a double hander day look at that i don't know if you ever heard this joke but as my friend used to say both hands on the keyboard um yeah um hey guess what it's hotter than hell here today oh really what is it what's the tip there at the moment um you can do the quick conversion for yourself but it's uh 95 degrees here oh that's like 34 degrees celsius at least yeah it's a it's a biscuit burner 38 degrees that's um how it it's hot um this is our first hot day uh this year uh like this hot so it's um because because of the way the world works in contrast it's sort of autumnal weather now here and it's gray overcast and rainy uh here in the studio in brisbane studio brisbane oh studio brisbane wait wait we have we have blockade studios oh wow look at that look at our studios here we got mics we have a room or an area it's a studio all right i always there's um you'll see podcaster setups and it's like how they just have that solitary planter and that that thing on the wall and it's all just like key lighting yeah and it's all just set up all amazing yeah and i always just kind of go wow that'd be nice but i actually use my room yeah i mean i'm i'm fortunate enough that i've got this space here which is also my office my worky work office yes i do my work from home but you know i probably will be doing some redecorating because you might have um long time um viewers might have noticed i had the drum kit in the background there where the monitor that sort of weirdly positioned on the on the wall was it was for playing a drum simulation game called um dtx mania and i haven't touched it for months and i'm kidding myself if i'm going to be playing it regularly again so i think it's time to get rid of that and maybe turn that into a i don't know a vr nook or something like that vr nook there you go yeah my um something like that yeah my my setup is very temporary, but it's how you see it now, because I keep on having to dive back and forth to my computer to that thing and set things up, and so I need it. I'm like, I need everything close, and all that while I'm working this out, and then once it's all worked out, then I can move to where it needs to go, but we'll, don't worry, we'll discuss about me working things out later. It's a tale. It's a tale, okay. Yeah, it's a trip. It's a journey. Before we get started, I have to note that I was sent a message by Feedspot. No idea who Feedspot is. But anyway, they said that we were, congratulations, we were selected as one of the top 20 pinball podcasts, Jared. And they have us at number 6.

  • X-Arcade comes with replacement switches and spare parts in an accessories box for maintenance

    high confidence · Jared notes: 'the accessories box you get with it actually has replacement switches and stuff like that in it so you know if you do end up um sending one to the graves graveyard'

    • @ ~32:00
    Indiana Jones
    game
    Meta Quest 3product
    AtGamescompany
    BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization
    Feedspotorganization
    Melperson
    Medievalgame
    Chicago Coincompany
    Andorgame
    Rogue Onegame
    Pac-Mangame
    Pinball Discordorganization
    Walkabout Golfproduct
    Puzzling Placesproduct
    Batmangame
    Arcade Rangerproduct
    Twilight Zonegame

    medium · Chris: 'on the day of release they will clearly see which platform reigns the pairing' and plans to discuss with Mel at year-end

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade Pinball Podcast ranked #6 among top 20 pinball podcasts on Feedspot with 4.6/5 star rating, significantly above average peer scores

    high · Chris announces: 'they said that we were, congratulations, we were selected as one of the top 20 pinball podcasts, Jared. And they have us at number 6... we had a very high 4.6 out of 5 stars, and that was well above virtually every other one'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen's mobile release of Tomb Raider as free-to-play serves as low-friction try-before-buy mechanism, potentially funnel to premium console/PC versions

    medium · Jared: 'on mobile you can just go and play it yeah you don't have to necessarily buy it... mobile is now the come test it out it's free give it a go'

  • ?

    product_concern: X-Arcade requires partial disassembly to swap joystick gates and accessories, creating friction for users testing different game configurations

    high · Jared: 'you've got to do surgery on this thing to do anything of that nature' regarding swapping four-way vs eight-way gates for different arcade games

  • ?

    technology_signal: Meta Quest DLC entitlements require Wi-Fi connection for license verification, preventing offline play of purchased content on flights/disconnected scenarios

    high · Jared: 'people on the Discord confirmed they've already tried to do that, but there was a problem with DLC not loading locally' due to needing Wi-Fi for license check

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: VR pinball in X-Arcade achieves high immersion with players naturally attempting real machine behaviors (shaking cabinet) despite missing tilt mechanics

    high · Jared: 'when the ball was coming to the out lane, I shook the cabinet. And then I went off like that. I went, Oh, what a missed opportunity... that was the first sort of broke me out of the immersion'

  • ?

    product_strategy: X-Arcade includes replacement switches and spare buttons in accessory kit to reduce support burden and extend product lifecycle

    high · Jared: 'the accessories box you get with it actually has replacement switches and stuff like that in it so you know if you do end up um sending one to the graves graveyard... you've got hot spares they're ready to go'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community shows strong positive sentiment toward VR pinball gaming with controllers, though some resistance from 2D-only players

    medium · Chris notes some commenters are 'hooked on vr' skeptical, but Jared and Chris emphasize: 'the vr experience with these is phenomenal there's no doubt about it these things look and play like the real'

