What you supply

vPinOps sits on top of a working Visual Pinball setup. Here is the whole list of what has to already exist.

1 · A computer

Windows, macOS or Linux. All three work. Any machine already running a cab is enough — vPinOps is a front end, and the heavy lifting is Visual Pinball’s.

Not a phone and not a tablet. iOS and Android reach vPinOps through OpsLink in a browser, which is the better fit anyway: the phone’s job here is to be the remote, not to run the cabinet.

2 · Visual Pinball

You install it; vPinOps points at it. It sits under your content root rather than beside the program, because it is yours and an update to vPinOps must never touch it.

macOS

VPinballX_BGFX.app — the Standalone build. It carries the F12 screen configurator and reads the ini keys vPinOps writes.

Windows

VPinballX_BGFX64.exe — the Standalone build, not the older Windows-only one.

Name the build

An older Windows-only VPinballX.exe install will still find, show, launch and return tables — but vPinOps cannot place your backglass or DMD on it, because screen configuration is written as ini keys that build does not read. If your cab has two Visual Pinball folders, check which one you are pointing at.

Linux

VPinballX_BGFX — the same Standalone build as the other two.

See Install on Linux for the distribution notes.

3 · Your tables

A table is a .vpx file — one file, one machine. Most downloads bring companions along with it, and they all belong in that table’s folder:

.directb2s	the backglass artwork, shown on your second screen
.vbs	a script some tables need to run outside Windows — see compatibility scripts
.ini	settings the table’s author shipped with it. Yours; we leave them alone

You can lay these out yourself as one folder per table, or hand the whole pile to the importer and let it build the folders for you.

vPinOps will show and launch a table from its .vpx alone — the backglass and the art are enrichment, not requirements. Whether it then plays is up to the table: one that emulates a real machine needs its ROM as well, which is next.

4 · Your ROMs

Tables that emulate a real machine need a ROM — a .zip under your PinMAME roms/ folder, still zipped. vPinOps names the ROM it could not start; it never downloads one. See ROMs, nvram and high scores.

5 · Frontend art, if you want it

Wheel logos, playfield videos, backglass and DMD art. Bring your own into medias/, or let the importer fetch defaults from vpinmediadb as a separate, re-runnable step that only fills empty slots.

Optional · Pinball FX and Pinball FX Midnight

If you own Zen’s Steam pinball games, they can sit on the wheel beside your tables. You need Steam, signed in, and the games installed through it — vPinOps never buys or installs them.

On macOS they run through a CrossOver bottle, because they are Windows builds. Windows and macOS work today; Linux is untested. Full detail: Steam games.

What you do not need

• An installer. vPinOps is a folder you copy. There is no runtime to install first.
• A dedicated user account on Linux. Two recipes, neither needs one.
• To rebind anything. Visual Pinball’s keys work out of the gate, and they are the ones a cabinet is already wired for — see controls.