Thank you. Jared Morgz. Hello. I'm not in the metaverse, but Chris is. If you can't tell, folks, this is the VR episode. And I've got, like, VR things happening in front of me, which are kind of really weird. Using a little AR pass-through right now. So I can see the monitor, and I can see Jared, and I can see my virtual hand and all sorts of weird things around me. So it's just kind of interesting what's going on. But, yeah, I thought it would be fun to start in a silly way just to slam home the point of what we're talking about today, right? Yeah, let's be serious. There is nothing sillier than seeing someone with a VR headset on, right? It is a really weird looking thing. I really, really feel weird when I'm out in the living room using this thing because it's – Oh, yeah. Yeah. It really do feel the same. Like, I'm glad I'm living alone most of the time because it feels very strange having this on and just people seeing you just waving your hands around in the air looking like a bit of an idiot. But it's not about what they see. It's about what you see inside the kitchen. I'm going to actually take this off. Oh, hey, there I am. Welcome. Welcome back to reality. It bites. so yeah this is our uh our vr extravaganza uh what we've been waiting for pinball effects vr has come out um and yeah don't worry we're going to talk about that believe me um but just actually save that for another time yeah let's save that for another time we don't need we don't need to talk about pinball effects let's talk about pinball world on your uh phone. No. That's much more exciting. Much more exciting. So, Jared's been using the Quest 3 for some time now. I had held off on buying the Quest 2 because I just didn't think that it was going to be a snuff. And when Quest 3 came out, it was like, well, they're still not the game that I want to play, so I wasn't going to purchase it. And then finally, when Zen came out with their announcement, it was like, okay, here we go. And I didn't buy it at Christmas when it was available at Costco. For cheaper. And then it disappeared, and then I started getting worried that the prices were going to skyrocket because of tariffs. And it became this, okay, when do I buy it? When do I not? And the thing is, I think, well, I don't know, Costco had it for the same thing, but all that you can purchase now is the 512 gigabyte version, Jared. You can't get the 128 that you have. Yeah. No, the 128, well, yeah, the 128 is, yeah. If you are looking, I would say, I said this to Chris when he was buying, I said, yeah, you need a 512. Yeah. Because there's some VR experiences, like some AAA titles that are like 30 gig in size. So you run out of you run out of stories pretty quick. Yeah. So, that wasn't an issue at all. Honestly, what became the issue was, what accessories do I buy for this thing? But, here's the deal. It was wonderful. I went to Best Buy to purchase it because I had reward points. So, I was like, sweet. I had like $35 worth of reward points. So, I was like, that took care of sales tax. and then I didn't even know it but for some reason Best Buy was offering a $50 gift card for buying the Quest I was like sweet I like money that's free right so that was really cool and then because I had bought a brand new headset a friend of mine who had a Quest 2 he was like hey let me send you this referral link code because if you've got a new headset then we both benefit by getting 30 in the meta quest store yeah yeah so with that being said folks i'm going to include my link in the description below um if you're planning on buying the quest 3 please benefit each other you'll get 30 credit i'll get 30 credit no wouldn't that be fun right um yeah so that'll be okay with not getting it because i've already got i already I checked into my account the other day and someone had clicked on a referral link that I threw out there a while ago. So I had $50 Australian sitting in there, which I wasn't expecting to see. So yeah, give Chris and by proxy the show a bit of a bump. Yeah. So anyway, that was all fine and dandy. I tortured said friend by buying all the things and then not opening it that night. I had things to do, and so I wasn't able to do it initially. And he was just like, oh, I wouldn't have cared. I would have torn right into that and just bam. So it wasn't like until the following day that I was even able to turn the thing on, which was kind of hilarious. But I did want to show some things that Jared was even just like, ooh, that looks nice. So after watching many a reviewer out there, thank you to all those reviewers that took the time and reviewed all the various headsets, because I was not aware of the jockstrap that comes with this thing. It's hot trash. It's hot trash. It's the first thing you take off. So I bought this Halo system from Bobi VR. Again, I can drop a link. We're not sponsored by them. It's just... No, but I would like to buy one. The product was really nice. Yeah. Because, you know, it's got the big pad on the back, the dial to pinch it to your head. These little things just rest on top, and then, of course, it's the padded up front. What I like about this is it doesn't have the headset itself pressing tight against your cheeks. You can somewhat float it in front of you. So all that pressure that you oftentimes, like when I was, my previous thing was the Oculus Rift. Yeah. That thing was just like, I mean, I'd pull it off. It's like something like, it's a little hurt. And that's if you don't have any sinus issues on that day. So that's really nice. You can float it. And then if you pop off the, I don't know, what do we call that, the blackout? The facial interface. The facial interface, that cushion, and just leave the lenses, it really floats in front of your face. You can still see the VR. It's just now your peripheral is seeing what's in the room and everything else like that. That can be a little bit odd. A little bit takes you out of the experience. Right. But if you want to wear glasses. Oh, yes. And you do. And how are you feeling? Fortunately for me, because my vision has been going weird and making things like everything's in focus without my glasses that is up close, and I can see to about six feet pretty clear, I don't need glasses. Oh, nice. Because I was going to go to, I know that there's a company called Zenni that has partnered with. Makes little plumbinances. They're really nice. pop in uh you give them the prescription and they'll mill them that's like 50 bucks for that so i was all prepared to have to deal with that um but i don't have to sounds like yes excellent news um in contrast so my headset is like a it was a i bought my my quest tree sort of at the tail end of the pandemic so uh options were limited yeah um and when i bought it the the range of headsets, they were still coming out with a lot of the ones from the more reputable manufacturers like the one you've got there from Boba. And they just were in really short supply and I just couldn't get one. So I got this one that was aftermarket. It still has a battery on the back and all that sort of stuff. But it does have the problem where it has, rather than the two little sort of things that sit on your head like yours, it actually has basically the same sort of strap type as the the jock strap as you call it which is how we'll be referring to it from now on but it actually it's super padded but it does come from the the thing over like that yeah and it and this one doesn't float and i'm actually like i get out of like that session that i recorded yesterday on ar that we're going to touch on today in the show i had these big pressure marks all around here and it's almost like you're wearing swimming goggles like the pressure you get the panda eyes you get from that so i want your headset i'm not going to be placing an order today i'm going to be getting because honestly the if you're new to vr and you're just coming into it with pimple effects vr the headset is the thing that makes the experience you have to have a good um head strap thing it's it's so critical it's the one accessory you have to buy so this is the Bobo M3 Pro, I believe. There is also a Bobo S3 Pro. That has a fan on top of it. Oh. I was like, do you go with the fan? Do you not? And what sold me a not was somebody said, it doesn't cool you. I mean, it helps, but also you have fan noise. And I was like, I don't want fan noise. But I'll point out something else that you can do with this, Jared. So that is on. and then I can actually tilt it up and see. So that's lovely also. Now the S3 apparently, I've got it all. The S3 apparently you can really crank it up high. Really pop it up like a real deal. Yeah, you can really go up high on that one. So that one you've got there is the S3. This is the M3. The M3. Yeah, which is on Amazon, $50. Oh, okay. Yeah, right. So if you want to know more about that product, again, we're not sponsored by these guys. I'm just impressed. You know what I'm covering them. But if you want to go find out more, it's www.bobovr.com. Go and check them out. And it's obviously probably cheaper to get it from third-party retailers rather than direct from these guys. But, yeah, they look like solid-looking headsets, and I want one to go with that. The other thing I love is this battery pack on the back. so the whole thing plugs into the gameplay. Yeah, it just plugs into the USB-C port on the side there and then all of a sudden, and it draws power from here before it draws power from the headset. So basically this is just charging the headset and when this runs out of battery, it beeps and you just magnetically pop it off. I bought a spare one and then you slap that on and you're Oh, no way. It's got a magnetic disconnect? Yeah. Yeah, that's so good. So, yeah, I bought... So here's my second battery. Do they give you a deal if you buy more than one battery? Yeah, so if you buy... This came with the charging plate that's magnetic and the extra battery. And so I just always have this going, and then when I'm done, I pop that. Bam, bam, bam. I haven't run out of battery yet. Man, yeah, I'm going to get one of them. I've got the website up. But that was, again, I bought that off of Amazon. That was bundled because normally the charging base is a whole other price. But so buying those two together, like I said, that's been amazing that I have not run out of battery before. I am tired of using the headset. I can definitely say that even if your budget doesn't extend to the BOBA VR one, you need to do what I did and go and get a third-party one. all the third-party ones with the external battery pack do very much the same except it's not removable and like it means that once the battery dies on Your new one on your you know fixed battery one. It's dead forever essentially so The the fact you can hotspot them Not hotspot them wrong term, but you can help swap them that's really attractive as an option and I think that would definitely get my vote as well I'm pretty sure there's a couple of VR dudes I used to follow on on YouTube that said pretty much the same thing, that one's the best headset by far like I said I don't have any regrets about that thing at all right now, it's been so different from my experience with the Rift and that whole headset. That's not the only difference that's been going on with this all. So one of my problems, or I shouldn't say one of, problems that I had with the Rift, and if you've been a long-time viewer, you've heard all this. Screen door effect was way uncomfortable for the resolution. It just bothered me. The god rays were insane. God Rays being anytime there's a bright light because of the refraction of the lenses it just like glows out and the Quest 3 screen door is very very minimal you can hardly see it I almost think it has more to do with the programs themselves than the resolution of the headset the pancake