    • 3:40
    And when I was going through the, I have no idea what the criteria is for where podcasts were placed. But I did note that we had a very high 4.6 out of 5 stars,
    3:58
    and that was well above virtually every other one that I saw on there. So thank you, viewers. For doing the review, like and subscribe.
    4:10
    You know, hey. It's really good. since you brought it up, folks, we are at 896 YouTube subscribers. Can we kick that over 900? Thanks. Appreciate it. That'd be really nice.
    4:25
    We'll get to 1,000 eventually. You know how I'm always amazed at these other channels where they're like, hey, we're only 50,000 subscribers away from this. When we hit that number, we'll do this. And I'm like, 50,000? Wow. I'm stoked if we get like six such is the nature of the niche of the niche that we cover the niche is pinball, we cover digital pinball that's quite a rabbit hole to go down really hey are you watching the old Andor season 2 oh yes I've got yes I've done it all so as we are recording this right now there's only three episodes left that'll be dropping in just a few days i'm very very excited because this thing is phenomenal it's not just that it is good star wars it's just plain good tv it's a very slow burn like it's i thought oh this is a bit of a slow moving and all season but you see why towards the end like it needs all of that simmering sort of developmental stuff at the beginning to make the rest of it makes sense yeah yeah yeah i actually thought that where i got up to was kind of the end it felt very endish but yeah we've got more coming that's very exciting it is and from what i understand these three you literally will should be able to turn them off and then put on rogue one and it'll just flow right in that's that's where i saw that character that I'm not going to reveal here.
    6:06
    That's where that originated from. Uh-huh. Yes. Right. Yes. I see. So that's what I'm excited to do because I was not... I know people that were losing their minds over Rogue One and I was like, well, it was kind of a boring beginning. The first half, I didn't care about any of the characters and then the second half was a really cool battle. That was the extent of it. Yeah. Well, now I actually am invested in these characters and or certain characters and or specifically. And so now I'm like, oh, this is going to change the entire tenor of that movie for me. And I'm excited to see how it does that.
    6:42
    I may have to do the same thing. And I wonder then if it might be time to, I don't know, go back in and play the pinball again.
    6:55
    You know, because there is Rogue One pinball. There is Rogue One pinball, you're right. Yeah, so, you know, go do all of Andor. Here's your mission, folks, if you haven't done it already. Go and watch all of the Andor seasons, including these last three that will be dropping any time now. Then go and watch Rogue One. Then go and play the pinball, and then pinball, and you've got the full multimedia experience then, right? There you go, yeah. You know? Exactly. All right, there's a plan. Hmm. Challenge accepted That would mean I'd have to fire up Flat screen pinball again And do not want Jared's like I'm out Not doing the flat ball Nope nope It's funny because Zen just had another pinball Bites and first off Not a Surprise to the show because it was Also spoiled by Ad games Tomb Raider pinball Coming out in June um yeah but the very interesting channel release every single platform it's getting it the same day including pinball vr which is rad yeah because boy they look awesome and like well talk about capturing a theme uh amazing here here's the other thing about that what do we always hear from people is oh how many times am i gonna have to buy this right because and i get it when a new pinball arrives, you're like, well, I want to play it, I want to talk about it, but this may not be the platform of choice that I want to play it on. Well, now you're literally going to be able to play it on the platform of your choice. You're not going to have to throw your dollars around to every single... Because it released here first, and then a month later it released over here. No, it's pick your poison right off the bat. Go.
    8:45
    I think that's pretty gritty. I can't imagine the amount of ducks that needed to be sorted out into a row and cats to be herded to get every platform to line up day date for a release for something like this it must be i i can't even fathom it like how difficult it must be to work around all the different console ecosystem release things and everything so the fact they're doing this so everyone can get in on the action on the day date is it's it's amazing yeah and hat tip to the studio for that because that is no joke not easy i'm sure and i and i hope this isn't just a one-off i hope this starts to become the trend um yep and that they can do it this way because that would be that'd be phenomenal i mean they're going to i mean obviously because then smart they're going to be getting a whole lot of data yeah uh day date and i think the data they're going to be getting from doing this release is going to be really interesting because on the day of release they will clearly see which platform reigns the pairing yep you know i think there's going to be a clear trend obviously steam is probably going to be the the largest one but i don't know because as far as i know consoles have more is that right and i don't know which console but i could have sworn that the numbers for console were actually more so i'm going to note this line of questioning for when we catch up with Mel at the end of the year for our little retro because I think it would be an interesting because they'll have the data from a number of releases probably by that point and this is just the sort of thing that Mel likes to talk about with us without going to specific numbers like what's first, second, third I think it would be really interesting to hear what he's got to say about that because it's even coming to the mobile it's even coming to Zenpin you literally it's everything so it's just the first time that we've gotten this opportunity that's a really interesting point chris because you know on mobile you can just go and play it yeah you don't have to necessarily buy it no you can go and and do it just have a go and add supported play so in a way mobile is now the come test it out it's free give it a go like and then understand that on each of the platforms that you get it on it's going to have a different graphical fidelity but yeah you know like mobile probably is the baseline so if you like it on mobile you're probably gonna love it on the platform that you're playing on on the regular because it's going to have better graphics and everything like that so um i mean that's a very interesting that that again is another very interesting bit of um like marketing so i've I've already had a taste of Lara Croft. Not the Manor one, but the Adventures one.
    11:51
    And it seemed to be following story points from the original games. Not so, we're getting the model of Lara from the modern games, but the storylines, the things she does. PS1, PS2. Exactly. And I'm I don't know if Zen went here, and I really hope that they did.
