But the main thing is: I BOUGHT THE TABLE!!!

So here is the first shot of the bottom of the table.

I’m waiting for my four Enermax fans to arrive to mount them… So this will be the next step.

I had an idea how to mount the tv: I will insert some screws in the back of the TV. Then i can lay the tv down on a board with 4 holes in it. The whole tv is relatively flat at the back, so that it will rest relatively stable on the back.

Sorry… pictures from my cell phone.

I couldn’t test side nudging since the table was even more stable to side nudges, but it is no problem to configure it in the software.

… just a test… with my planned (nice price) DMD-monitor

and with black cardboard…

I think i will put the board which stabilises the table between the DMD and the TV. With some holes in it for airflow.

Also it shows that to be authentic (a normal DMD is about 60% of the width of a pinball table) the DMD should have a width of approx. 24 cm. For a width of 23 cm i would need a 10.4 Inch display. Although i could not display the backdrop… I will think about this.

Sorry for people thinking in Inches… the metric system…

Quarterpounder <-> Hamburger Royal

• TV
• DMD Monitor
• Fans (since it will be hot for the TV without)
• Sound

I came to a switchable multi socket which is sold for approx. 30€ via ebay and some german senders. I’ts produced by http://www.gembird.de/ and they have a little program which can control the individual (4) sockets.

I installed the sofware (which is of no use without the actual device(s)):

But it looks good. and according to the manual you can switch the sockets with a program which monitors active programs and with a dos command:

» pm2.exe -[on | off] -device name -socket name

According to amazon.de the software is a pice of crap, but another reviewer said that with the new software everything is good.

OK… let’s buy it

Me and my friend looked it from the side and we both said that in comparison to the other LCD-TVs the AV 500 P has a great viewing angle. So my conclusion for you: Dont buy any TV – look for the viewing angle! Although the screen was not perfect at extreme viewing angles, it always was OK. I would say that between 120 degrees it was nearly perfect and up to 150 degrees it was still good. Sitting at the side of the table 60 cm above the table and 1 meter to the other side of the screen would give a viewing angle of approximately 30 degrees from the side – makes 180 degrees – (30*2) Degrees = 120 Degrees  from side to side. So the image will be good.

What i also found out – unfortunately – was that the buttons under the screen look approximately 2 mm out of the bezel. That is not so good, but not a big problem, since i can mount the TV 2 mm under the glass. I just have to stabilize the glass a little bit. As i plan to mount a black cardboard under the glass with cutouts for the screen and DMD this should not be a big problem. I also have in mind that i maybe have to mount a infrared emitter over the infrared “eye” of the TV, if it turns of to be a pain to switch to HDMI input.

I think the TV as well as the U-HID-G will arrive on tuesday (because of easter). According to the tracking they are already in my city.

As i dont want to cut the glass of the table in pieces and a wanted to have a cleanable surface, the touchscreen should be “under glass”. So i searched the internet for such a technology and found it after a long search:

Projected capacitive touch screen.

Looking at Wikipedia directly gave me a link to a producer of such touchscreen systems: Visual Planet.

At http://www.visualplanet.biz/products/touch/ they show that their product ViP-Interactive Foil works through windows. Some minutes later i found out that this product is a foil which can be mounted under the glass (in front of the screen) and it does exactly what i was looking for. Multitouch (or at least dual touch) is possible but not implemented yet (should come this year). There are two versions: One with an direct attaced USB-controller and one with a removable one. The accuracy seems OK and the resolution is 4096×4096. Unortunatly they don’t give out a price directly on their website. While searching for some other producers i found a project where the ViP-Interactive Foil in the size of 42 Inch was also used. Unfortunately i could not find out when this project was realized but they had listed the costs of the project. The foil was listed as 4000$. So i was forewarned .

I contacted them via email about the thickness of the glass and a price list and got an answer some hours later.You can configure the thickness of the glass and the air gap between the glass and the foil via the driver. They have a german reseller called Interactive Displays. ViP did not give me a price or a hint where the price would start. So i contacted Interactive Diplays in germany.

One day later i got all informations i needed – a price list

They are selling their interactive foil at 32 Inch 16:9 for 1452.- € (q1 2009) not including tax and p+p. I dont know if this is an all in one price (with software and USB-interface), but now i know the range.: 1750.-  to 2000.- € (including Tax and p+p). That’s OK if you earn money with it, but for my table this would be some kind of price overkill. Although i thought about selling my “home use only” pinball for it, i decided to think about this when the table is ready to play. I could mount the interactive foil under the glass even after the table is ready. For pinball gameplay this would be not better than without the foil. For surfing the web this would be great…

Conclusion:

Touchscreen – Great
Moultitouch – Wait for it (and for the software that can understand these informations)
Price – Wait a little bit (in the hope price will drop in near future)

Beside eight interface Pins it has a three-axis accelerometer for sensing gravity and motion acceleration built in. –> IDEA: for nudging the table!!!

In addition it has a really nice looking configuration utility.

You can do almost everything with a touch of a button (or a nudge of the interface). Press virtual buttons on a virtual gamepad, mouse or keyboard and much more.