lenses make a massive difference rather than the phrenzel lenses. And then I haven't noticed God Race at all. No. If they're there it's a completely different experience. Yeah, they're not bothering me in the least. I can tell you for those people who are actually on Quest 2 at the moment and are playing Pinball FX VR the Quest 3 it's if you've got if you can scrape together the cash to do it it's a recommended upgrade. It makes a big difference. Like to like the alias thing that you're experiencing some of the um the older titles it's reduced um in in uh a pimple effects vr um so unless they get past the programming quest 4 is not coming out until probably holiday 2026 oh so yeah maybe um if you're if you're killing chickens on that one yeah so because i was seriously going oh but wait the things i've been hearing about that I'm not going to wait that long. For me, though, the absolute game changer and why I'm actually using this thing a lot now, it is the pass-through. I had a friend who was just like, you'll never use the pass-through. Who cares if it's in black and white? Oh, no. It makes a huge difference. I'm using that pass-through. If a game offers the pass-through, I've been using it. I don't like the isolated feeling of VR. For that matter, I'm using the Onset sound, which sounds great. What I didn't realize was how loud it was. At one point, my wife came in and was like, because it was during the day, she was watching kids, and one of them takes a nap. She's like, can you go into the other room? It's really loud. I was like, oh, I completely forgot that you can hear everything that's coming out of this thing. But, again, I don't feel isolated by being noise reduced due to headphones. And with the pass-through, somebody can walk into the room, and I can look up, notice that they're there, and actually start talking to them and having a conversation rather than being the, hold on, wait, I've got to pause, and then pull the headset off and that whole thing. Oh, that is a good point, yeah. I, for me, I actually purchased a set of Quest-specific headphones that work with a low-latency dongle. It's not Bluetooth because Bluetooth, you can't use Bluetooth in VR headsets. The latency is terrible, and it makes you actually quite ill using Bluetooth. So these ones are low-latency. Essentially, they use, like, that 2.4 gigahertz, like, technology we used to have them like corded phones cordless phones yeah to do the the the transfer and it's like milliseconds latency you don't even notice it and they're really great they're nice little discreet earbuds they they charge in a little case like uh airpods um and they're they're really great um really good sound like really nice bass reproduction everything sounds really good so if If you want to upgrade your experience, they're out there, and they're worth getting. They're really, really nice. I tried hooking my earbuds up to the Quest, but it never recognized them. Everybody was saying that, oh, yeah, you can do that. It never recognized that they were there to pair with, so I never got that far. The two options are basically with earbuds. It does actually have an old-school 3.5. Yeah, so on the one side you've got the USB-C, and on the other side you've got... It's hard to see. There it goes. That little black hole, there's the 2.5 mil port for headphones or audio jack, I should say. So any standard corded headphones will fit in there quite nicely. And there's some that I've looked at that are a basic over-the-ear foam, you know, like old-school Walkman style. Again, so you can hear what's going on around you also. But that sound will be isolated to you as opposed to anybody else being able to hear. Yeah. I haven't gone that far yet because I don't really need it, but it's there as an option, I think. There's definitely options out there for you when you decide you want to have a bit more of an immersive experience. Actually, it does make a difference. I mean, if you don't like immersion, then probably not for you. But for me, I love having sound isolation, being in VR. It really dials up the experience when you're in immersive VR. It's really good. Things that are odd. so the setting up your your zone your boundaries um i'm still working through that whether it's yes do the seated one but then for some reason because you're seated and a lot of the games being pinball if you're seated and you look down hey there's that giant blue circle because of that that's annoying um but then you see the circle if you're out of the zone so you've got to you've to be like stay in the zone basically and if you if you find yourself drifting out you just have to go back in and just redo the zone and you'll fix it i never have the blue circle um constantly whenever you exit the game getting meta horizon world notifications those can just go away because i don't want to mute those you can mute those okay i'm gonna have to learn how to mute those because you're going to settings you can mute them actually i just i usually just mute all notifications on the device because I don't need them. If I want to read the notifications, I'll go and read them. I still am raw-dogging the controllers. I'm debating because, again, when playing pinball, your hand gets tired and you start losing grip. And so I don't know if I want to get one of those that has a strap across the back of your wrist or just silicone. So speaking from experience I have one with a strap Don't get them Don't get them They actually change Because of the strap and the way that they attach to the back of your palm They restrict The angles you can get When you need to reach over and get to the sticks So you actually need to be able to freely move With them Which is why they've got the nunchuck style strings on them So that you can actually Move your hands around to suit the game because some games that you're playing, like, for example, you might be in a platformer that relies on the stick for movement. You want to be able to, like, completely have the actual base of the touch controller right firmly in there so you can get your thumb over the top and actually access the sticks. Okay. So, yeah, don't buy the straps. I've actually taken... I've got a silicon one that came with straps, or cheap, nasty Chinese knockoffs ones, and I've just cut the straps off because they would drive me nuts. don't waste your money but the silicon hand grips silicon hand grips will increase the tactile feeling of the controllers you'll have a better time with silicon ones so you can just buy a really cheap pair of Chinese ones and cut the straps off and you'll be fine just make sure that they will because if you buy them for Quest 3 they'll have little cut offs out the top that let the VR signals pass through the top of the touch controller like the infrared signals because you need those yeah anyone for quest 3 will be suitable quest 3 comes with 3 month subscription to their meta quest plus so you can try various games which is like whatever I was going through I'm going eh I tried beat saver I whacked my hand really good against my desk because I was seated while I was doing it and forgot that the desk was there and I had to do an upswing and went bam ow Oh, yeah, you could have a good area around you for that one. And I thought that that was going to be a for sure purchase until I was like, wait, it's only 40 songs, and then you have all that DLC. And I went, no, Lord, DLC. I don't want to pay for all that DLC. And also, I was getting hot while doing it, and I was like, I just want to relax when I put this thing on. I don't want to feel like I've got to move around. I also did, I tried a walkabout mini golf or whatever. and again my brain was you know i putted and my brain said oh go to that and into a wall see this is the like you know essentially vr's working if you if you go oh oh oh crap yeah into a wall because you're in it and like the the game that interestingly enough that i would have never in a million years thought that this is what I'm playing a lot of. It's called Puzzling Places. I haven't heard of that. I should check it out. Think about 3D dioramas, okay? And then they break them up into, you know, 200 pieces, and you have to assemble them. So it's like a jigsaw, but it's in 3D. It's a jigsaw, but in 3D. And some of them actually have motion on them. So once you get a couple pieces together properly, things will start moving on them. Oh, that's cool. It's a wonderful AR experience. You just got puzzle pieces floating in front of your room, and you just grab, you bring them down. You can arrange them wherever you want, whatever depth you want, close to you. Rotate them in whatever manner that you want to rotate them. Once you assemble pieces, they come together and become one solid piece. You can send them back to the board, pull them back. There's organization to it. It's really cool. It's a very chill. It's one of those things that I start doing a puzzle, and then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, that was an hour and a half. Whoops. Yeah, right. You know? Yeah. And some of them, it's interior and exterior. Oh. So, like, you're building a train car, and you can assemble the exterior, but you also have to assemble the interior also. Oh, that's cool. which I made the mistake of assembling the exterior first, and then I can't see inside. And so, like, you're grabbing the whole thing and basically putting your head inside the train car. There's a really close-up experience putting this together. So, essentially, you're clipping your head through the train to be able to see what's going on inside. But it's so natural, again, in terms of just reaching out. it's right there. Everything feels like it's just tactile and in front of you. And that's really nice. So, um, those are the things I was messing with waiting for pinball effects, VR to come out. Um, I did. So, uh, with the rift, me and Jared had already had these both, uh, did have star Wars. VR did have, uh, well, now they're calling it pinball effects. Classics. Was that right? Um, pinball effects, classics. I had no problem. Worked with the controller. Yep. I didn't have Star Wars initially native to the headset. I just had it on Steam. That's a journey. Getting that to function, because I thought it was just, oh, you bring up Steam, you do VR, you do Air Link, you're going to be in it. No, it's a whole thing of first you have to Air Link. Then you have to open up Steam through the headset and the virtual PC. I'm not using – Jared actually has a program that's a virtual PC, right? Yeah, it's called Virtual Desktop. Virtual Desktop, yeah. It's really nice. So I wasn't using that. I was just using the Steam version of it. But, I mean, we showed my desktop, and then I was selecting Steam, bringing that up, selecting the game, bringing that up. And by doing it all through that, that let it know, oh, VR controllers. Otherwise, it wasn't using the VR controllers at all. It wanted to use an Xbox controller. So I did plug in, hey, it's the Pinsim. You plugged in that. I plugged in the Pinsim. And I was like, how the heck do I navigate? How do I move around the Star Wars area? Because I have no controller You have no thumbsticks I just had this So the pen stem has an accelerometer in it Yeah And what I accidentally discovered when I bumped it I moved forward I went, oh, really? So I tipped the whole unit forward, and it started me walking forward. And if I turned my head, it moved me in the direction of where I turned my head. So I was actually able to navigate. And then if I tipped it backwards, I moved backwards. so I was actually able to maneuver around with nothing but the Pinsim but the Pinsim is brilliant because plunger works flippers work it does function as it should in Star Wars VR when I did get the native version to MetaQuest so Zen did hook me up with that it was like