Getting started

Quick setup gets you up and going quickly — one table, playing. Everything below it goes deeper, when you want it.

It is the same on Windows, macOS and Linux. Where a path or a name differs, there is a tab for it.

Have ready: a computer, the Visual Pinball download (you copy it in at step 6, and Get Visual Pinball says which one), and a table or two. If your tables need ROMs, have those too.

Quick setup

A quick step-by-step for importing a single table or a .vpxz file. You can read more in each section if you need to.

1. Install vPinOps for your platform — macOS · Windows · Linux. (step 1)
2. Find the icon — menu bar on a Mac, tray by the clock on Windows and Linux. It is how you talk to vPinOps, and the only way to quit it. (step 2)
3. Settings… → Save. You can leave every box as it is. (step 3)
4. Open OpsLink — vPinOps in a browser, on this machine or your phone. (step 4)
5. Your folders are already there. vPinOps made vPinOpsData the first time it started, for your tables and Visual Pinball. (step 5)
6. Copy Visual Pinball into visualpinball/app/ inside that folder (on a Mac, Applications works too), then quit vPinOps from its icon and start it again. It finds Visual Pinball there by itself. On a Mac, open Visual Pinball once yourself first and click Open when macOS asks. (step 6)
7. Library → Import → Send a table, pick a .vpx or a .vpxz, then Look at these and Import. That second press is the one people miss. (step 10)
8. Play it — from the icon, Launch front end; or on your phone, Playing → ▶ Play it on the cab. Flippers move along the wheel, the start button plays, Esc leaves. (step 11)

Continue into Your library or Using it if you need more — cabinet or desktop, screens, buttons and starting on boot are steps 7, 8, 9 and 12 below.

Full cabinet setup

This is the whole setup, start to finish. Each step says what to press and what you should see. Where there is more to know, the step links to the page that has it.

1. Install vPinOps.

   macOS · Windows · Linux

   Each page is short: download, unpack, start it, and the one thing that platform needs. Come back here when it is running.

2. Find the icon.

   vPinOps does not open full-screen. The wheel — the full-screen row of table logos you pick from on the cab — only appears when you ask for it. Until then, vPinOps is an icon where your platform keeps them:

   macOS
   In the menu bar, top right.
   Windows
   In the tray, down by the clock.
   Linux
   In your desktop’s tray.

   Click it. The menu is: About vPinOps… · Settings… · Map my controls… · Launch front end · two boxes for starting on its own · Quit.

   That icon is how you talk to vPinOps from now on. It is also the only way to quit it.

3. Open Settings… and press Save.

   This window does one job: it makes OpsLink reachable from your other devices. It has three things in it, Port, Password and Listen on, and you can leave all three exactly as they are. Press Save.

   Leave the port alone unless something else on this machine already uses 7833.

4. Open OpsLink.

   OpsLink is vPinOps in a browser: the cabinet on your phone, or in a tab on this machine, over your own network. Everything from here on happens in it.

   • On this machine: in that Settings window, press Open it in a browser here.
   • On your phone or laptop: open the address vPinOps shows. It is in the run log every time it starts, and pressing M on the wheel shows it on screen. Sign in with the password from the file below, then change it under Settings if you like.
   macOS / Linux
   ~/.vpinops/remote-password
   Windows
   %USERPROFILE%\.vpinops\remote-password

   Four tabs along the bottom: Cab · Playing · Library · Settings.

   If your phone cannot reach it, that is almost always the firewall on the machine, and connecting to OpsLink walks through it.

5. Your folders are already there.

   vPinOps made them the first time it started, so there is nothing to press. Your tables and Visual Pinball live in:

   macOS / Linux
   ~/vPinOpsData/
   Windows
   C:\vPinOpsData\

   You can see them under Settings → Where your stuff lives. Leave Tables where it is unless your tables live on a NAS or an external drive. If they do, point it there, but only if that library is already one folder per table, the way Visual Pinball lays it out. A folder full of loose .vpx and .directb2s files is not a library yet; those go in one table at a time, at step 10. The folder layout

   The VPX box stays empty on purpose. That is the next step.

6. Put Visual Pinball in place.

   Copy the Visual Pinball you downloaded into the visualpinball/app/ folder from step 5, then quit vPinOps from its icon and start it again. When it starts it finds Visual Pinball in that folder and fills in the VPX box itself. If you keep Visual Pinball somewhere else, point at it instead: Settings → Where your stuff lives → VPX → Browse… and Save settings.

   On a Mac, open Visual Pinball once yourself before playing from vPinOps. macOS asks whether to open an app downloaded from the Internet; click Open, then quit it. If vPinOps were the first to start it, that question would appear behind the front end.

   Which download, and exactly where it goes: Get Visual Pinball.

   You do not have to run Visual Pinball first, and you do not have to turn anything on inside it. vPinOps switches on the three pieces a table needs the first time it launches one.

7. Say which setup this is.

   Settings → Which setup is this? Pick Cabinet or Desktop and press Use this setup.

   That sets the view and which way the playfield turns, and nothing else. This one is read when vPinOps starts, so the page tells you to press Restart vPinOps on the Cab page.

   Cabinet or desktop, in more detail

8. Put each screen where it goes.

   Settings → Screens. There is a card for each surface: playfield, backglass, DMD and topper. On each card, pick the monitor it lives on. That is all most setups need.

   If a surface needs an exact box rather than a whole screen, for instance a DMD strip along the top of the backglass monitor, press Open the screen designer and drag it on the machine itself. Screens and layout explains both.

9. Map your buttons.

   From the icon: Map my controls… Press Add… next to an action, then press the button or key you want for it. Flippers move along the wheel, the start button plays.

   A keyboard already works with nothing mapped. This step is for a cabinet, or a controller. Controls

10. Put a table in.

    Library → Import → Send a table. Pick a .vpx, or a .vpxz if you have a packaged one.

    Sending puts it in a holding folder. Then press Look at these under Waiting in your inbox, check the name it worked out, and press Import. That second press is the one people miss.

    Now open the table from Library:

    • Files → Add a file for its ROM, its backglass, or anything else it came with. You pick the slot, so nothing is guessed.
    • Artwork fetches wheel, playfield and DMD art for it, into the table’s own medias/ folder — the one place vPinOps keeps a table’s pictures and video. Tick Videos too if you want motion.

    One-off: get the table name list

    Settings → Table name list → Get the table list. Do this once and import can suggest proper names and makers. Import works without it, and a table nobody recognises still imports under the name you give it.

    Importing has the whole story, including what goes where.

11. Play it.

    From the icon: Launch front end. Or on your phone: Playing → ▶ Play it on the cab.

    Flippers move along the wheel, the start button or Enter plays, Esc leaves a table. Hold Esc for a second to leave vPinOps.

    If the table plays and comes back to the wheel, you are done. If it did not, the table is held: taken off the wheel on purpose, with the reason kept, so you can tell “not tried yet” from “does not work”. Press T on the wheel, or look at the table in Library: it says what it needs.

12. Make it start on its own.

    Back at the icon, tick Start vPinOps when I log in and Launch front end at startup. Turn the machine on and the wheel comes up.

    Linux
    Auto-login is set in your desktop, not in vPinOps. Building a dedicated cabinet has it.

If something did not work

• About vPinOps… from the icon shows which build you are on, where its files are, and the OpsLink address, with a Copy details button. That is the first thing to send when you ask for help.
• The run log, last-run.log, next to your config. It names what was written to Visual Pinball before a launch and why a table was held. Where things are
• Troubleshooting lists the failures that actually happen, most common first.