As for Pinup Player. To explain what it is...at it's basic core, it's a program that plays videos in VLC media player windows (it does so much more than that though). This can be sized and positioned, and layered anywhere on any screen. FP can use DOFLinx to trigger Pinup Player (PUP) for videos, images, Overlay frames, and SSF. Anything that VLC can play can be used for video files.

Pinup Player Packs (PuP-Packs) are the active video backglass / topper that can be used optionally with a FP table that has both DOFLinx and PUP support added)

The VLC windows can NOT be "part" of the FP window itself. They can only display "over top" of FP. Therefor the limitations for using it with FP is:

-with desktop view. It "can" work fine, as I showed in one of my demo videos...but FP must be run in windowed mode (and you can use another program to force it to Borderless Fullscreen windowed). This will allow the PuP window to show over top of FP's window. This also means you can only use one PuP layer for videos.

-in cabinet view, or 2/3 screen view. You can one way or another fully use PuP on a Backglass screen and a Topper screen. For multi-layered PuP-Packs you just need to "hide" the FP backglass when launching the FP table from a front-end so that only the PuP-Pack is displayed on that screen.

So as an example my Tron Legacy PuP-Pack can work fine for both because it only uses one PuP screen layer. My more complex PuP-Packs like Transformers which uses 7 PuP layers won't work on desktop, but will work fine on a second screen setup if the FP Backglass window is hidden or not used.


The big difference with playing FP in a cabinet vs desktop or VR is that cabinets use a "static" view. The angle of this view is set so that is looks "correct" for your angle when playing at the cabinet.... BUT the limitation of this is that for many tables, you don't get the best view and angle of the mini videos screens like in Jaws. There's not much you can do about it.

Also...the FP lower resolution videos and images really do stand out when being shown on a HD backglass screen compared to real HD videos using 24fps up to 60fps.

So for a cabinet, Pinup Player really works nicely to make the table look really charp and also is nice for other spectators.

I agree with SLAM, in that the videos needs to be used appropriately and timed nice and tightly to the events on the table. You don't want to see the video still playing 10 seconds after the event is long done. If you have a long timing for an "intro" for a MB mode...that's fine to use a longer video to match. In fact it can be really cool...but the video should be done when that mode starts.

For some events like a timed "hurry up" mode, I think longer/looping videos can be nicely used though and can work well. A great example is the APC mode for my Aliens FX3 PUP-Pack. This is a mode that is limited in time...so I just had the APC video clips edited together to play over and over again to look like they are seamless. It's only when that mode is done do you get the video to stop.

Even in my FP Tron PuP-Pack I want to re-edit it and refine it to be tighter and look nicer and less loopy.

My record for videos in a PuP-Pack is Transformers. Almost 250 videos! That includes topper and Text,etc.. but that table had so many modes and unique Jackpots it was crazy!

Is this what you mean ?


https://youtu.be/uV-qkGbLSCo

Nice!

I noticed that it didn't seem to be completely self-luminous like a typical overlay. You can see the lighting affecting the surface. I wonder if that can be adjusted? Does the original overlay look the same under that lighting?

If that surface "can" be adjusted to be fully luminous, or not...then you could possibly also use that for a playfield that uses Image Lists. A normal overlay can't be used for an entire playfield because it's always lit up.

Wonder if that movement can be adjusted in real-time via script? Moving videos.


On a separate note:

I also wonder for the texture swapping....can't that be used for toys as well? Imagine having in Star Trek the space ship textures "visually" change when it takes damage...or Medieval Madness can have parts of the castle visually damaged,etc.

Could make for neat stuff.

Yes you can swap textures on Toys
I believe that is what I did with the fake games room pinball tables to swap their texures
and the Room Walls in Creatures from the Black Lagoon. I converted them to 'toys" in FPM Editor and then swapped their textures...

You are a sick sick man Terry

Video pending
overlay playfields are indeed self luminous and work very well !!
If you don't want it at any time I can make it disappear in the code no problem...

https://youtu.be/XudGziw1-yc

Haha...nice.

Yah...where my mind was going was imagine have an animated playfield with the proper cut outs for the light inserts,etc (using the correct transparancy colour) on every image in the Image List. That should allow the lights to shine through. Then you can change up the playfield to have animated water for a Jaws like table. Maybe not the entire table but parts of it like Zen's,etc.

Or some of my ideas for a Silent Hill table I've always wanted to do...like having animated fog on the playfield...and then it can change to a rusty animated bloody playfield.

you don't need cut outs, just assign all the lights to a "surface" above the overlay frame that I am superimposing

https://youtu.be/lvUVGa6msmY




Ya you don't need cut outs, I just reassigned the lights to a slightly higher surface...

I tried changing the intensity and remarking out the ambient lighting. It does seem to work better.

...So if we add shadow maps to a table we release, should we add a nano-flasher to the existing lights as you have done here or is there a better way? Did you do it this way on IJ? I am thinking about adding shadow maps to "Phantom of the Opera" since I am going to update the bounce code on it anyway.

George

Good question...I still haven't figured it out...you do need a slingshot flasher to create a good shadow map I think