oh, hey, these controllers work much better. It's so much easier than having it around. It's a bit of a smoother experience. It's a bit of a smoother experience. There's a graphical trade-off, but again, look, on the graphical trade-offs between PC VR and Quest, there's now a way of working around that. There's actually what's called Quest Optimizer, QGO, Quest Game Optimizer. It's a side-loaded app. if you don't know what that is, there's plenty of docs on the internet but essentially you can go in there and override the safe defaults in the games and bump up resolution bump up frame rates set the quality levels higher and you can mess around with it a little bit like you do when you're adjusting graphics settings and pinball effects flat screen to get the best result for your graphics card there's already some suggested profiles floating around out there for it and it makes a big difference to those older titles so Classic and Pinball FX, Star Wars on the headset all those titles benefit so much from this it actually makes me wonder why not just make them the settings in the game if this optimiser can set them and the community has validated that those optimiser settings are right just make them the settings in the game so that we don't have to optimise them. Anyhow, side note. But you can do it. It takes a bit of set up. There's a bit of, you've got to sign up for a developer account, which is not that hard anymore. It used to be when I had to do it. But not anymore. You do that, you then connect your headset to the PC, you put the app on it, and then you start it up. There's some steps. Once you've done them, it's a one-time set up. And then literally every game on your headset, that you can actually pull in profiles that community has created for the popular games on there. Install the profile, bang, you're running with an optimized version of the game. It's pretty amazing. It's like $10 US, I think, for the app. So about the same price as virtual desktop to buy, and I think I'll be doing that as well. Interestingly enough, Zachariah Pinball, I had no issues. That thing fired right up. Yeah. that's one thing that Magic Pixel have done really nicely it's really really good so yeah I didn't have that's where I was like why am I having issues with this and not with the other again I got it all worked out but it was one of those things where it's just like this is why I like things just natively work put it in go and boom done well look we should probably actually speaking of natively working, we should probably actually talk about natively working pinball effects on headsets. Yeah, you want to do that? Because I've just realized that we've been talking about, it's good, but... We're getting there. Yeah, we're getting there. We're getting there. This is probably going to be a long show, so... Yeah. So here's what we're going to do. We are going to dive into pinball effects. Now, I'm sure some of you are going, but Chris, look at that controller behind you that is glowy and rainbowy. What about that? We'll get to that because most of that, like 98% of that, is going to be in another show. It literally arrived at my doorstep only recently. And I'm still waiting for mine. Because it's coming from the U.S. and who knows. We'll get to that. But, yes, let's talk about pinball effects in VR. I'm just going to first impression out the gate. holy crap yeah just even from the opening splash screen I just went ooh this is nice this is good I like this I don't know if that was your first thought it automatically walks you through kind of a little tutorial that unfortunately had me scratching my head because I'm like why is there a binging sound and I don't understand and there's some aspects that doesn't walk you through enough, like, hey, try holding up your left hand and you'll see what the problem is. Oh, yeah. I had the same problem. Like, it's so... There's elements of the interface that are actually so slick that you completely don't realize they're there until it's pointed out to you that, like, settings... And there's lots of settings that you can adjust in this game. You have to hold your palm up and there's a little menu that pops up. you would have seen this in the AR video I did when I was setting up my garage but it's like until you realize oh of course you're thinking flat screen and you're thinking oh I'm looking for a settings menu but there's none, it's on your wrist and things like adjusting your sitting and standing position which is like the thing that I was struggling with it's all there, the settings on your hand mate it looks there Yeah, and for the record, though, its height setting is called accessibility. You're going to want to make that your friend if you just want to sit in a chair and play. Otherwise, you're going to be like a little kid with his chin on top of his head. Yeah, pinball machine. Like I was nine again playing pinball. I've even had some issues just trying to figure out what is the proper height, because sometimes these machines look like they're just ginormous. And I'm realizing it's because I'm still having it set me too low. So there's a little bit of a learning curve trying to figure out what is comfortable, where you are. And again, then I'll get into it as we start talking about the AR stuff, but the Pinsim cab came in handy. Oh, did it? It did because I was literally booting up the table and then moving the cabinet to where it would match where my hands are and the machine, and then adjusting the height so that it matched, and then I was like, okay, now I'm fine. That was before you got the XRK, right? Yes, that was before. Yeah. So, yeah, good old pin spin is still kicking and screaming to be used in one form or another. because, and I think this is the biggest thing with the VR pinball, you want to be leaning against something. It's kind of unnatural to have your hands just dangling by your side. It does feel weird. It's odd. I've been doing it for a while, and it's like you really do want to. I even got my table here and jacked up the height and was wanting to rest my hands against the table just for something to do it. But then, like, if you're doing that, the bottom of your hands actually get sore. Because, like, the controls and everything, you're sort of, like, leaning up against the table like that. Yeah. And they get sore. So, you know, having your hands like this ergonomically is actually really important. So, and then the other thing, too, is that in VR, the way Zen have coded the virtual hands in the game is that your controller has to actually be down like that. So if your controller's facing towards the wall, that's the game signal to actually put your hands on the pinball and have them sit there. Otherwise, they're floating around the place like this. You're at the rave party, right? They kind of snap to the machine, which is nice. There's kind of like a... They do. They're in place. There's like a hitbox, essentially, around a certain area of the pinball in virtual space. where it's like, okay, you obviously want your hands there. So if you're seated, you can put your hands in your lap, and it will actually snap broadly to the area, so you're not going to have them in your way. It's pretty good from that perspective. So some of the little quirks and oddities that I'm going, okay, is this where I, was it necessary? And then I went, well, that's kind of cool. But some of it is kind of like, well, that's cool for once, and then you don't want to do it again. such as reach to your hip, pull out a coin. You can insert the coin into the machine, and then that's how it starts up. Okay, that's fun. And then you just go, you know, after like three times of doing that, you just go, or hit the A button. And that's exactly what you do. And it starts you in. And you instantly, yes. so there's things like that that is kind of like oh it's fun that they fought him there not necessarily necessary plunger because I was like how are we going to do the plunger I don't want to use the joystick on top to pull back and plunge but you reach down you pull your that trigger I think yeah the grip you have to actually pinch both yeah you pinch both and then you can pull the plunger and let me tell you folks it's a freaking one-to-one ratio it feels good you can hit skill shots i was nailing the adams family skill shot over and over and over again um yeah in ways that i have not on the app games cabinet at all because the app games cabinet you pull the plunger and then the thing moves you release the plunger and then the thing moves so this was like really nice really nice and you know because you're in VR you can use the gauge and use it and honestly I lean over the table every time and I use it now yeah because it makes a massive difference like it's it's there to be used like that you know you do it in real life why not do it in VR and I have had a similar a slightly different experience depending on the table but I've noticed that the the pullback that you have sometimes isn't represented in the full gauge. So you pull the plunger back all the way, but the actual pin in the gauge doesn't behave like that. So I don't know, maybe I've just got something weird with my build or something like that. I'm still operating on the press build that we got given. We haven't actually got the GA version yet that Zen will graciously give us keys for, But, yeah, all the footage is on press build stuff at the moment, which is, I think, pretty much the same as the general release. Because I'm seeing leaderboard scores from every place you hear in the press build. I was going to say leaderboard scores are suddenly populated. Yeah. It's good to see everyone coming in. It's great to see the competition on there. Okay, before we talk about the tables themselves, let's just talk about some of the other weirdness that's around this thing. So there's a dart board that I really haven't figured out a purpose for. You can just throw darts. You get tickets from it, I think. Really? I don't know. You also get tickets from the campaign mode. And for unlocking things in the game. like you know just getting I think it's just more it's nice to have but it doesn't really do much yeah there's a big spinny wheel that if you spin the wheel you get a prize that I think it allows you to customize the tables I haven't tried customizing it no lack of time to try those things out but I did get a flipper bat that I was like that's kind of cool I might put that on the machine yeah I got a really nice Indiana Jones one with like, you know, a sort of inside tomb texture to it. I thought that was really sick. Yeah, I really should apply that. And then I went, oh, but I can just play pinball, so I'm going to do that. The rooms themselves are divided. Right now you have basically out in the main lobby you've got the Zen titles and then you've got a room that's Universal titles and the room that is Williams titles. Yeah. And you can decorate the carpet and the walls in both of those rooms to be however you want. Customize those a little bit. I mean, with pre-chosen patterns, let's say. You're not creating your own pay scheme or anything else like that. But what posters you want to put up, that's up to you, and what decorations and all that. So here's my prediction. I've got a prediction already. Yes, please. Let's go. So, you know all the areas that have, like, couches and occasional pieces scattered around? Those will be entrances to new zones when more packs get added. They're going to turn those. They're going to knock down the walls, basically, and build a new room that you can walk into and go and experience that. Well, because that Universal room is only half the length of the Williams room. Yeah. And I have a feeling that that room is going to expand and go down a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And the great thing is