Pinball Labs is Trying to Make Virtual Reality Pinball a Reality
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to play pinball in virtual reality? Well, a group of developers called Pinball Labs is trying to make that fantasy a reality with an immersive pinball simulator that will work across multiple VR platforms, including the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, virtual cabinets, and PC.
To help bring their dream into fruition the team has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The project will be live for another 21 days and has already attracted more than 153 backers, raising $6,150 of the project goal of $18,500, so they're about a third of the way to being funded.
A short trailer for the project:
What Will Pinball Labs Be Developing?
The innovators at Pinball Labs are looking to develop several versions of an out-of-the-box pinball simulator that will be compatible with various VR devices and PCs, while also providing a media creation tool and custom API that will allow virtual cabinet makers and other developers to build their own simulators using the Pinball Labs framework, which is based on Unreal Engine 4. The team has shared a link to an alpha virtual reality demo.
The finished product will be a software suite that includes a pinball machine editor, robust pinball simulator, and a custom API that allows for connectivity with third-party emulators and hardware. In addition to developing a basic pinball simulator for existing VR devices and computers, the creative tools included in the Pinball Labs package will facilitate the development of new digital pinball machines.
Every component of the virtual pinball machine (i.e. - spinners, plungers, lights, pop-bumpers, etc.) will be customizable and can be routed to buttons or commands in virtually any interface. You can even route these components and commands to buttons, knobs, and other physical hardware.
A second trailer detailing the pinball machine's component in a DMD event stream:
Bringing VR to Virtual Pinball Cabinets
In case you don't know what a virtual cabinet is, it's essentially a homemade digital pinball arcade game, which runs pinball as a video game on a large LCD display. You can easily find a number of DIY virtual pinball cabinet tutorials that will show you how to build a virtual pinball cabinet out of a couple of LCD displays, speakers, some wiring and a basic homemade cabinet.
A finished DIY virtual pinball cabinet in action:
Pioneering an Essential Component of the VR Arcade
If Pinball Labs is successful, we'll be seeing virtual pinball cabinets that interface with VR headsets to create the ultimate VR pinball simulation experience. With virtual reality still in the early stages of development, having an accurate simulator and robust pinball machine editor for all of the main VR platforms will mark a basic milestone for the industry as a whole, just as basic arcade games were the pioneers in the original video game revolution of the late 20th century, from Atari's Pong of the 70s to Namco's Pac-Man of the 80s. Thus, Pinball Labs might be ushering in similar first steps for developers in the VR sector, while also bringing a classic arcade favorite into the realm.