    12:16
    Oh, because the music is from those games, too. Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. When you hear that music, you know that music.
    12:25
    But I really hope they allow us to turn her into Pixel Laura. Triangular Laura. Well, let's go Tomb Raider 2 Laura. Not Tomb Raider 1 Laura. but let's go to Raider 2 and I say that because even in the modern game that's one of the skins you can throw her in that skin she doesn't talk her mouth doesn't move when she's in that version but it's just there's something fun about seeing that and being able to play in that manner I don't know, we'll see what happens the other thing that dropped with the pinball bites this week this coming week is we're getting nine tables, Williams tables, to PinballFX VR. The first three Williams volumes are coming in. There's some heavy hitters in those packs. Yeah. Wow. There's some that I'm really looking forward to seeing. I've been hanging around a lot in PinballFX Discord, and I can tell you without any reservation that everyone's pretty happy with the announcement they did in Pinball Pies. Okay, good, because a friend of mine was going, I really wish they had announced some of the originals. And I went, no, they're being smart about this, because what is the draw?
    13:47
    It's these William's things. And if you want to get people playing on VR, give them the goods. Give them these machines that they can have in real life and do exactly what you did in your video with putting them in mixed reality next to real machines or whatever. Make it look like it's in your room. Yeah. Like, you know, now it's not $50,000 worth. It's more than that. Nine tables coming in. It's more like $100,000 worth. Well, especially when you throw in medieval that's, you know, well, I don't know how the price has changed since Chicago Coin made their remake, but that thing was going for $15,000, $18,000. grand no it's well i'm talking about aussie dollars down here and they're still like 12 13 for the original okay and you know if you're looking at a chicago coin version because people were crazy enough to import them down here to australia like they're they're that price like you know uh still they're you know they they command those dollars yeah so i have a i have a sneaky suspicion in terms of what is coming to our vr experience first um it's going to mimic what came to the at games cabinets i feel okay the titles that are available on the at games cabinet i think are going to be the same titles that are available in vr uh they just happen to be doing them in different order so we're getting these uh williams tables in uh but if you're oh hello let me just turn that off hello hello take two uh my name is sugar trap um the uh uh if i had to guess okay so hey jared it's your favorite thing to do speculation uh yeah if okay so so we got these we got these nine williams and i love that they up a nine all at once just bam i guessing 15 a I guessing Because we talking packs here right Pre And none of them are licensed
    15:57
    There's no licensed ones. And I say that because on at games, they were all $5 a piece. Oh, yeah, right. I think, look, I'm pretty sure people would be pretty happy if they're $15 a pack. I think some people have been speculating on Discord that they might even be $20. that would be the other guess is 20 yeah and i think honestly look i'm happy to be surprised but i think they're on point i think we're looking probably at 20 okay um vr just because of the amount of extra work that's going to them and i think it's a fair cop like if you break it down we'll do you know how much does a cup of coffee so our favorite do here um i'm like hey when we when we're looking at pricing and you know a same argument has to be made on on the form just like Okay, so let's call it at least $7 a table, right? That's seven plays.
    16:51
    I can't even buy beer for that in a pub. So yeah, take my beer money. I'll just not have a drink. So after this, what is coming next? Well, that leaves pretty much originals for the most part because not all the Williams volumes have come to ad games yet either. So of the originals that are on the ad games, I honestly think that we're not going to see the DreamWorks or Nickelodeon anytime soon.
    17:29
    I'm thinking it's going to be Godzilla pack next. I think so. um that's what i would guess uh and or possibly jurassic park mobile what's coming out just recently on zen mobile i don't know um well it's godzilla oh okay well i only say that because that was one of the first packs that came to ad games also so you can pretty much guarantee that anything that was developed in the last i don't know six to eight months probably also had a vr wing on it as well or at least the notion that this was going to be converted into a vr experience at some point down the track so they would have been doing the plumbing necessary to make that pathway as easy as possible i think um and if zen wants to have fun hey new jurassic park movie or jurassic world movie coming out this summer that's when you drop the jurassic vr pack on there too yeah so i don't know that's but those are but that's my guess for the literally i think the next two releases are one of those two and they and flip-flop them the order that they arrive so yep we'll see now i think putting i mean giving us nine brand new tables in vr yeah play i think people were expecting maybe a pack and they just go oh here you go have nine you know that's really good now to all those that uh in the in the comments section of the video who were like oh god vr i could care less about that really why are they so hooked on vr well that's what today's episode is going to be about and there's a very good reason for that um because the vr experience with these is phenomenal there's no doubt about it these things look and play like the real like what you would expect them to play it fools your brain absolutely it absolutely fools my brain I still can't play Indiana Jones to save my life I don't know what it is about that table I cannot line shots up I can't get the angles and I think it's probably because it's a wide body but I'm going to say it kicks my butt for me, I find it easy to play in pro.
    19:58
    Interesting. It's less floaty. I think it needs to be a little bit faster than it is in classic. Okay. Maybe I'll give it a lot of tries. I've been playing a lot of the Bally Williams in pro. Yeah.
    20:11
    And yeah, you know, you don't get the benefit of extra balls, except, strangely enough, I did get extra balls on Twilight Zone in pro. Okay. I believe. But they were earned extra balls. They weren't like extra balls from replays.
    20:25