that, like, I love the fact that you can walk around the space if you want. Yes. Again, palm menu, map mode, brings up a map, a virtual map that you can just click on to go straight and walk to the area. Oh, I haven't seen that. It's really, really thoughtful interaction that they put into this thing to make it so you don't have to walk around if you don't want to. I just want to go to the Williams Room. Bang. You even select the table you want to be in front of and stand right there. Okay. Really sleek. That's nice. Really sleek. because that was one of the things I was like, but on the other hand, you've got to walk around to get to all these things. I would love it. They put space in between all the tables so that the virtual elements have space to be able to perform. Yes. But I would love it if, because you have the ability to turn off that stuff. So Jared's concerned about having a big giant dog next to World Cup soccer can be alleviated. it in by saying bye bye doggy I mean I want to say that Striker actually doesn't look too bad at all next to it, he doesn't get distracting but Robbie the Robot can get right in the bin like he's big and he is he fires across the table at things like they look you know again it's supposed to be immersive right and he fires across the table not during things that are happening in the game. It's like pausing gameplay he'll do a thing. So they've orchestrated the effects not to interfere with gameplay for the most part. Some exceptions I personally feel to that would be probably Star Trek, The Next Generation. It's got a lot of environmental effects going on. A little too much I think. But that's the only one that I've felt has been a little bit too overdone. someone's obviously a really big Star Trek fan there and they wanted to put all the things in but for the most part they're mostly unobtrusive, I really think out of all of them I know we're jumping around a bit here Chris but for you, which one has the best environmental effects I think for me it's a toss up between Knight Rider and BSG Battlestar Galactica Knight Rider's pretty strong I don't think the Battlestar Galactica stuff I really paid much attention to I just love all the Cylons and the actual Battlestar Galactica itself just like warping in or FTLing in and then the massive Cylon battleships just expanding and twisting, it looks so cool if you're a fan of the show I'm a mild fan of the show and I was going wow that's really cool what I was going to say though is I want if I turn off the environmental effects, I would love to have the ability to move the machines right next to each other. I want that just row of machines eventually. So, similar to what you can do in augmented reality where you lay out your room, you have them like you would see them in a 90s arcade. All put it up together. I just, knowing... Okay. I think we both feel that Zem's going to expand this. It is not going to be abandoned ware. I better not be abandoned ware. I really think that we can expect to see the entire back catalog. So, if you have the entire back catalog, I don't want the world's longest tunnel of Williams. That map will become very important. Right? I want them just bam, bam, bam, and I want the ability to put them where I want them. Oh, you want to actually lay them out? I want to be able to put them in the order that I want to put them. That's what I would ultimately love to do. So you want this to be your game room, not a game room that you're walking into. Not someone else's game room. Correct. You want this to be yours. Correct. Yeah. I think that that would be very, I mean, if we can customize everything else, if we can customize posters and items that are on shelves and everything, why not let us customize what order we want the machines in? Yeah. I think that would be really cool. And, I mean, that's one of those things that, again, there's not remotely enough tables in there right now for this video. It's going to be kind of a problem, though. But let's think about that in the future, that we have that option. Okay, keeping on with the weirdness of things that are just like, there's a soda machine, and you can put money into the soda machine, and you can pull out a soda. You can't open the soda. Shaking it doesn't do anything. I thought that would be hilarious if shaking it and then it explodes. Explodes or something, yeah. That doesn't do anything. I have basically taken to making soda can pyramids on the bar top. That's so far. Okay. And then there's also like metal canisters that are on the bar top, and then taking that and trying hurling it at the – Oh, you're doing like a fairground attraction thing. Yes. No, I just yeet them. I just grab them and yeet them across the room. I think you just have random soda cans just, you know, dirtying up your environment. There's a phone. You can dial numbers. It doesn't do anything. I think it would be hilarious if things did. Yeah. I was hoping that if I dialed the number that you see in noir, it would actually give me the voice of the dude on the other end. Or perhaps if I dialed 2222222, I've got an answering machine that would talk to you. My friend tried to dial in 911. He tried 867-5309. That didn't call Jenny. I think they could put some nice memes in there. They really could do some hilarious. You know how there are certain jokes you can do with Siri on your phone? I think that would be hilarious to do things like that. Oh, there's plenty of Skype that they could put in there. There was a wonderful, at the bar top, there is a magazine. you pick it up and it says The Art of Zen. Yes, I want to open that. I want to open it so badly and you can't. Yes. Come on, Zen. Let me. Okay, where are the pages? I have like 10 pages. Right? Yes. I'm glad I'm not the only one that tried that. Oh, no, I tried it. There is. And there's even newspapers. There's the music player. There's newspapers you can pick up. Yeah. There's the music player that you can open up. There's a whole bunch of cassettes. All the cassettes are specific to, hey, do you want the music from Pinball FX 2? Bam, play it. Pinball 3? Bam, play it. Commodore 64 version of Pinball FX? Bam, go for it. Yeah, it's wild. Operencia? Castle Storm? They got music for that. Am I playing the music while I'm in the arcade? Nope. But... No, it's cool you can do it. Can we bring in our own? Can we please be able to bring in our own music? Oh, look, I could take a leave of that feature. I don't really worry about it that much. I don't know. You don't hear it when you're near the thing anyhow. It doesn't transmit through the entire room. Yeah, and that's something that somebody brought up. They actually said, look, it's interesting that they're giving you the ability to set the music that plays from the stereo, but it's very directional and it's very positional. So it might be interesting to put a tape in and that gets piped through the arcade. even if it's like it's still directional in that like you're having these virtual speakers that are placed in the room that are pumping out the volume. But as you're moving through the, as you're, you know, locomoting through the environment, you should sort of hear little sort of bits of it as you're passing through. Okay. I reckon that would be a really nice little sort of immersion piece as well if they considered doing that, you know. Okay. Okay. That's basically all the weirdness that is there. It's nice that there's a section that you can put your favorite table right there in the front. So when you pop in, bam, it's there. There's a little hologram area that's basically alerting you to what's new. So I was like, hey, that's nicer than just having a pop-up poster that was done in the past. So it's not interactive. It's just informational. Yes, disinformational. What I love to see with that area is you walk up to it, and that's like, play random game. You know, like you can in flat screen FX, where you go, oh, play random. I actually use that a fair bit when I'm just lacking inspiration. I want to just play a game of pinball. What's it going to throw at me? I would like, since you have a dartboard, how about a skee-ball? Skee-ball, yes. Skee-ball, maybe hoops. Grab a basketball and toss. Just throwing that out there. Why did I think that would be Axelro? I don't know. Okay, so here's, again, what I'm saying. I think those are just temporary places until they open up the new zones. That's why they haven't really put a lot of effort into them. Yeah. Because they're going away, probably. Probably. But as they open up more rooms. So, again, hot tip. Prove three months or six months down the track. Prove me wrong. Okay, but... I reckon I'm right. This is what I really, really hope the Zen does. and I've already brought it up of the very thing that I was like, how do you delete those notifications Jared? Can we please make this a Meta Horizon world? The arcade that we can all meet up in. Oh yeah! Can we please do that, Zen? We can meet fellow players and chat with them in there. I know you're thinking about, because people have already asked on the discords and there's been already a response about multiplayer. Can we watch other people play and yes the response has been we're working on something with multiplayer please let us have this space as somewhere we can all hang out because i'm not going to do this meta world thing otherwise but if i can meet up horrible but i've done a couple of them it feels so cringe man right like you're walking into this world and random people start talking to you and i just go I don't like this at all. Right? But if you could meet fellow pinball players... I'd feel a little bit less cringe. A little bit less cringe? If you could watch that pinball player play, that would be very interesting. Yeah. I would love something like that. All of a sudden, you do what they do at tournaments where they've got the screen above the machine and it's playing what their game is. And so that way you're not hovering over the top of the table being worse than the mummy. you know I'm just that is a wish list item that I hope that Xen does if that is the way that they're solving like like the not even multiplayer but just like full motion man I would be in that all the time it would be fantastic if they doubled down on that I didn't even think about it but yep then hopefully by the end of the year you've got something worked out with that because that would be spectacular. I mean, you've already got this wonderful space. Let's use it. Yeah. Wouldn't it be nice if, you know, Zen is the only one that has access behind the bar, and if a Zen employee popped in, that's where they're standing and you can go talk to them. I don't know. Just saying. There's a number of ideas that could be applied to this space. What's up with the exit stairs, but that's not how you exit the game? Yeah, I don't know. weird. I was trying to get up there. I was trying to walk in because in all the other VR titles Sorry, that's incorrect. No, it's just in Star Wars VR. That's how you exit the game. And you also do it in classics as well. You actually go out and up the stairs and exit. Oh, okay. As well, yeah. So you do the same thing in there too. So yeah, not having the exits coded in is weird. Okay, let's actually talk about the game. Yeah, we're finally here folks people who like to index the game uh index our episode thank you for your services and uh yes this is where the actual talk about the game starts um it is hands down the best looking that they've done of the other two titles it looks phenomenal um yeah it's incomparable to the others yeah which just makes me go hey anytime you want to bring those other titles in please do it's time to keep it up there for those who want to have the experience honestly if I had to guess Jared I think it's if Xen is doing what they said with if you bought it in the past you