Get Visual Pinball

vPinOps does not install Visual Pinball. You download it, copy it into place, and point vPinOps at it. This page is the whole of that.

Which one

Visual Pinball Standalone, the BGFX build, 10.8.1 or newer.

It is on Visual Pinball’s own releases page: github.com/vpinball/vpinball/releases. Pick the newest 10.8.1 release and, inside it, the file for your platform with BGFX in its name.

It is a pre-release, on purpose

Visual Pinball marks every 10.8.1 as a pre-release, and its newest stable release is still 10.8.0. vPinOps needs 10.8.1 anyway: it is the first build that lets a front end put your backglass and DMD on the right screens, which is the main thing vPinOps does. On 10.8.0, or on the older Windows-only VPinballX.exe, tables still launch and come back, but your screens cannot be placed.

Where it goes

vPinOps creates the folder below the first time it starts, so it is already there. Then:

macOS

The download is a disk image (.dmg). Open it and drag VPinballX_BGFX.app to Applications, as the disk image asks. vPinOps looks there too.

You can drag it into ~/vPinOpsData/visualpinball/app/ instead, which keeps everything in one folder. If it is in both places, vPinOps uses the one in visualpinball/app/.

Then open it once yourself, from Finder, before you play anything from vPinOps. macOS asks whether to open an app downloaded from the Internet; click Open, then quit Visual Pinball. That question only comes once, but it has to be answered by you, and if vPinOps is the first thing to start Visual Pinball it appears behind the front end. vPinOps checks for this and tells you instead of launching, and if something else is ever in the way it steps aside after 20 seconds, but answering it up front is the quick way.

Windows

Unzip the download so that VPinballX_BGFX64.exe and the files beside it sit in C:\vPinOpsData\visualpinball\app\.

Not VPinballX.exe. That is the older Windows-only Visual Pinball, and if your cab already has one, it is easy to point at the wrong folder.

Linux

Unpack the download so that VPinballX_BGFX and the files beside it sit in ~/vPinOpsData/visualpinball/app/.

Why one level down inside visualpinball/: Visual Pinball keeps its own settings in the folder above, so when a new version comes out you replace app/ and your settings survive.

Already have it somewhere else? Leave it there. Browse to it in the next step and nothing has to move.

Point vPinOps at it

Quit vPinOps from its icon and start it again. When it starts, it finds Visual Pinball in visualpinball/app/ (or, on a Mac, in Applications) and fills in the VPX box itself.

If you kept it somewhere else: Settings → Where your stuff lives → VPX → Browse…, choose it, Save settings.

The page stops saying Not ready to play. That is the whole check.

Nothing to switch on first

You do not need to run Visual Pinball on its own, and you do not need to turn its plugins on. The first time vPinOps launches a table it switches on the three pieces every table needs, where nothing has chosen them yet: the ROM player, the backglass and the score display. Anything else, such as DOF, alternate sound or PuP packs, is yours to turn on in Visual Pinball’s own F12 menu while a table is running. Which settings are yours and which are ours

ROMs, and where Visual Pinball looks for them

Tables that emulate a real machine need a ROM, still zipped. Put it in the table’s own pinmame/roms/ folder, which needs no setting at all, or in one shared folder that you tell Visual Pinball about. ROMs, nvram and high scores has both, and the one Windows catch.