    Replay value, yeah, sure. So these were like bona fide extra ball earnings. But yeah, that's interesting. So, yeah, it's, but as Jared, you've already heard him say, he doesn't want to play in 2D mode anymore. I really don't. I gave up on, now I'm not calling it 2D mode, I gave up on playing on my PC and rotating my monitor 90 degrees. Yeah. because I'm now playing it either exclusively on the iGames cabinet, which the cabinet feel is bonkers and great, or playing it in VR. It's a... There's good and there's bad about both. And the reason that we've covered several times in the past is because you can turn it on and it's ready to go. Yep. And that's literally the case with VR, and even with XRK as well plugged in. Yeah. It's like, oh, yeah, everything is just easy. I don't have to go downstairs and worry about, oh, I need to do a GPU update or I need to do a Windows update because I haven't turned the computer on for like two weeks. Not only that, but it's Mother's Day this weekend. And so I'm going to go visit my mom and my sister and her husband are going to be there. And I'm bringing the headset.
    21:49
    You're going to bring the headset, are you? I'm going to bring the headset and show them. I can't do that with my PC. I can't do that with the AtGames cab, but I can bring that. So, you know, not that I've done it yet, but if I was on a long flight, I could see myself playing some pinball. Oh, people on the Discord confirmed they've already tried to do that, but there was a problem with DLC not loading locally. Oh, because of it needing a Wi-Fi signal? Yeah, that's right. So they had a bit of trouble with that. And I think that's actually not necessarily a Xen's app perspective. I think that's just how DLC entitlements work in general on Meta. They need to license check it with a connection, which is... I get it. But also, it is frustrating. But I've definitely seen people have headsets on the plane and want to do that. Because, I mean, you're seated. What else are you going to do? I will say too just with my VR experience Jared is obviously much more involved in the games that have been out because he's had his headset a lot longer the only things that I've been messing with have been Pinball VR this Arcade Ranger game that came with X-Arcade we'll talk about that in a bit and Walkabout Golf Walkabout Golf, oh yeah that's it, oh and the Puzzling Places But that's fallen aside since I've gotten these other things. Yeah, right. You know. The newest shiny. Do I have the Batman game loaded up in the headset? Absolutely. Have I played it? About for half an hour.
    23:30
    Right. Yep. You know. So, all right. So let's dive into, though, what the crux of this episode is, and that is precisely about the X-Arcade. Jared recently got his. you may have seen his assembly video and I'm happy to say Jared it took you about the same amount of time to build it as it took me that was me explaining this is a screw this is how you could make it easy to install but give me your impressions of getting that box and opening it up well I think the entire just the way that they just packed it to start with is like okay even in the the way it was packed and shipped it was thoughtfully designed right like everything was economically packaged but just everything was really logical like you unpacked everything in a certain order there were three layers in the in the actual box for the stand and i love the fact that i've still got them on there i haven't taken them off yet but each part was numbered so oh i took those things on so fast oh did you as soon as i had as soon as it was assembled i was like and those come off oh you're right now i left them on there for now because i just i'm lazy i'll probably will pick them off um but like those little extra little bits of usability when you're building something for the first time make all the difference in how you feel about a product when you're using it i like that it's easy yeah the the the hardware was also in steps so it's like oh you're on step one peel back these are the pieces that you're going to need for this yeah and then it was really nice it just was like oh i don't have to go through all the hardware separate it and then measure it up against the chart on the book to go yes this is the right length screw that i'm putting in um yeah and the thing is that when you look at them all of the screws are pretty much the same but for each step they give you the correct quantity of them separately packaged again, it's thoughtful UX when you're building something for the first time and you know when you're writing instructions like this ask me because I'm a technical writer you have to cater for the lowest common denominator this might be the first thing they've ever built so you know you've got to really think carefully about how you design the experience that they're going to have to do for the first time when all they want to do is play the thing but then they have to build the thing first and it's really good I was really impressed with pretty much everything about it was really easy to build for me and you just feel the quality of it yeah it's got a nice feel on the it's got a nice texture to it and a nice heft yeah it's got a nice powder coating on it Like, everything feels premium on it. It just really feels nice. The ability to slide it up and down to different heights, did you lock yours in place, or did you leave it loose?
    26:46
    You mean tightening the little things on the side? Yes. Yeah, I left those loose. Okay. So, that is right off the bat.
    26:57
    A, I love that you have the ability to raise and lower. what I don't enjoy is the fact that if you leave it loose the whole assembly is a bit wobbly a bit shaky I find that maybe my side bit is a little bit tighter because I just wound up locking it in place and I have it locked in place to the height of a pinball cabinet right but it's easy enough the tool is on the bottom yeah yeah the tool is just hidden inside the cabinet i love it like it's just a little there's a little pouch it's like a little marsupial pouch for uh for parts yeah it's great um i also like the fact that like you know uh and i think you shared a picture of this but like the accessories box you get with it actually has replacement switches and stuff like that in it so you know if you do end up um sending one to the graves graveyard which you know you probably will on side buttons eventually because they're the ones that are getting most of the use for me you know you've got hot spares they're ready to go you don't have to go and cannibalize it for another button you know i think that's really neat the um you have the ability to obviously swap parts um you have the ability you can buy extra uh spinner knobs they basically go where right now you would set your VR handset.
    28:23
    And I think that's great. My only issue is you've got to do surgery on this thing to do anything of that nature.
    28:32
    Yeah, you've got to undo nuts and take panels off and stuff. Yeah. And so they give you the different gates for the joystick. It comes with the eight-way gate in there.
    28:45