get it in the future with the other titles I wouldn't be surprised if that's something they're going to try and accomplish with this too so it might be I believe it would be possible on meta yeah it might be a wait and see let get some other titles in there first we need to see how viable this hell is and for everybody wanting it before we let you have the free stuff But I'd say Prediction, by Christmas, will have an ingestion Ryan Policky in place for the FX2 Classic and Star Wars. Because you've already got the Universal room. So, bam, Jaws E.T. and Back to the Future are just waiting to be popped in there. And look, I'm not expecting at all, like, you can pretty much, like, before, the frustrating thing is on the reviews at the moment. The number one thing is, oh, I have to rebuy the tables again. Oh, my God. It's like, oh, just really? No, you don't because none of these are previously available in VR. This is the first time buying them in VR. Oh, but I've got the flat screen version, Chris, so I've had to buy it again. And it's like, do you not understand just how much work has gone into making these in VR? Like, anyhow. Look, I get it. Some people don't want to rebuy things. Fine. Maybe it's not the platform for you at the moment. But if you just play them in VR, it's just like, oh, I'll give you this. So I load up Indiana Jones, and I just went, ooh, that looks so nice. That's very – but I know Indiana Jones, right? I'm not confused by it. I loaded up Adam's Family and again, I've been playing it on the At The Games cabinet hey, it's nice to be able to move my head around and see a little bit, but you know, it's not like it looks so different in cabinet. Yeah, it's incomprehensible normally like it's just a little bit nicer in VR I load up Curse of the Mummy and went, oh oh, that's what that's supposed to, oh and like did you get the same impression wingulated that the first time, I was like, oh, all the upper playfields scaled correctly. Like, it doesn't look like it's this massive thing because of the forced perspective of being on a flat screen. It's like, oh no, the Sphinx is a reasonable size and everything feels geometrically clear. I understood the pyramid jump. I understood it just made sense. And I went, I've played that game. I've already liked that game. But in VR, Man, it's hard to put that game down. It feels so nice in VR. A lot of ScarePirates? Eh, it's still ScarePirates. Look, I will say this. I managed to reach wizard mode for the first time on that game in VR. It was a 100 million point game. I was happy for it to end. I was like, okay, have I got the wizard mode? Okay, I almost just want to let the balls drain because I'm really 100% over this experience on Sky Pirates. It is just... I did have... I'm not going to bash it, but jeez, it's not my favorite. I did have a problem with Sky Pirates in that I got into a mode where you're firing cannons, so it's like you're no longer above the table, you're all of a sudden... You're in... Oh, yeah, like in Star Wars, Well, you had the Mando mode and you're hosing down the playfield with fire. When it got done and went back to cabinet mode, it had completely reset my height. Oh, did you have that problem too? Yes. Because I reported that in the press build phase to Bolty. And she said, oh, could you send me a video of that happening? I think, and folks, if you've experienced this on the production build, I think it might be a first run app issue. So when you first run the app and you go to that game and you play it and you come out of that mode, I have a feeling something weird happens on first run because I have not been able to replicate that vision jump. And, like, for me, I turned my head just as the game came out of that mode and my table was over here. Yeah. I went, oh, and the problem is, like, the ball is live as soon as that mode finishes. So you have to go, oh, and you have to reset. You had to look straight ahead, reset your view with the meta button on the controller, and then continue playing really quickly. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's really jarring. Like, I haven't been able to reproduce it yet. So I think it must just be a first-run quibble, like, honestly. Noir makes a lot more sense. Oh, that table is far more comprehensible. Far more comprehensible. The Lombard Street thing is still screwing me up, and I cannot do it. I still don't know how to do it, because Zen loves their, hey, here's the ball, and here's the instructions at the same time. I cannot get the magnet timing right to accelerate the ball through those ramps, and I end up just doing seven or eight second runs through it and feeling like I had known nothing about pinball. Yeah. It's not a really great experience at all. World Cup soccer is probably my favorite 3D representation. It looks so great, doesn't it? It looks great. There is some textures missing in it, like the magnet. for me, like the magnet on the left-hand side is not there for me. Maybe, again, maybe it's a magnet. I don't know if I noticed that or not, but... But Jesus, like, people's aside, man, it's... Because that soccer ball, the half soccer ball in 2D, it just looks weird. In 3D, it's like... Yeah. Yeah, looks great. Yeah. So, I mean, I've just loved the game anyhow. Like, it's one of my favorite pins. The other thing that stood out to me, though, was, okay, you play Addams Family. It's, you know, standard dimension pinball machine. And then you walk up to Knight Rider and you go, whoa, wide body. It's not just a wide body. It's super wide. It's like one of my super wide dot leads. And that is something that absolutely does not translate on the AtGames cabinet because it just scales, right? But the width of what you're standing in front of is the same. Yeah, because it's smaller. Yeah, you're playing with a B-beevil. Whereas here, you realize how wide these tables actually are. And it's just like, oh, that's interesting. Zinn does love a wide body, right? Most of their tables are wide body. There's very few that they do that are standard body. Yeah. They love a wide body. And I'm okay with it because they look really good in VR. Like, really good. Yeah. Things to note. Yes, you can turn off the pop-up scores. yes you can turn off all the extra animations on the williams stuff um you can pretty much turn off i think everything that bugs you um yeah that could be a popular distraction yeah you can like i'm blown away by the amount of options you have in the city for like both in-game environmental they've really gone all in on the way that you can customize this experience to meet your needs yeah um i think look there's been some i've really appreciated reading the discord like channels for fxvr because there is actually a dedicated um discord area now for fxvr and all the feedback coming through like people it's clear that people want control support oh my Let me use my Xbox controller or I'm going to murder you is pretty much the sentiment that everyone's saying. And also, I didn't even realize this when I was playing. Literally, I'm being dead honest here, but the lack of touch vibration and touch... Yeah, there's no haptics while playing the pinball. Yeah, and now they've pointed it out to me. I've gone, yes, you're right. Like, there's no... Yes, exactly. That is definitely something that is missing. And again, that's the thing that I love about playing on the AtGames cab with the surround sound feedback kit. You get that immersion. Those haptics, they immerse you without the 3D. So if we could just marry all the things into one. Just imagine. One, that would be wonderful. I really wish, and again, Zen has partnered with X-Arcade. and we'll talk about this in a moment, but there's things that I need to talk about. But they've partnered with them, and they've made an interface really nicely with it, but again, no haptics. Then you need to do the exact same thing with AtGames and allow us to use the surround sound on that cab in combination with the headset. So that it is all one. We have everything combined, finally. Yeah. Yeah. You know. I, a devil's advocate, I don't think they're going to do that. Oh, I don't think they're going to do it at least. I'm just saying it would be nice. Because the partnership with Exarch, hey. But nobody has done an all-in-one solution. There's always something missing from every solution. And that's the problem. it's like yeah you have to make compromises on everything you do and I think again I know we're going to briefly touch on XRK but they are hinting that they'll do a surround sound kit for it and I believe they also confirmed or sorry not confirmed that's probably a very risky thing to say but they said that they're going to do a plunger for it as well I think maybe I'm wrong Okay, we'll talk about that later. But yeah, there's going to be like, there's going to be add-on kits for that thing. Because I've already got them for, you can add on a mic to it. You can add on, it's a speaker. Yeah, it's actually a speaker bar thing, so that's pretty neat. And yeah, there's a mic on it, yeah. So you can do all that sort of stuff. So there is the ability to expand that thing, and I think if they put a surround sound feedback kit on it, and a plunger, just, it would be incredible. Okay, let's talk about the aspect that really got me excited, and I told Jared, Jared, can you record video of this aspect? So he hadn't messed with it yet, and I think you've come away with a whole new appreciation for it. Let's talk about the mixed reality mode, or the AR mode of this game. It's incredible, dude. So basically what you're doing is you're able to switch into AR, you see the room that you're standing in, you do a scan of the room. It figures out where there's space for a machine to be able to go. You can select what machine you put there or however many machines, depending on your space. You put it in there, and then you push play, and it's there. It's there. It feels like it is. The very first thing that I did with that was I put it over the top of the Pinsim. Yeah, right. I lined it directly over the top of it, and I couldn't see the pin stem. All I saw was the cabinet that I put over that. And I went, well, that's choice. That feels so good. Yeah. So Jared went ahead and recorded some videos. So we're going to 45 minutes of video. So if you want to watch it with narration, if you want to watch this, it's in our videos. It's up there. But I wanted to kind of scrub through it. Scrub through. and show a few things here. So let me fire this bad boy up. So I'm just going to scan in. This is Jared scanning his garage. And you notice that it's recognizing the various cabinets. It's looking at flat surfaces. Yeah. It knows that that's a table. Hold on. I've got to mute the video, Jared, because you were talking and I didn't know who was talking. I'm sorry. I can just be quiet. no no no the video you was talking and i was like what are you trying to say jared um yeah yeah so you're you're scanning through um it finds a door and it puts the storage door and it obviously is the wrong shape door yeah sorry i actually sorry i bought this i've already raised this with a bug with bolty um it it's it's going yes this is a door which is correct but if if i was to turn around now i actually have a back door leading out of my you put it on that door to the back it's just because this is the first door that it's found. Okay, cool, that's your door. I should have gone with that door. Yes. And that's the cool thing. You can actually grab it and move it along any surface. I actually put it in my office here. I didn't even realize that. Oh, yeah. I actually put it against a wall and turned it into a door. So it's not even a problem then in that case. No, it's not a problem. I could have just moved it wherever. It's absolutely not a problem. So Jared's mapped out basically so that