Visual Pinball ("VP") is a

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

and

source available Source-available software is software released through a source code distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called ''open-source ...

video game engine for

pinball Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails call ...

tables and similar games such as

pachinko is a mechanical game originating in Japan that is used as an arcade game, and much more frequently for gambling. Pachinko fills a niche in Gambling in Japan, Japanese gambling comparable to that of the slot machine in the West as a form of l ...

machines. It includes a table

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...

as well as the

simulator A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...

itself, and runs on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It can be used with Visual PinMAME, an

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

for

ROM image A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory Computer chip, chip, often from a ROM cartridge, video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's arc ...

s from real pinball machines. A huge variety of user-created VP tables are available on the internet. Players can choose between faithful recreations of existing pinball machines, with or without ROM emulation, and original pinball simulations based on licensed or completely original themes. VP's scripting capabilities can also be used to create pinball-like games such as pitch-and-bat baseball, pinball bingo,

bowling Bowling is a Throwing sports#Target sports, target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a bowling ball, ball toward Bowling pin, pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). Most references to ''bowling'' are ...

cue sports Cue sports are a wide variety of Game of skill, games of skill played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a Baize, cloth-covered billiards table, table bounded by elastic bumpers known a ...

, and

. VP can be used with common desktop PCs and monitors, but also supports "virtual pinball" cabinets, with various monitors and TVs used to display the playfield and backbox, similar to a real pinball machine.

3D television 3D television (3DTV) is television that conveys depth perception to the viewer by employing techniques such as stereoscopy, stereoscopic display, free viewpoint television, multi-view display, or any other form of 3D display. Most modern 3D te ...

s are supported; and recent versions support touch controls for playing on

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers ...

s and

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s. In February 2010, VP's

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

was released under a license allowing free non-commercial use.Visual Pinball
at

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

Design

Every Visual Pinball table includes two main parts: the "physical" playfield design, and the

script Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...

that determines table gameplay, establishing the "wiring" of the emulation (through Visual PinMAME) to the table components such as lamps, switches and flippers. The editor uses Microsoft

VBScript VBScript (Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is a deprecated programming language for scripting on Microsoft Windows using Component Object Model (COM), based on classic Visual Basic and Active Scripting. It was popular with system admi ...

for user programming. VP itself is written in C++ with the

Active Template Library The Active Template Library (ATL) is a set of template-based C++ classes developed by Microsoft, intended to simplify the programming of Component Object Model (COM) objects. The COM support in Microsoft Visual C++ allows developers to create a v ...

for making

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

controls.Visual Pinball: Build Your Own Pinball Machine
from DigitalPostProduction.com VP is based on

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

, so it can run on any Windows version from

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was Software ...

on, but most recent VP versions require at least

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

due to modern Microsoft

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

s abandoning older versions of the OS.

History

Visual Pinball was released to the public on December 19, 2000 by programmer Randy Davis. In 2005, David R. Foley purchased rights from Davis for modification of the suite for a full-sized pinball cabinet based on the Visual Pinball software.UltraCade Licenses Visual Pinball
from RetroBlast.com Chicago Gaming purchased rights for licensed tables from Williams Electronics. The Visual PinMAME team and the Visual Pinball development community also joined in the effort to produce improvements to the suite product and a few tables. This project, known as UltraPin, was acquired by Global VR following the acquisition of certain assets UltraCade,Global VR to Purchase UltraCade Technologies
from a web archive and was discontinued in 2008. In 2008, NanoTech Entertainment acquired VP rights from Davis to use and distribute the engine with its ''Pinball Wizard'' PC Controller. They released version 9 of the engine back to the community, with many updates developed between 2005–2008. Version 9 includes major improvements, but incomplete backward compatibility, so some older tables still need VP version 8 to run properly. In 2010, the

of Visual Pinball 9.0.7 was released under a

license A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

allowing free non-commercial use, similar to the original MAME license. Davis and NanoTech are no longer involved in development as of (at least) version 9.0.8. Since then, development has been done by various