Before this i thought of some buttons for nudging the table. I have to test the interface, if it recognizes nudges if build inside the table. If this does not work, 8 buttons are enough to play pinball. If it works, i would have some more buttons as menu buttons for the PinMame-Controls and do not have to shift all my buttons.

So i bought it for 66,79 € including Tax and shipping to germany.

• good viewing angle (since i look from the side)
• the bigger the better
• Full HD?
• Pixels that are quadratic
• Small bezel around the Screen
• HDMI input

The first thing i thought of was: should it really feature full HD? OK, this would be great, but full-HD TVs are more expensive as HD-Ready TVs. But more important is the viewing angle. Since LCD TVS are made of layers. If the density of the layers (the resolution of the TV) increases, the viewing angle decreases because the RGB overlay somewhat shifts over the LCD-shutter panel (i researched this for my MAME (TM) cabinet and bought an arcade monitor for this because there was no good LCD-Monitor that time).

Then i researched the prices for full HD LCD-TVs – nooooo gooooood!

OK… Since the resolution of Visual Pinball tables are not so great either, and 1366 x 768 pixels is somewhat the standard for 16:9 tables for Visual Pinball, i decided for a TV that should have 1366 x 768 pixels. Also this resolution has exact quadratic pixels so that i don’t have to bother about stretching issues.

Searching a little bit the internet i came across this LCD-TV:

The Toshiba REGZA 32 AV 500 P

I found it at a german Web-store (Redcoon) for 345€.

The best: it has a viewing angle of 178 Degrees. Exactly what i was looking for.

The measures (without base) are:

79,6 x 51,2 x 9,9 cm

So 51,2 cm height… i have a maximum height of approximately 54 cm inside the Ramvik table. So it should nicely fit in.

OK, it has a relative big bezel, and the reviews are noit so great, but the price was what was really counting… The overall Price of the table should range about 700€ (without computer).

So i bought it… No way back. Now i really have to build the table.

This Picture i found at http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/ikea-instructions/9429-ramvik-coffee-table-instructions-annotated.html?setorder=1

Let’s look at this picture: The table has a board inside, which stabilizes the table exactly at the position i wanted to build the TV-monitor in.  In addition it has Drawers, which i could not use because i need the place for the TV. To stabilise the table without the board in the middle i could mount the fronts of the drawers to the sides (since i don’t need them) with some corner brackets and leave the board in the middle out. Good…

The size of the Table (according to the IKEA Website) is:

Length: 120 cm
Width: 58 cm
Height: 40 cm

Assuming the wood is 2 cm thick, The glass would have a surface of 116 cm x 54 cm. I confirmed this approximation at my local IKEA this week, but lost the paper i wrote the exact measures .

So let’s look what TV i could build inside this piece.

It should have the following features:

• glass on top of a case which is big enough to hold a TV screen bigger than 25 Inch
• cheap
• nice looking
• a little bit durable

To follow the needs that it has to be cheap and nice looking, i looked at the coffeetables at IKEA and immediately found a Table which was perfect for my Project for approximately 100€: The RAMVIK

OK, this looks good. Plenty of place for a TV – maybe for 37 inch?

That was so exactly the table i was looking for, that maybe other would have done the same with a Ramvik table. So i googled… and laughed out loud:

I found two projects:

1. Ramvik Media Table (http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/2008/08/ramvik-tv-and-music-console.html)

and 2. Ramvik Mame Book (http://mamebook.blogspot.com/)

OK, i’m not the first person who builds a monitor  into a Ramvik table, but nobody has built a Virtual Pinball off a Ramvik table before. In Addition my screen should be MUCH BIGGER!!!

Let’s see if i can make it!

Visual Pinball 9

VP 9 Features
• optimized for vpm
‐ lotr runs close to full speed with emulated sound
‐ ball blurring/stutters/etc have been greatly reduced.
This still has lag/issues with 26 balls in play on Johnny Mnemonic)
• translate locked triggers
• Plunger and all other objects can be locked in the editor
• sound/graphic exporter/table unlocker
• dual display span mode support so vp has full control over the backbox display as well as table
• table rotation ‐ 360 degrees possible
• full physics options for slope, oblique correction, flipper settings, ball dampening, scatter angle, friction, gravity
• table scaling support X+Y
• table bottom height ‐ set the bottom of the table lower than the playfield surface for realistic holes
• scriptable exit table to desktop method
• updated for DirectX9 0 full hardware rendering
• reduced engine crashes
• support for Pinball Wizard Input Controller

One feature i always missed got realized! Table rotation!

So i thought about creating a selfmade Visual Pinball – Cabinet. I have some experience in this since i created a MAME(TM) Cabinet some years ago.

So what should it look like, what features should it have? Where should i put it (since a Pinball Cab is big (and i already own an original)). Questions and questions…

Of course i knew Ultrapin:

but at 4000€ this was to much money for some fun stuff.

A few days later i came across some youtibe videos of Microsoft Surface:

… also neat stuff .

How would Visual Pinball look at Microsoft surface? And that was the Idea: To build a coffeetable for Visual Pinball!

So i had to do a litte research…

• Which Coffeetable?
• Touchscreen?
• Interface for VisualPinball?
• DMD?