he doesn't bump into his machines and anything else in there. And then it's a matter of, okay, where do I have space to put a table? So he goes into his inventory, and there's that wrist thing that we're talking about on the left hand. And it goes to tables, and he's going to select the Indy, I imagine. I think that's what it is. There's Indy, and then, hey, look at that. And you can actually rotate the machine where you want it, you know, the angle. And then you can push place, and ta-da, he's now got Indy. Ian Jones in his garage. And tell me that does not look sweet. It looks... It's even got shadow below it. Look at that. It's... I was like going, what? How did this come in here? You're kidding me, right? This is amazing. So the thing I didn't realize and I was struggling with here was the fact that when you're doing things in AR, I was struggling. See how I'm like... I have little round things in the wall? Red box, bad. Bad. But the reason why it was red box is because I didn't realize the little circle that you're seeing is actually pointing at the wall. I'm trying to put the pinball machine on the wall here, not on the floor. So I need to point my thing down so it's on the floor, and then I can place it where I need to on the floor. Okay. Now, you look at that. Hold on. I want to go back to that little image that just was up. we turned around we turned around you can go a little bit further where I've got like four lined up in my garage and I'm looking between the two so just skip forward a bit more like another I don't know 30 seconds because literally that's how long it takes well that's you putting in another pair I was just going to say that hold on there was an actual imagery that I was like let's look at that that that's what I wanted scrub through as you turn around. Bam! So you see that grid. It is recognizing all of his pinball machines as an object. What that means is he cannot put any object into that zone. Okay? What Jared does not know, and I'm about to tell him, you can reshape your room, Jared. You can tell it to ignore those objects. You can push your wall farther back than your room actually is and therefore make space. And I see that. You can actually treat those things as like furniture as well. You can mark them as furniture in your AI space. Yep. Yeah. And I say that specifically, and I'm going to cut back to me here. Okay. So I have my pen stem right there at my closet. Okay. The way that it maps my room, it maps that as a wall. and if I put a pinball machine there well it butts it up against the wall and the pinball machine comes all the way up to here and I don't want that. I want it to be right at the pin sim. So what you're actually able to do is you can edit your room and I grabbed the corner of the wall. You grab like up in a corner and I just sent it back about 10 feet and then I went to my other wall and I sent it back about 10 feet and suddenly my closet was deep and then I put a pinball machine in there and it fit perfectly in my closet and it lined up perfectly against the front of the Pinsim. Beautiful. Bam. Done. Now, I did the exact same thing and put one on top of the X-Arcade, but unfortunately it still sees the door and so it's like fighting. It's like zip-fighting it. Yeah. But you are fully capable of reshaping your room, making it much bigger than the room thinks. So you can actually... It's a pretty cool feature, I've got to say. It's so cool that you can actually go, no, walls? We don't need walls here. No. And I was deleting furniture and everything just so that I can have more space for those things. So, yeah, let's get into you adding a whole bunch of your row of pinball, which is just great. Oh, yeah. Hence the somewhat click-ready title. $50,000 worth of Belly Williams equipment in my garage. That's actually not really a joke in Australian dollars. No. It's like, oh look, you can look all around the cabinet. And it's just, yeah. You have a look at that. So that's Force 2. That's a bit more machines in virtual space. Yeah. And then, you know, you looked at the back. Yeah, there's no error on the back. You know, they modeled everything. Amazing. Right? My friend was impressed that they plugged the machines in in the actual arcade. Oh, yeah, they do actually have power cords. Yeah, they actually have power cords. And then you were like, well, can we fit four tables in here? I now have a nine-table garage. Right? Look at that. I mean, you want to walk into that space? Looks great. I would love to. Yeah. Look at that. I don't need a car. So this is literally every Australian garage. Like, we don't put our cars in the garage. We use the room. Okay. What I like about this, though, is if you're at your house and you're wondering, do I have space for a pinball machine? You're going to legitimately use this as a guide and go, maybe. You can map out your house and go, how many pinball houses is my house? Yes. And what would I have to move and where could I move it? And, you know, yeah. And so, really, if you look at the size of the mapped area of these pinball machines, I can tell you with strong confidence that, yes, they are actual room-scale-size versions of the game. Like, they do map one-to-one with your space. And then Indy's a go-for, Indy. Indy's a little bit cut off there, bro. Sorry about that, mate. But you know what? I realise my mistake is that when I'm placing the tables, there's actually a big golden square that comes with a space in the table to give you the proper amount of space between that shows you the space you need to put between the tables if you want the digital effects to work right. Or you just turn indie off and then you have it looking like a regular arcade. That's what I'm saying. You literally could do that and then you could do exactly what you wanted to do Chris and have it so everything. Look there's even stage balls in the shoot. I love the detail. I am, to be honest, I'm so blown away by the detail that Zen has done. When I was looking at Adam's family, the pop bumpers are just 100% mechanical. Everything just looks great with them. They've even got like cross, like the actual Phillips heads in the screws on these tables. Like I'm just going, clearly they realize that people, the first thing they were going to do is to go super close up to the table and try and work out what's going on. So, yeah, good work on them, but in the time getting that right. That's a little odd. Raining on the table. Yeah, that's, you know. And I had a weird thing. It's worth pointing out. I don't know whether it was a bug, but I locked the ball, and it didn't serve me another one. And that's why I tilted because I was trying, oh, is it just like jammed up somewhere? But I was in pro mode, and you get like one tilt and then you die. Yeah. This is you changing the height, your height, because I think there was something... Struggling to, but it wasn't successful trying to do it. I couldn't actually change the height of the tables for me in AR. Like, they're a set height, it seems. Okay. But you can see definitely that, like, you know, one-to-one, they look pretty much the same height. But when you're looking down the thing like that, it's pretty amazing to see them side-by-side like that. It's wild. And then we're going to go back to the regular... So this is my attempt to go back into the game, adjust my player height, because you can't do it when you're in AR. Yeah. And one of the comments on the video already says, oh, could you, like, zoom in a bit on the table? Make it so your playing position is a little bit zoomed in. So I'm messing with my player height here, and then I go back into MR, thinking that would have made a difference. And look at that. Instantly. All there. Everything's there. I think that's pretty cool. And you have a theory. I don't know if you've tested it out yet, but you could map multiple rooms. and then it would remember what tables you put in what room. Potentially. I would like to put a machine in here in the office when I get my Exarcade stick. I'm going to leave it permanently up here and I'll be playing games up here. But yeah, I would like to do that up here. I think this is genius. I love this. I am so glad that Zen put this in here because again I can play and I can turn my head and I see who's coming in to look at me when I want to be of people and around and aware it allows me to do that so I think that is absolutely phenomenal you know what I like to see in this AR mode for folks who still want to use AR mode but are really space constrained, like they're in a small apartment, I'd like to be able to, a little bit like they did in FX Classic, VR Classic, where you could actually select, you could hot select the table that appears. Yeah, hot slot the table. So have two tables in your room in AR mode or even one table and then just be able to go, oh, I just want to hot swap that out, select the game from menu and it just displays. Excellent idea. I think that needs to happen because especially when you're using something like the X-Arcade, you won't be able to move around like I'm doing in here. You have to stay fixed. Yeah. So the ability to hot-swap from literally a menu button or a button on the X-Arcade would be a really nice quality of life. That is an excellent suggestion, and I hope you send that in and make it. I will send it to Bolt. That would be phenomenal because, yeah, I can only fit one machine in this room. Yes. So being able to go, yep, hot swap, and just go through and go load the next one up so I can play it, that would be a huge accessibility feature. This is me putting out the table so we can get the effects lining up properly. Because I'm about to... Yeah, well, that's right. So I'm about to have a massive game on Twilight Zone here. And... What's going on there? Oh, I know. I'm trying to fast forward and get – oh, this was you trying to put the machines over the top. This is where you had to move the wall because you didn't have the wall. Yeah, I just needed to move the wall. So if you move the wall, you can put it directly over the top of your machine, Jared, and then you have something to lean against. Yep. And I really want to try that. Because then you can have eight virtual tables in here. Yes, I absolutely could. Yeah. Yep. 100%. Or you can even move this current group up against the wall where all that your equipment is. Bam, jam up against the wall, and then you can have another kind of row in the middle. So I can have a 20-room, a 20-table garage if I wanted to. Oh, there's your... Yeah, he's probably clipping through. Clipping through. So, yeah, this AR stuff is really fantastic. I like it a lot. I think that they did a really good job just out the gate of doing this. This is day zero release. It's day zero, so I only hope that... I think Jared's suggestion for an improvement is a must. Beyond that, I'm just curious what they do, because I'm pretty happy with how it is at the moment. Yeah. Something that does bother me... they put the topper on Adam's family it doesn't work but it doesn't light up I know the first thing I did is when I was in multiball look up where's the flashing lights if you're going to put the topper on there make it work then you have to when white water comes that white water topper better work it better be prismatic that's all I'm saying I'm going to virtually table flip the table that's a don't tease us like that it needs to be in saying that how good are the animated back glasses on the Williams tables, the flashes are working the DMD is like you just glance up and you look at it like it's just so good it's so good I love it I think they can actually do the same thing the thing is it's really hard to do it with things like the mummy and noir because they don't really have any lights in the back no those are just trans lights and maybe that's okay to leave them like that because