We have already been able to see various styles of games in virtual reality, although a pinball game was still missing. But the wait is over and we already have it here. A modder has created a patch to adapt the Arcade Pinball game to the DK2, and has named it VRcade Pinball. The free version of the game, which includes the “Tales of the Arabian Nights” table, can be downloaded from Steam and then follow some simple instructions to play with the DK2.
Facility
- Download PinballVRcade.zip and unzip it wherever we want
- Configure the Rift in extended mode.
- In the Steam library, right-click on Pinball Arcade and select “Launch Configuration Utility”
- Configure Pinball Arcade to run at 1920×1080 and in adapter select the Rift screen.
Run VRcade Pinball
- Run Steam
- Run the Launcher file.exe that we unzipped earlier (if you can’t find the game executable, see below in troubleshooting)
- Play some table. We can play the free table that includes or try a demo of the ones that carries payment
Known issues
The author warns that the mouse support does not work properly, so to move through the menus he recommends that we do it with keyboard or gamepad. She also says that pushing at the table doesn’t seem to shake her, but it works nonetheless.
Troubleshooting
If running the Launcher gives an error, it may be necessary to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable. The Launcher will search for the location of the game executable by itself, but if it does not find it, we can tell it ourselves where it is. To locate it, we right-click on the game on Steam, go to properties, local files and view local files. Once we have located the PinballArcade.exe we just have to create a shortcut to the Launcher.exe, edit its properties and in Destination add at the end the full path of the PinballArcade.that. For example, if we have it in D:juegossteamsteamappscommonpinballarcadepinballarcade .it should look like this to us:”[ruta donde está el launcher]Launcher.exe” F:JuegosSteamsteamappscommonPinballArcade .
If you get an error that says “Couldn’t set up Pinball Arcade app id file”, try running it as administrator. If it doesn’t work, create a file called steam_appid.txt containing the number 238260 and save it. (This file has to be in the Pinball Arcade folder or else Pinball Arcade will relaunch itself from Steam bypassing the VR patch).
In the tests we have done the fps have been blocked at 62, and therefore the headtracking was not smooth. We have tried to change several graphic options from the game configuration tool but there are no changes, so in principle it is not a performance problem. We will have to keep testing to see if we can find a solution.
