OK peoples, this has been sidelined long enough!!!!!
I've finally got my workshop built and finished, I'm all moved in with power and lighting and have cleared a large part of the garage out so that I can really get some breathing room and be able to see where the barcade is going. All that being said, I really need to pull some focus and get back to this build.
I keep getting mentally overwhelmed by all the different parts of this build that sit outside of the norm and I think I've been letting myself get stuck in mental blocks.
So to get around this I'm going to break the project out into goals so I'm not trying to think about everything at once.
Goal 1. - GET IT WORKING!!!!!
Hyperpin is a bit of a pain in the ass itself, add into that the quirks of Virtual Pinball, FUture Pinball and then the different .exe releases of those that are matched to certain tables and not others and it all starts to get a little annoying. So I'm just going to configure Hyperpin to run a few tables and use those for testing, TAF, TZ and MM will be enough.
Goal 2. Hardware & Lighting
I have all the gear I need to control my motors, gears, shakers, contactors, strobes and LEDs so I just need to get in there and do all the wiring and get things configured properly, I think once I feel all the thuds, whirrs and other gizmos it will really get me excited and feel like I'm getting somewhere.
Goal 3. - Bezels, glass and dressing.
I really want to build a 3D bezel that runs along the inside of the cabinet and under the glass around the playfield. Also I'd like to incorporate some RGB lighting within this bezel so the entire sides of the playfield react to the lighting events. For the glass on the back box I want to do some paint masking and I really wanted to have some kind of subtle generic pattern in the masking so it didn't look so boring and black. Maybe I wont need it as it may take up so little space that it won't really matter.
Goal 4. - The rear projection sides.
I've decided that I want the sides to be solid pieces of acrylic that cover the entire side of the cab. They need to sit flush against the shape of the legs and also the side rails, so I'm going to need to make some kind of routing stencil to do that. Either the acrylic itself needs to be a frosted white with a matt, semi translucent finish, or I need to treat clear acrylic with a rear projection paint to get the quality of image I am looking for. I know how to do both, but it will come down to my ability to execute this properly and of course cost, some of those acrylics can get insanely expensive as they are so specialized. Also, mounting the acrylic on the side of the cab so there are no visible screws etc is going to be a challenge.
Goal 5. - Software, head tracking and FE configuration.
SJaak is helping out in the dept, but it's going to take us quite a while to nail it down and get it working just the way it needs to in order to really unleash the potential in this build. Done right, the whole cabinet will transform as you flip through the tables in the FE and of course when you launch the game, it should hopefully be the most convincing VPin you've ever seen showing full cabinet side art to match the play field and back box area. I also want to make use of the BAM system to really take the experience to the next level using head/face tracking to change the view of the play field as you move from side to side, see here...
Goal 6. - Nudging
First I have to work out if the machine is up to the abuse of nudging, especially with the dual projector configuration. If it is then I can decide which way to go and how to implement this properly.
Goal 7. - Lock down bar and likelihood of being able to still pull off the shmup controls.
Jamming such a large screen into a normal wide body pinball space has left me with basically zero space at the front of the cabinet, so I decided I would wait until I have the cab performing it's primary function properly and THEN decide if I can pull of the shmup controls in an elegant way, if not, then so be it.
If I stick to this list in this order then I should be able to make good progress at a decent pace, I just had to break it all out as all of this has been spinning around in my head, each section with it's own unknowns and problems, so hopefully this is my way through.