there's not really much point because the thing is they weren't designed to be in an arcade trying to attract people and entice people I'm most excited for when they put in say Doctor Dude and say the correct a Fresnel... Well, yeah, the flipping image on the back glass, but no, having the score in the vertical row like it should be. So, with Party Zone, like with the speakers at the top and the DMD inserted into the glass, you know? Yes. I mean, that's going to be so nice. I'm really looking forward to that. Okay. If you can't tell, Pinball Fiction VR is worth it yeah feel good about your purchase it's great, you're going to love it and allegedly, even if you have a Quest 2 I have a friend that's playing with the Quest 2 and he's able to play it so in Immersion VR he's tried it in AR I don't know how successful he's been yep so I haven talked to him about that yet but you better believe that this is making him want the Quest 3 Quest 3 Desperately Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about X-Arcade here. So through a conversation, just a random conversation of Jared asking how the insane price of this would be to get to Australia and everything, suddenly we were both hit with hey send us your address and we went huh right so yeah you know Zen had a talk with X-Arcade and suddenly I had this literally in my house in less than a week it came quick and that was really cool so props to them for providing us with these I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of this thing until Jared has a chance to also so we can actually have a real conversation plus I do want to let you all know a couple of things right off the bat first thing to know as Jared commented when I put in a picture of it and he was like that thing is chonky it's a chonky boy it weighs a lot I was expecting like rock band kit kind of construction. Not a full steel stand that weighs a lot. It has wheels on the bottom of it so you can wheel this thing around. That's how much it weighs. Oh, that's good. That would be my first question. How do you move it? I'm not manhandling it. I'm just like a dolly truck moving it out. The control deck itself, it's like I don't know if it's real carbon fiber or not, but it's got a carbon fiber top you know like texture on it the control panel itself weighs a bunch that trackball you can feel the weight behind it it's it's all commercial grade and i don't think i even quite understood what commercial grade was but comparing it to the app games cabinet where i have a joystick and buttons and trackball which feel fine there's a touch difference there's a tactile difference you can for sure tell this thing is meant for hundreds of thousands, you know, tens of thousands of plays. You can handle the abuse. I think they're actually using, like, from a technical standpoint, I think, I'm happy to be corrected wrong here, but they're using Sanwa buttons and controls on this. So these are, like, proper Japanese arcade quality controls on here. Spears isn't stuff. Among the things that they sent in the box, so you can actually get an adapter that allows you to play on pretty much any console that you can hook it up to. But it came with this lovely box, and you can see it's got an octagonal gate, a full gate, a completely circular gate. Wow. Yeah. So this is the universal dongle for which everything then plugs into. Oh, so that's like the main adapter that all the adapters plug into. Yes, and then everything else can plug into it. It came with a... It goes as far back as like Mega Drive. Like which? It's far back to like 16-bit consoles like Mega Drive and stuff like that. It has a really long cable for power. It also comes with a really long USB for hooking into your computer. Because this isn't just a VR stick. It's very much meant, I think the VR is kind of newish. If you had the old model X-Arcade, this is just upgraded for VR, basically. Yeah, it's got the extra slots for the touch controllers. which allows... Yeah, so there's slots on the top. ...in VR spaces. So there's slots on the top that your controllers just go plunk into, right? It's not... There's no convection or anything. It's not like it plugs in. It's like a caddy for them. It's a caddy for them. But what that does is so when you go into Pinball FX VR, it actually... Oh, I should point out... Ah. There's a little dongle. It has a little dongle here. This is a USB dongle that connects directly. This is what connects to the unit there. And it does have a USB plug on this side so that I can still power. Just a little junction box. Jared was joking that we're going to have these things starting to get longer and longer, poking up and down your head. But when you fire up the game and you have that on, it recognizes that you're using an X-Arcade controller, and it asks you, what are you doing? And so you can select X-Arcade, and then it immediately goes into a semi-transparent AR mode so that you can see yourself plunk these down into the deck. And then you just push both of the pinball buttons, and now it is perfectly aligned to the X-Arcade. No way. Perfectly. So you're in. You're in. wow dude and wild and so you're not having to futz with height you're not having to futz with angle it's just bam and it stays locked on like that you don't have any problems with it yes um latency what no uh i mean one of the things with pulling a trigger that's a long yeah a long time in order to make it happen right these are just people are already complaining about that. These are just, bam, instant touch on the flipper buttons. So you're saying that there's actually the perception of less latency because of the throw of the switches that you're using in this thing. Wow. The knock is that, and this is why I'm excited when you said that, Jared, plunger, we're back to just you push a button and it pulls back. And that's bothersome, right? That is bothersome. That's a big, that's a problem. And also, no accelerometer tilt in it either. Yes. Correct. If you want to nudge, you slap the joystick. Which isn't bad. Tell me, when you're in game, do you still get to see the, like, the footprint of the controller in game? No. You do not see the controller at all. okay so it's just you're there you're standing up against it so you need to be aware of where things are yes which is why i don't have the little curtain that goes below on the headset so it's nice to be able to go oh yeah there's my button you know just kind of tilt my head up and i can see where the launch button is i mean i'm learning i'm starting to get the muscle memory for where it is also and i imagine that's sort of what what you need to do when you're using something new like this you'll get a feeling for where everything is just by doing it you'll And there's a – like having to take your hand away from the flippers to tilt is not good at all. Like that was the biggest thing when I was seeing the integration. I was going, oh. It's using the left stick, and quite honestly, your thumb is right there. Oh, so you can sort of access it? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's kind of like a lift your hand and go, you know, kind of. So you can get to it? You can get to it. It's just not – What I really want to know, though, is when you get to a game like The Getaway, when we get that, you've got to shift. Oh, you shift up and down. What are you going to do with that? Right. Honestly, the other – Currently, it's using the launch button. That's what it is in-game. Well, that is true. That is what it is in-game. Which has never been the ideal, but that's the solution that we have. So we'll see where that goes. Which is the launch button on the – how is it mapped? Which is the launch button? Okay, so if you see the buttons behind me, those are not the buttons you're using. You're using the ones on the right-hand side. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, it's on the other side that you're using those buttons. Oh, right. But do you see you've got the row of six and then the row down below that's two? Yes. It's that, the middle button, basically. That's your launch button. Oh. Right, okay. So trying to find that without having any reference. Your hand is right there. And that's actually a problem. On the right-hand side, if you rest your palm on top of the deck, you're actually pushing buttons. Oh, really? Okay. Which I don't – that's kind of, again, like one of those things where you're like, that's not the feel that I want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm adjusting to it. But then it's just – it's pretty easy to hit the launch button. I mean, it's not – Okay. Well, that's all right. It's not being detrimental. And, again, I'm still able to hit skill shots fairly decently. I'm learning what that is but my god if they did a plunger attachment that would be so nice yeah I would be buying that the lack of haptics again if we just had the haptics it would be so immersive just send this right over the top and make that a must purchase I wonder if they could if they enabled haptics on the controllers I wonder if that would be a good short term measure if XRK could allow haptics through the controllers to then vibrate through this thing. This thing is built so strongly Jared, I don't think you'd feel it. Oh really? I don't think you're going to feel it. That's just the truth. But a lot of the things, like you can, where the controllers drop in, you can actually buy spinner accessories and put those in that space instead. of course if you have the spinners in there then you're never going to be able to do VR but you can literally take apart the control deck and put these things in because you've got to plug the wires in on the inside I mean it's there's a bit of surgery it's like unscrewing right there's a bit of surgery to do with it but that tells me there might be room to put in haptic speakers to make that thing vibrate I reckon that's exactly what they do it sounds yeah I would love to get more maybe we'll have to see if we can get the XRK people on the show they won't get those sort of things obviously or get some kind of information but that if you want them to come on the show and we'll have a chat about it then let us know in the comments and we'll see what we can do because we're apparently influencers now according to what the program is so yeah good Oh, something else I wish this thing had? An off switch. Because the only way to turn it off is to unplug it. Also, it doesn't run again. Now, I don't know. Well, okay, you can unplug the RGB. Like, you don't have to have that going. Okay. But it's always powered on. But it's always powered on. And I don't want to leave something just always powered on, because it's going to overheat at some point. So I wish that there was just an on-off switch. I don't know. Maybe just literally our power isolation switch. Yeah. That would be good. But, you know, short-term, let's just switch it off the wall. But, again, you've got to get to the power point, and it's a bit of a hassle and whatever. Yeah. You know. Or unplug the USB from, or the cord from the back. Yeah. Which means maybe have my friend 3D print me some kind of a capture holder so it's just unplug, plug, and I'm not having to dig out, you know. I think there's solutions. There's solutions here. Like a 3M cable holder would probably do the trick as well. But I legitimately, folks, this got delivered on Thursday. I put it together that night. And I was taking my time. It's Ikea furniture. It took me an hour to put it together by myself. They recommend two persons. I understand why I was able to do it. It's not the end of the world. but again I was taking my time took me about an hour to assemble and get it all together I didn't play on it until last night so Friday that was the first time I actually had a game on it and was like whoa okay got it and then this morning Saturday I