Improving Physics

[Canadian War Moose]

After many hours playing this game. I've noticed where the physics could be improved.

1. Light pocket 6 pin (right handed): I've been able to recreate this over and over and the issue the ball deflection when the ball hits the pins. After watching numerous light pocket hits by PBA Pros I've come to this conclusion. Need to reduce the ball deflection on pin impact.
   
2. Dead Pins: The pins do not bounce around the same way they would in real life with 19.6 mph shot and a rev rate of 550 rpm. The pins weigh a shade too much.
   
3. Pins too vertical after impact: There's a couple causes here. One of the tensors needs to be adjust down and the max angular velocity also needs to be reduced to provide more accurate pin action. Another reason the pins remain too vertical is the Centre of Mass is too low. The pins cannot get vertical because the impact looks like this Ball-> <-Pin. This results in the pins being pushed and not able to get air born. A slight adjustment higher yields way more realistic results. Not only do you start to get more messenger strikes, the pins also stop "spinning up" (when the pin wants to go vertical when spinning on its side). The pin remains flatter and again more realistic.
   
4. Shape of the pin pits. There's almost zero bounce backs from the pit and in some of the environments, this is caused by the pin pit shaped like this: ~~\ opposed to a more rectangular shape like this: ~~|. I've noticed the pits that have the more rectangular shape provide a more lively environment with possible bounce backs.
   
5. High throwing speeds: If we want to go a more realistic route, we should probably limit the throw speeds to mid 20 mph range with the average around 18-19 mph.
   
6. Ball Composition: This one would require work by the devs, but right now we're essentially playing with different Urethane balls with the way that the oil gets pushed down lane and not absorbed into the ball. Maybe have an option between the two?

This was a lot, but I'm wondering if would improve the physics on this game a bit more to give the other PBA game a run for its money.

[Rusty Shackleford]

100% agree!

[dakin1]

You can set custom physics up for the game, but of course the game will not record high scores if you do that.

There were a number of physics tweaks proposed that would greatly improve the play of the game and address many of your issues, but when the devs tried to test and implement them as the default physics they said that it caused the game not to work for VR players (apparently some of the changes can cause the pins to actually explode in VR mode). I never fully understood the explanation, but the tweaks were never implemented. If you search the forums here you can find the proposed custom physics changes and try them yourself--I found they greatly improved the scores and reproducibility of the game play. As it stands to get high scores or perfect games it becomes a frustrating exercise in "pick a pixel" with your mouse--miss by even the slightest amount on the release and a strike turns into a 9 pin roll.

[shimsham29]

What gives the other game a run for its money is that this can be played in VR and all you folks not playing it in VR are really missing out. No idea how you can all play it in the pancake mode as it is so weird that way and from my brief time trying it, very inconsistent where in VR, you can pretty much call out your strikes and other rolls after you release the ball. In VR it is an amazing game.