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

contributors. Visual Pinball X ("VPX") was released on December 24, 2015, again breaking

backward compatibility In telecommunications and computing, backward compatibility (or backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, software, real-world product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with Input ...

with version 9; previously created tables can be loaded with it, but not played without changes. VPX brings significant improvements to graphics and the program's physics engine. In 2025, the re-integration of the VPVR fork into Visual Pinball 10.8.0 was finalized, which adds support for dynamic virtual camera movement, including

Virtual reality headset A virtual reality headset (or VR headset) is a Head-mounted display, head-mounted device that uses 3D near-eye displays and positional tracking to provide a virtual reality environment for the user. VR headsets are widely used with Virtual reali ...

s, and adding

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

as an alternative graphics API option. Due to the latter, Visual Pinball 10.8.1 (still in development) added support for operating systems other than Windows, including

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

tvOS tvOS (formerly Apple TV Software) is an operating system developed by Apple for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. The software for the second-generation and later ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

(incl. the Batocera

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a varia ...

Batocera Linux distribution
/ref> and the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

platform) and Android.Standalone source branch
at

These versions for now omit (most of) the user interface for creating tables, and focus on simulating/playing existing tables.

Visual PinMAME

The simulation of most modern pinball machines (especially those made after 1992, using large portions of DMD animations and digital sound samples) requires the Visual PinMAME program (sometimes referred to as VPinMAME or VPM) to emulate physical machines as closely as possible. VPM increases Visual Pinball's system requirements and, like other emulators, uses image files of actual ROMs from physical pinball machines, executing them as simulations of the embedded CPUs, sound chips and displays from the original machines. Since its 3.6 release, it also allows to physically simulate light bulb,

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (corresp ...

and alphanumeric segment display behaviors to match the analogue circuits more closely. On top,

flicker fusion The flicker fusion threshold, also known as critical flicker frequency or flicker fusion rate, is the frequency at which a flickering light appears steady to the average human observer. It is a concept studied in vision science, more specifically ...

is simulated to match human perception on real hardware. VPM is a program (a COM class) designed to work in combination with Visual Pinball (or nowadays, any other program that can use the COM class, e.g. ''Unit3D Pinball'') to allow 3D renderings of actual

table designs. It is responsible for emulating

CPUs A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...

and the connected

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

s used in modern pinball tables, as opposed to tables with electro-mechanical mechanisms that contain no ROMs or advanced ICs. VPM displays the LEDs or DMD of the machines in a separate window, and emulates integrated sound chips. To work properly with a rendered table, it requires that specific table's ROM images. VPM was written by a programming team including Steve Ellenoff, Tom Haukap, Martin Adrian and Gerrit Volkenborn, and was released on March 30, 2001 with version 0.99 beta. The underlying PinMAME core—which drives all emulation components, and is responsible for emulating LED displays, the DMD and playback of the emulated sound and music—was already started in April 1999. VPM is named after the original

MAME MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to emulate the hardware of arcade games, video game consoles, old computers and other systems in software on modern personal computers and ...

program for emulating

arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily game of skill, games of skill and in ...

s and is based on some parts of the MAME core .7X. The VPM project started as WPCMAMECOM (and its underlying core as WPCMAME, based on the WPC and MAME acronyms). VPM is written in the C++ programming language, whereas PinMAME is still based on C. On August 1, 2008, the full source code of PinMAME 2.0 was made available to the public. Since then, development continues with the help of open-source contributors. In 2017, the effort of making the PinMAME core interact with other programs through other APIs than the Windows exclusive COM was started (initially called PinMAMEdll). Over the years, this was further extended to result in a platform-independent library (libPinMAME) initially released in January 2021, that can be employed also on

and Android, and in

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

and

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

flavors.

References

External links

* * * {{MobyGames, id=/visual-pinball Arcade video game emulators Pinball video games Windows-only freeware Video game level editors Freeware games Video game engines Video games with stereoscopic 3D graphics Video games with available source code Windows games Proprietary video game console emulators

Design

History

Visual PinMAME

See also

References

External links