put in real time on it and immediately bested my top scores on four tables really? Like, without even sweating. Wow. So, pretty effective. Right. I think the thing that is, okay, let's circle back, Jared, to actual gameplay. Yes. Once again, and I'm not complaining, I think it's kind of amusing, though. Physics are different. Or ball behavior is different. so when you're playing adam's family and the ball ejects from the chair and you go to capture it don't capture it bounces or no excuse me if you went to go do a dead pass is that right or no if you just go to if no if you just go to capture on ad games it comes out it'll capture the ball on this it'll go and it'll bounce away from it like you cannot capture unless you do a live catch just that little kind of thing good luck doing a live catch on one of these your finger is gonna that's i haven't been able to do it i was immediately able to do it on this oh really because if that is that quick dip dip you know with your hand and i was able to do it yeah right and that's why my score suddenly increased immensely um interest so So, but there was that. There was another, there was a couple of different physics different or ball behavior differences, particularly with Adam's family, that I noticed from the app games cabinet, which was different from, like, creature on app games, different than creature in pinball effects. So I don't know what, why there's differences, how things are switching. To me, it just means, hey, you've got to learn the table. You've got to learn the machines. It's like when you go to a tournament. No two tables play the same, even if they're the same title. Yeah. So it's not the end of the world. It's actually kind of nice to not be able to count on these tricks that you know. Just carry over your abilities. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even really, I must admit, I didn't really notice anything. Nothing jumped out at me, really, from a physics perspective. Like, you'll hear me talk about it in the AR video about the bounce from the slot machine to the left flipper and the fact sometimes it triggers a switch, sometimes it doesn't trigger the switch. And I'm going, okay, so normally on FX flat screen, it will always just contact the switch so you get like a loop, yeah, a spiral loop lit. But it doesn't always do on this. So it's almost like, yeah, I think the physics are a little different. Another example on Adam's family is when the ball comes down the left side, on at games, it always goes down the bear lane. It does not go down the thing flips lane. And on this one, it almost always goes down the thing flips lane. When, which table is it that it was doing this on? Oh, it is also on Adams. When you hit the train and the ball comes down, it goes right into the swamp. whereas usually it goes just below the swamp and then bounces down, at least on ad games. So yeah, on ad games, you're playing with FX3 physics. Ah. Okay. So they couldn't put the UE4 physics on ad games. Okay. So that's why you're experiencing it differently on there. Okay. Yeah. And I haven't even tried the pro physics yet in this because there are pro physics available in the BR game. Yes, that's right. I have tried pro physics and yes, it kicked my butt. I mean, Indy killed me, but that was just because something weird was happening and also I was a little bit overwhelmed with how cool the AR mode was. I just wanted to move to the other tables. Honestly, that's the problem right now is I'm so shanky, look at this, that I haven't been able to truly do a deep dive on these things and really get into the weeds. so I think that the good news for all of you is that we've got plenty of content to talk about down the road here yeah I don't think that's going to be a problem we've already gone like nearly an hour and a half just talking about our initial impressions of it really there's more to come so once the X-Arcade pops in for Jared we'll get into that because there's a whole there's a whole arcade game in there where you can bring in ROMs and play I'd even scratch the I'm intimidated by it it's really just like essentially there's an embedded there's like an embedded main emulator in the thing itself unfortunately X-Arcade does not work with Star Wars VR or with VR classics I'd love them to patch it patch it folks I would like to see it But then again Would you do the patch or do you just Import the games over into this That would solve all the problems And you don't have to worry about a patch or new coding Or anything else like that It would make sense It would make sense Especially considering Star Wars is already in Unreal Engine 4 It was their first Experiment in the wild with Unreal Engine 4 So it shouldn't be monumentally difficult to port those. Nope, and all the AR environments for what goes on around the side of the table, those are already programmed in and done. Those are already in. From all those tables. They would. So, I mean, really, we can pretty much say probably the next major pack release, if they're smart about it, we'll be trickle-feeding those. And I... So, all right, in closing thoughts, Chris, here's another question that I'd like you to comment on. how would you like them to release content in this table would you like them to pack release you know three at a time would you like them to release an entire like you know category at a time with packs that you buy like how are you feeling oh my god i'm overwhelmed by choice perspective at I honestly believe that, like, for the Universal stuff, it has to be pack released. Yes. So I don't think we have a choice there. Williams, that's up to Zen. And I honestly think they should just release them individually and let people decide what they want. You know, again. So not volumes, but individual. Individual. just release them individual let people decide um and with that i would like to see a trickle feed like here's the deal i want at least one release a month i don't think too much i think you need i like the idea one release a month one release a month give people give people a chance to enjoy what you have but also have something to look forward to ideally two releases a month that would be but but this is the thing there's a lot of work that zen has to do into this so i understand why they wouldn't so how about this one new vr experience a month and one of the old vrs from one of the other uh packs also yeah you know so that we see that it is active, that we see that you're supporting this, and that there's more for us to buy, because I think that a lot of people will be on the fence about diving into this based off of the two other previous games. And it being just abandoned. So, let's show it as a thought. There's a lot of caution out there, I think, at the moment surrounding that. I think you're quite right to say that, Chris. I had that caution myself. I'm not the only... That was a big thing for me. Like, do I invest $700 in a headset? Yeah. It's like, well, do I invest $700 in a headset? Sorry, Australian dollars here, probably like $400. Five. Yeah, five. Like, that's a big chunk of change to drop on a risk of this platform. But I think they've already confirmed that there's going to be more stuff being released. They haven't said what, but definitely more content coming out for it. So that's definitely a healthy sign. But yeah, it's... So like you with AtGames, I don't think I'm going to be opening flat screen FX for a while. Right. I don't really see much point, honestly. Like the 12 games that are in there, I haven't even scratched the surface of some of the stuff that they offer. Like they've got... And I think you're... So they've got all the... You're going to... You've got all the modes from M in each of the tables now. You've got all the M modes. There's a full campaign mode. There's all these little challenges and everything. I think, Jared, you're going to experience exactly what I'm experiencing with ad games, where you're going to be, even though I already own this table, I'm excited for it to come out and play it in a new way. Yes. Yeah, I fully expect to feel like that, Chris. It's like, I know people have been enjoying a VR experience using Unreal Engine VR and the Injector. But even I've seen some people on the various places around going, yes, I'll use UEVR, but this experience, I bought it because it actually is, I've seen what is going on and this is way better. And again, if you made this space into essentially a chat room, but a meta world where people could come in and hang out and watch other people play pinball, I think that would bring it alive. Yeah. You know, and it would be incredible. I'm not saying that you allow 100 people into the room either. You could have multiple. There'd be rooms. You'd have to have like capped like 20 people per room or some arbitrary value of the room. that makes it still feel like you're, think of like a bar arcade or something like that, you know? But I'm just saying, imagine us having, and rather than streaming over Twitch or whatever, but it's, hey, Blockade's hosting a room, come and watch a year of play. Yeah, how good would that be? Right? That'd be pretty spectacular. Yeah, there's, like, that's where, yeah, I can see now why they aren't doing PC VR and they're doing it all on the headset because it's all these, like, meta-exclusive things that potentially open up a whole different way of interacting with it. So I can see why they went with meta first on this now. I'm getting it. But, I mean, if you went, you go meta first. If you did, I don't know how successful it would be, but the PlayStation VR 2, you can do the exact same thing. Because they've got a similar concept, right? Yeah. You know, do the same thing. I think the PC VR is the thing that's lacking some sort of space, but perhaps it would just be built into the app. They could actually code that in as a platform. You could just connect to it. I don't know. I understand why it's not releasing simultaneously. Yeah. Let's put it to you that way. They need to patch some stuff here. They need to solve the Captic issue. They need to do control support. you know and I don't think they're not going to I think people are a little bit fearful that perhaps this XRK partnership will mean that they're not going to put in controller support but the fact is it's actually an accessibility issue there are some people who need to use the controller to actually interact with the game because of accessibility reasons and you know all the people that have their own custom controllers some of which are actually validly used for accessibility reasons like they can't exclude those players from that I'm pretty sure so I suggest that they're probably going to be putting it in I would say it will be unusual for them not to be putting that in I think anyway that's more than enough for this episode I said it for Avaganza in the title I think we should try and chapter this if anyone who's watching this wants to have a go at putting chapter cuts in this for us if we don't get to it first we'll actually go and put those in the description if you want to chapter it out because we've covered a lot so uh so sorry for the long run um but it was no other way of doing it like it's just too much to talk about now this time around it's massive and there's going to be so much more to talk about uh coming up so i mean that's it's nice that there's not gonna be a little drought so uh We should be seeing some more content coming your way soon featuring more VR, more about this X-Garcade once we figure it out. Hopefully, Zen will have some other announcements about just new tables ready for either Pinball M or Pinball FX. We'll find out. Until then, it's always all about the things that Jared loves to talk about most. It's the stuff and the things. All right, folks. Until next time. Bye-bye. See ya. Thank you.