There's this certain hubris to a lot of commentary about #pinball every time something I post goes a bit viral. The most typical comment is seeing some mechanism and commenting on how stupid it is because the commenter's tech bro expertise would have replaced it with a one cent part. This is what happened with the tilt sensor video where I compared 70s and 2020s tilt sensors.

People were fist fighting each other to tell that it should be replaced with a MEMS sensor. I tried to explain the issue to some, as in the deeper soul of the game there are some things that have always remained no matter how much the technology has progressed. One obvious is the purely mechanical playfield and a ball, which to this day have not been simulated anywhere near satisfactory level. This other example is the tilt sensor, which many just see as momentary switch and completely miss that it actually keeps its momentum and forces the player to "cool it off" after some noticeably strong save move. So, it'd require simulating all that movement, not just the "indicate if the game was pushed beyond this force" information alone. It's also always "simple", but I see no one actually implementing it.

That being said, we've been discussing about the solid state tilt for some time now and it'd be very curious thing to get right. One obvious benefit would be resetting it between players, as the real thing is left swinging if the previous player tilts the game. Another interesting thing would be some kind of an indicator of just how close to the limits the game is taken. A skilled player typically has some kind of a mental model of what's going on, so the simulation would have to match that image pretty closely, or else we're just getting the same reaction as a skilled pinball player playing any of the old simulations and just laughing when the ball does something physically impossible.

Just to demonstrate how bad the ball physics in pinball sims were, here's a slight nudge in PInball dreams 2. This would require an insane amount of force to happen on a real game.

https://www.twitch.tv/apzpins/clip/AbstruseSpicyMagpieStinkyCheese-axTfTG9l0Wg3SKDY

@apzpins I have to admit, I played enough pinball on my PC that I tried it. I was not successful. That said, I do think if you're not too married to realism it's a good gameplay mechanic.

@hunterking I used to play a lot of pinball sims at home, mostly because I ran out of allowance to stuff into the real games and the comparison of driving a real sports car and a car race game would be very close to the truth. I enjoyed most pin sims after they got a bit more complex than those on NES and C64, but the ball physics was always the immersion breaker, it was always like playing with a rubber ball than a 80 gram steel one!

@apzpins I know what you mean. I'm not as immersed in it as you (obviously) but I live three blocks from a movie theater with five or so Stern machines and have been putting more time into the real thing than I used to.

But that comparison is good. Lots of great racing games are nothing like a car. I like the pinball games that go way beyond the realm of the real. Yoku's Island Adventure, Odama.... loved Pokemon Pinball back in the day.

@hunterking @apzpins It‘s a good comparison cause in both pinball and racing people to simulate the real thing :D

@boink And like in racing, I have nothing against the sims. I'd love playing the realistic ones with a good set of pedals and the wheel. But if someone would question owning a real sports car because it can be simulated easily, we get to my problem with the "what's the point of mechanical parts in pinball".

@apzpins If we ignore real world problems like available money/space/time it comes down to variety vs. accuracy. With a sim you have more flexibility but lack the original physical sensation.

@apzpins I know almost nothing about pinball but it almost sounds like you’re saying that tilting/moving the pinball machine is actually okay as long as it isn’t enough to trigger the sensors? if so that sounds like a super interesting part of pinball culture