    But as I've been trying to play some main games on here, they need the four-way gate like i'm missing you know you're just playing pac-man and it's like no i pushed you oh i was on a diagonal you know um but there's no there's no easy way of just quickly going up gates good let's go you know for for that game so that's kind of that's kind of one those little niggling things but uh it's only because i've been testing you know 130 plus maim realms um you know once i settle in i might discover that the games that i typically are playing are only four gate games and then who cares you know so we'll see yeah um okay so you've got it all assembled you get plugged in uh tell me about your first experience using it using pinball effects vr because i know that's what you used it first for yeah correct so i yeah i just plugged the um the receiver dongle into the usb slot on the quest 3 i plugged the the battery pass through into the dongle uh and start up the app and instantly you get this onboarding in the app where it has like a x arcade mode and it explains briefly how to actually do it and where it doesn't work and where it does which i think is a really nice little touch so you walk up to a game and you use your um your right touch controller to select the game and then immediately you get um the the same sort of uh mode selection screen that you would get and then from there after you've selected the mode you then get the x arcade option where it says you can go x arcade mode or you can play with your touch controllers that whole handoff process where you select x arcade you then dock your controllers and i found out for me originally i was really driving the controllers down into the sockets you don't need to no it's just arresting you just rest them in there yeah and they don't wiggle or anything like that and even if they did it doesn't seem to concern the game too much at all um so you just i actually permanently just keep one docked and the other one i just have when i'm using it navigating around um and so i just put one controller in press the two flipper buttons and you're in. And it's lined up perfect. It's just, it's flawless. Yeah. Like, you feel like you're standing in front of that machine and you're in. Now, I will, my first run experience, I want to tell you what that's like. Yes. And you can probably share yours as well because you had it longer I know you been sitting on it But my first run was okay I thought well you know what better game to try it on than a wide body And so I went, let's go and do it on Indiana Jones first.
    31:53
    So I thought it's a good test because Indiana Jones just has a trigger. It doesn't have a plunger. So let's see what it's like just pressing the button and going for it. I don't have to worry about plunging, right? Go in there, start playing it. flipper buttons feel responsive like instantaneous um like there is no perceivable lag whatsoever with it for me uh when i'm playing it um the uh the initial feeling of where i was trying to find hand placement um for my hands was took a little bit of getting used to but i thought no it's cool I'll just go with it and see how I go.
    32:33
    And the first thing I did was when the ball was coming to the out lane, I shook the cabinet. And then I went off like that.
    32:46
    I went, Oh, what a missed opportunity. Yes. That was my first, that was my first reaction. When, when I did that, it was the first sort of broke me out of the immersion. Yeah. yeah and i just i know that like the it's been ruined in a number of videos that they're going to be doing a haptics and a plunger and a accelerometer and all this stuff but you know from the literally i'm playing this out of the box first time not having any sort of accelerometer tilt even accelerometers from the controllers themselves yeah and like you know that sort of thing felt like a a really big missed opportunity so i went okay so then i had to work out right how am i going to hold my flipper like that and then like hold the joystick um in you know this part of the of the hand here i i started to like contort my hand and like had it like this and then i got hand cramps and i went this is this is not good this doesn't feel right this doesn't it's not ergonomic it actually feels worse than actually trying to like just flip the game and play it so i kind of just gave up on tilting for the time being i just focus on playing the game fortunately for me i'm not a nudger by nature um i've learned to play all the tables without nudging um even on the app games cabinet i rarely nudge uh you can though on the i can't you can't now here's my only thing with the nudge and this is on zen uh there's a delay oh there is a delay there's a delay when you push and this is on ad games when you push it's it's like a it's a half second delay you push and then it goes oh that's the difference between death and alive. Exactly. That's no good. I don't find it to be 100% accurate. And that was the same way with me playing on the Pinsim. Exact same experience. It's even worse. It's even worse on Zachariah.
    35:08
    Oh, is it? So, again, I feel like that's a software thing for Zen. They're too committed to the stick, to the analog stick, and they haven't worked out, if you're using an accelerometer, how to register it fast enough. I know the other thing, the other point about accelerometer-based tilting is, and it's a common thing that comes up on Pinball FX Discord as well, is that it's really hit and miss. Yes. Like no one, like some users are reporting that, you know, when they lift the touch control up to scratch their nose, that's when it tilts.
    35:48
    How is the X, Y, and Z axis programmed that when you scratch your nose, it tilts? Yeah. Like, so I think there's some calibration or some adjustment required for that to work. And the thing is that it's even unintuitive from the perspective of tilting when you're in a game and you don't have anything to lean on and you're just using touch controls, right? Yeah. I think what would need to happen is you need to hold the touch controls at a certain angle so that the accelerometer would be able to sense the XYZ planes or do some sort of computation that tells it when you're holding it. Say you've got your arms holding it down just by the side of your body and then you want to do that little left-right flick. Like, how is it going to work out the alignment of the sensor versus the alignment of the touch controller? I'm sure there's a way, but those are the sort of things they're probably trying to battle with at the moment with this element of the game. So I know for me, with the hand placement issue on this, your left hand, not really an issue. There's not a lot of room for your palm because your palm is literally joystick and your thumb is right there. So it's not like you can put your full palm onto it. The bigger issue is with your right hand because your right hand, your palm wants to go directly underneath. I'm going to zoom into Jared's feed there. If you look on the right-hand side, there's those two red buttons on the far right. that bottom right button, that is your launch button. And that is right where the palm of your hand wants to sit.
    37:41
    It really is. And so because of that, my right hand, I wind up kind of like lifting it and playing like that. Now, I've also watched videos on how to be a better pinball player, and they all say the same thing. What are you doing leaning on the lock bar? Your hand should be loose on the side, and you should be slapping. You shouldn't be pushing with your fingers. You should be slapping. And I'm like, okay, fine. Be that way. But that's not how I play. It's not what's comfortable for me. I don't do that much.
    38:10
    There's elements. Okay, so I have worked out that there is a position that I almost think XRK wants you to hold your hands in when you're playing this. And it might just be because of the shape of my hands, and it might be because I've just got quite large hands, so I can do this. but there is a i might just get up yeah get up and show get up and show i don't know how well this is going to translate in the video but i'm going to do it on like the that not that side this side of the controller because i think it's more visible yes so what i'm going to show you is that rather than going down like this on the side you actually grip like that oh and you actually use your index fingers okay so i'm going to go and demonstrate that you'll probably be able to hear a little bit of me but i'll try and extend this over there so you can hear it sure so on this side yeah it's figuring out what it wants to focus on follow the hand camera that's weird okay oh well it worked in this won't work um now i'm probably gonna have to just turn my camera off and on again. Hang on. That might actually be the solution. Let me try that.
    39:33
    Oh, man. Now it's really jacked up. Hold your hand in front of the camera again. There you go. And remove.
    39:43
    Nope. It's just jacked up. Jared's now blurry vision. Now I'm soft-focused, Jared. All right. That'll teach me.
    39:51
    The good news is Jared looks younger than ever now. Look at me. Yeah, I'm also in a witness protection program right now.
    40:02
    But I'll try and fix this in the background. Okay, so while Jared is trying to fix that, that is, I'm just going to say, that is the issue that you kind of have to work out. However, you'll figure out pretty quickly what to do to get it comfortable for yourself. Yeah. Jared, did you experience this thing, though? My first four games, I had the best four games on each of the titles that I'd had to date with playing in VR. It was instantaneously my scores were better.
    40:41
    Yep. I think the first couple of ones for me were a little bit rough because I was still thinking in that tilting mindset. But once I got my mind over that, I'll go, no, no, I'm just going to flip. Yeah. that's when things started to get really interesting. Because I didn't... What the thing... What the X-Arcade allows you to do is natural flipper control. Yes. You just do naturally on... I suddenly can do live catches.
    41:10
    Or... Live catches work. Or closer to. So, like, Adam's family, when it ejects out of the scoop, if you've got your flipper up, it doesn't catch. It bounces out. and if you do a dead pass it bounces really hard and so it's kind of dangerous and so you need to get doing that live catch and it's just doing that little with the flipper that you cannot do with a trigger you're never going to be able to do it right yeah so the folks at the moment who are rightfully complaining about the the trigger travel in yeah um pimple effects it's i definitely agree with what's being said on there. And while if you play it enough with touch controllers, you can adjust, I did, and I started getting good leaderboard scores when I was using the triggers. Some people really have a hard time with it, and the trigger action is different on the touch controllers. In pinball effects VR, they need to put them more towards 50% rather than 80%, which is the current throw rate of the trigger. that aside however on those um side buttons they're just like a they're not a micro switch they're like a not an optical switch either they're some sort of hybrid sort of thing a little bit like a keyboard switch i think yeah um but they're very very short throw and what i found is yes live catching is um significantly more repeatable but the other thing that's really interesting is that even without touching the left joystick to try and do tilting at all i can still do that left right action um that you would normally do on a pinball machine to like juggle the ball if it's coming through the out lane and that translates into the game like that left right action on the flippers i have saved balls going right down the middle without even touching the yeah the the um the left tilt yeah control so i mean it's it's a i feel bad it's a bit of a cheat if you're playing tournaments in vr um you know going for a score i'm people with the xrk they're gonna have a significant advantage i think so yeah i honestly do like it it for me i particularly after you've gone okay i'm for example let's say I'm going to go on Twilight Zone. I was chasing a leaderboard score from one of the people in my friends group. As an aside, if you want to compete online, there's a pin thread in the general Pinball FX VR chat where you can go and add your Oculus details if you don't mind other people adding you as well. And so you can have a really nice full friends list to compete against. It's great. I met some really cool people who like to play pinball through the thread. So it's good to see you sort of chasing scores. It makes you more engaged, honestly, trying to beat a really good player score. So I was chasing one on Twilight Zone. And as I got more and more accustomed to how pro mode worked and where the bounces were, I found, like, even without tilting, I found, like, the connection between the game, the controls and everything just really immersing me more and getting my head into the the game more and i i topped the leaderboard at one point probably not anymore at the time of recording but i was number one at one point on the pro there was a mode i think i was it may not be in the pro leaderboard it might have been a one of the modes um but i got there and it was because I just didn't have to think about the controls. They were just natural.
    44:55
    So I think, look, it's not cheap. This thing, in Australia, Chris and I were incredibly lucky enough to get ours gifted to us by XRK. I just can't believe to this day how that happened.
    45:13
    I'm incredibly thankful for it. Honestly, I use the thing every single time I play. yeah um but it is you know it's it's a thousand dollars australian from the australian distributor down here like not a cheap thing to play you can always justify it in different ways right you know you go well if i'm not owning a pinball machine i'm owning a vr headset i can probably get essentially pinball machines in my garage for australian dollars we're talking here about two grand like all up with even with a headset like a momo headset like we've got on our VR headsets, all up, ready to go two grand all you need, now you can't even get a pinball machine for that price down here like a real one so, you know, there's that you know talk yourself into it any way you want, but just get one of these things, because I think there's like the tilting things aside the lack of haptics and stuff like that I think the question at the start of the show was is this a perfect pinball controller i think the answer that is no but it's like 90 there it's and this is the that 10 is the point of frustration for me there's another there's another thing that is the biggest detractor for me and that is the button-based plunging i'm getting used to it but on things like battlestar galactica there is like on the skillshot scale where you're actually plunging with your analog stick and you're using that scale to plunge right to the top and then just a notch back that's yeah you're just using luck yeah you're waiting in time now and it will be there's so many different ways of controlling this and i've sent this feedback back to the studio in an email so it's tracked but it's it's like there's a trackball right there there's a trackball and button why not just use the trackball to control the depth of the plunger and then you push the button and that's what it launches the biggest object on the thing you don even need to see it to know where it is correct you just find it you you scroll it back to the point you want and you don even need to roll it forward you just scroll it and then press the button to release and off you go yeah like it such an obvious thing to use it's right there program it in the other thing is you could do you know that right that right digital sticker sitting there doing nothing as well do the same thing use that to adjust the um the depth of the plunger, you can micro adjust it so it goes like that then button to plunge yep so I don't know, there's a lot of things that could be done with the existing controls available on the thing to just elevate the immersion just that little bit more and it wouldn't take too much, I think the other biggest thing which I'm sure there's got to be a solution for is being able to leverage the touch controller's sensors to tilt like there's got to be a way not even with an accelerator accelerometer module built into the unit there has got to be a way of coding in some sort of tilt based thing without sure because they're sensitive enough that they would notice any kind of movement they can micro adjust the scent that the position of a cursor on your screen if they're that if they're that sensitive they're bristling with senses yeah they should be able to use tilt somehow in there to do that surely for me the uh the two biggest things missing uh i agree with you about the plunger that just i want to reach down and and do that on the skill shot i would definitely love a whole sense of plunger add-on to that thing i don't know where they're going to put it but i want one um and then the other thing for me is the haptics it's i've gotten so used to the haptics on the ad games cab and it does so much i mean there we're talking about a completely 2d static angle viewing but the haptics make it come alive and then i throw it on the headset and i'm standing here with this these amazing flippers under my fingers and everything is looking great and i'm just not feeling ball roll i'm not feeling flipper you know solenoids firing i'm not feeling any of that now the interesting thing i think is there's a lot of room inside that like an m there's empty space inside that controller particularly up the back like it's just a massive void of space where the touch control is gone. So I hope that you're right, that there's going to be some kind of an add-on kit, because I think there is the space in there. It's just a matter of them wiring it. And then it's going to be a matter of Zen programming it.
    50:21
    Because currently Zen is not programming for that. I mean, even just using the touch controllers themselves, there's not any haptics going on. yeah i mean that's another massive critique of the game we've got haptics if you were playing using a ps4 controller or a 360 controller or xbox controller but you don't have it on this if you're playing the switch it's almost too much vibration but if you've got it there so it's kind of a miss that zen didn't put that in but i specifically want the same kind of haptics that they were putting in for ad games. So, on that, so what sort of haptic stuff does the ad games cabinet have in it? So it does have two solenoids. Right. And then it also has basically the, what do we call it, exciter speakers? Oh, yeah, right. The ones that make the cabinet vibrate. Yeah. So I think that you could put exciter speakers inside of this relatively easily.
    51:26
    Yeah. And just to give that sense of where things are. You don't need to put the solenoids in. No. In fact, the thing is that that's plastic. Your AtGames cabinet is wood. So they probably have to be quite careful about what they put inside because the whole thing will probably just buzz if they're not careful about what they put inside. So, you know, I think vibrator motors might be a better choice. I know that's not the standard. Like, actually put like different um vibrator motors in like the controllers have because that that actually works pretty well i mean the mechanical there there's an element of you know wear and stuff in there but i think honestly it feels like the way they would go about it it i mean we'll hopefully we'll see because they'll do it because i think it'd be amazing if they did yeah um but yeah look really for me it's just the it's the haptics and the the tilting that's like just the 10 i'm not saying that you shouldn't go and buy one because i actually think it's the only way i want to play pinball effects now um and i don't know if they're going to have um like any fix to the usb control not usb the like separate controls or mappable controls yeah uh that people are absolutely requesting like literally every day so the studio knows about it for sure it's just i don't know what they're going to do about it so uh yeah um it'll be interesting to see what what goes down with it uh again i i do think that mapable controls is the is the easiest thing in the world that'll make people happy yeah it's it's such a quick win it's such a quick win i don't know why you know people Well, they had a message on the forum. I think it was Bolti responded because everyone was talking about the whole controllers and not being able to use an external controller.
    53:30
    And the response, what I think was an official response from the studio was, oh, look, the combination of technology we're using in pinball effects means that we don't have a way of accepting Bluetooth input. It wasn't that you can't, because you can actually pair a Bluetooth controller to the headset using Meta's OS hardware. Like, it lets you do that separate to any game as an accessibility feature. I just think that because they're using, because they confirmed that they're using Unreal Engine 5 on Xbox VR, it's been confirmed by the studio. So perhaps there's not a library that works with 5 and all that sort of stuff at the moment. So, and then people go, well, hang on, they were going immediately, well, I'm pairing a Bluetooth controller and even when I start the game with the Bluetooth controller paired, I'm getting the X-Arcade pop-up. So it's recognizing there's some sort of external device there, but because it's X-Arcade layer in there, maybe that's the reason why they're not able to do it at this stage because there's a conflict in how the stack interprets the input. i'm just guessing yeah there's some software related thing here that's making it not possible or the studio is literally not doing it for reasons um that they can't do it at this stage and it could be that thing behind us as the reason yeah i will i will say this too uh it's disappointing that we cannot use this with pinball effects vr2 and we can't use it with star wars vr oh it's just um if we're not going to be getting those titles into pinball effects vr anytime soon then we need to be able to use the controller on those um we really do that's really a miss integration it's already there yeah put the integration into those platforms so we can get extra value yeah extra out of the thousand dollar investment that some people have made in this thing so like just put it in we uh it's dawning on us now um we've got so much done we haven't even talked about the software per se um we haven't talked about i'm having a little bit of a connection issue with the dongle um and using the uh extra battery pack i've got a solution for that i've had the same problem okay do you want to cover that now because it was driving me nuts okay tell me tell me what your solution is jared yes okay so it seems that for some reason i thought it might have been because i was using the quest game optimizer software which again we probably won't have time to talk about in this show but not this show tldr get it it's amazing um but the the thing i found with the dongle is that if you put your headset into sleep and you leave it charging through like if if you got the battery pack plugged into your headset like it is in mine at the moment with the charging cable in the top and it's receiving power and it's in sleep something happens when it wakes up and the connection between the usb dongle it drops between the controller so what i found you have to do is that each time you've got to shut down the headset and then reboot the headset okay if everything plugged in and if you do that it's every single time it reliably connects and you can use x arcade mode i did notice that and i did notice also you don't even have to load the game to find out if you have the connection just roll the trackball you'll see a cursor move up and down all right yeah I see that cursor move up and down, then you're good to go. Have you run into this, though? The battery on your headset runs out, you do a hot swap, and you lose connection.
    57:29
    No, but I have a feeling I've seen artifacts when you're in the main VR lobby, not the game lobby, but when you're in the meta VR lobby in your VR environment, where there's like a little change in the like in the what they call the pills on little titles they actually go there's like a handoff between headset power and when it receives power and i think what it does is it's it's a meta thing it actually drops the connection to the um the vr dongle temporarily and that ruins the pairing to it and i think the only recoverable way you can do it is um when it runs out of battery and it drops the connection it doesn't seem to falter although no actually i've had it happen where where the battery runs out i i get like a momentary blip where the the sink goes out for the controller and then it comes back again but I think if it gets to the point where your battery runs out and you put another one in, it does this weird handshake thing with the battery pass-through and I think that screws up the connection to it it's a bit touchy so that was that there was also this I want to save for next time but I was having an issue figuring out how to exit a table while on on this uh it turns out it just takes a long time but it's doable so initially i thought it was a something that i can't do it and i can do it but uh my internet connection due to this heat is going wonky um and we've got so much more to cover because we haven't even talked about like i said uh how well zen has crafted this software to work with the x arcade 2 or the tv arcade to tv xr it's a mouthful folks it's a mouthful let's just call the x arcade um honestly um compared to the other pieces yes compared to the other piece of free software that came with it which is arcade ranger which would allow you to load in uh well there's an actual game and then there's the ability to play classic arcade games on it um and uh spoiler alert it's half-baked but um we'll get into the r yes but that's not a that's not necessarily a problem with xrk no software because they don't that's not their app they're actually not a problem with the hardware yes it's a completely different studio that's developing it but yeah it's so we're gonna save that for uh for next time so we'll we'll get back onto this uh probably sooner than we normally would because we actually have content to uh to come back onto with it um but that's what we're going to uh hang on to so for right now we're just saying is this the perfect pinball controller it's close so far so far there isn't one that's the part that's mental the things that are missing on this are on the games cabinet there's things that are missing obviously on the ad games mainly 3D that this using your quest headset has oh it's so close it's so tantalizing I'm hoping that the solution happens and that we can say yes this is it this is what you want to do but from my perspective I'm saying look as far as VR goes it's yeah it's the best yet at the moment but that's there's room to improve here both software like mapping buttons and stuff like that figuring out different ways of interacting with the game through it doing things like allowing you to select different modes from the menu without having to go out and come back in again there's little things like that that would make a massive difference to making this 95 of the way there but it's not like it's 50 like if you bought one of these things now and this is not me speaking from any sort of rubbish influence of perspective that the same sort of the same sort of opinions have been i've seen these from people who have spent the hard-earned cash and bought these themselves they go it's incredible like it's great it's like i said it'll be great if immediate difference in my scores immediate i agree even without tilting i've actually worked out a super hacky way of making tilting work and it costs you the strap off one of your vr controllers i think i know what you did yeah you know what i mean like all i did was i just got the the loop and i just put on my thumb put my thumb over the control stick zipped it up and i've got tilt and it's like doesn't even cost you anything and it works i can tilt and it costs you nothing so i mean that's how you fix tilt you just do that super dodgy but you do it all right so that's uh that's it that's our show for this time uh hopefully you enjoyed it hey let's let's if we can get us over that 900 number we'll give you part two i know it who are we kidding all right folks until then bye bye the uh stuff and things etc oh yeah stuff and things bye