Pinball FX2 is not free… and not available to buy anymore. The game included 70 tables, most of them were ported to FX3 but a few tables are still exclusive to FX2 (Southpark, Plants VS Zombies). I will add it to the guide in case you were able to obtain it elsewhere.

When you have the game installed, these will be your pinballX settings

In some cases you may see that pinballFX2 is not closing correctly, this was not the case for me on windows 10 but if you run into this problem you can use this killAll.bat file and add it as run after like this:

@echo off
echo This will kill everything before returning to pinballX frontend
echo Run as administrator
C:\Windows\System32\Taskkill /IM “Pinball FX2.exe” /F
C:\Windows\System32\Taskkill /IM “Pinball FX3.exe” /F
C:\Windows\System32\Taskkill /IM “dmdext.exe” /F
C:\Windows\System32\Taskkill /IM “DOFLinx.exe” /F

Then open up FX2 and go into settings, these were my settings but I will add a small guide on how to calculate your values if you are running different resolutions than me.

There are 70 FX2 tables and there will they will not release new tables for FX2 anymore (since FX3 is freely available), That’s why I will add the media pack directly, it can be downloaded on the PinballX Media Projects page HERE. Extract the pack inside your Media folder in your PinballX folder. The media should automatically appear when browsing your FX2 tables.

Configure dofLinx & dMD?

In your DOFLinx.INI file, make sure the “processes” variable has “Pinball FX2” in it, then DOFLinx will automatically detect FX2 when it’s launched and should automatically control your light effects whenever you start a table.

If you want to list the processes that will wake up DOFLinx, comment it out if you just want Pinball FX2

PROCESSES=PinballX,Pinball FX2,Pinball FX3,Future Pinball

Setup x360ce

To make sure all controls are working in FX2, we need Copy the x360ce executable inside our FX2 installation folder and create the mapping for it. The default controls for an Xbox controller in FX2 can be found in the settings, then map all buttons from your Virtuapin controller to the correct FX2 controls.

Install&Configure Game

Pinball FX3 Is free available on steam, don’t get too excited the free version has no tables and all tables are considered DLC and have to be bought in packs. The complete pack will set you back about 220$. Before we can rotate our tables we need a cabinet activation code which can be obtained by sending a mail to FX3 support. The code can be entered when clicking the cabinet icon in the FX3 settings screen. To obtain the code, they require a photo of your cabinet or at least some indication you are building your cabinet.

Once you got your cabinet mode enabled in FX3, you can set your rotation orientation as well as some extra settings to make sure the tables fit on your screen nicely. The DMD screen has a resolution of 1040 by 272 LEDs.

Media packs for FX3 can also be downloaded on the PinballX forums (here), copy all media in your PinballX media folder and all media should show up in your main menu.

Add to Pinball X

Configure dofLinx & DMD?

In your DOFLinx.INI file, make sure the “processes” variable has “Pinball FX3” in it, then DOFLinx will automatically detect FX3 when it’s launched and should automatically control your light effects whenever you start a table.

If you want to list the processes that will wake up DOFLinx, comment it out if you just want Pinball FX3

PROCESSES=PinballX,Pinball FX2,Pinball FX3,Future Pinball

Setup x360ce

To make sure all controls are working in FX3, we need Copy the x360ce executable inside our FX3 installation folder and create the mapping for it. The default controls for an Xbox controller in FX3 can be found in the settings, then map all buttons from your Virtuapin controller to the correct FX3 controls.

Install Visual Pinball 10

Download the latest version (VPX4 this time) of Visual Pinball X (here), download the all-in-one installer, extract the zip and start the setup.exe. Install in a directory of your liking and select pinDMD3 support in the components selection window

Install DirectX (watch out uncheck bing bar :angry), install the .NET framework. then When prompted ‘if you have a second monitor’ click yes. (if you are using a 3rd monitor for the DMD, you still click yes)

then B2S will prompt for your display resolutions/setups, for me this was correct

Now we install the fonts (Download Here), these are needed or your pinball tables may look wrong/incomplete. Extract the fonts zip and copy all files into your C:/Windows/Fonts/*, when you get a warning or error just overwrite and skip.

Now Visual Pinball X, and open video settings, these are my settings

Then open keys and fill in your keys, these are mine

• I disabled B2S as I want VPX to have their backglass that belongs with the table and is completely working

some of the Visual pinball use program data that was dumped from the original table to have a very good experience. these are called ROMs. You will need these to play pinball games. I cannot host these roms but a collection can be found here These files should be placed under Visual Pinball/VPinmame/roms and will be automatically picked up by VPX when needed and the ROM is present.

Install Future Pinball

Doubleclick the FuturePinball setup, Click next, accept the agreement and choose your installation directory, create the folder when asked.

Don’t create a desktop icon and don’t launch it yet, right-click on the future pinball executable and make sure it will run as administrator always

BAM installation, double-click the bam-setup executable, accept the agreement, select your future pinball installation folder:

In the select component screen, you may want to check/uncheck some options you have/want or don’t want (Kinect, TrackIR)

Don’t launch bam yet, right-click on FPLoader, click properties and run as administrator in compatibility options

Now open future pinball, go into preferences, video rendering options, I entered these settings for my setup

Then controls

In the PinballX settings, make sure to set the executable to FPLoader.exe from the BAM folder, this will start all tables with DOF enabled. Also in parameters add /STAYINRAM. also FPRAM path /future pinball/fpRAM (this will fix problems with bam and Future Pinball)

Future Pinball will now show up in your PinballX main menu

PinballX stores all tables inside databases (/PinballX/Databases/Game/Game.xml), In here you should add all tables that should be visible in PinballX, for FX2 and FX3, the database should be available to download on the internet, If you wan’t to manually add games from Virtual Pinball or Future Pinball, you need to update the database manually. The name of the table should be the exact filename of the table inside Virtual Pinball or Future Pinball.

FX2/FX3 Example

<menu>
<game name=”Alien_Isolation”>
<description>Alien: Isolation</description>
<rom></rom>
<manufacturer>Zen Studios</manufacturer>
<year>2016</year>
<type>SS</type>
<hidedmd>True</hidedmd>
<hidebackglass>False</hidebackglass>
<enabled>True</enabled>
<rating>0</rating>
</game>
</menu>

Future Pinball / Virtual Pinball Example:

<menu>
<game name=”Avatar (ULTIMATE 1.01) (p2.6) (DOFLinx MX)”>
<description>Avatar (ULTIMATE 1.01) (p2.6) (DOFLinx MX)</description>
<rom></rom>
<manufacturer></manufacturer>
<year></year>
<type></type>
<hidedmd>True</hidedmd>
<hidetopper>True</hidetopper>
<hidebackglass>True</hidebackglass>
<enabled>True</enabled>
<rating>0</rating>
</game>
</menu>

Add all tables from your table directory in this file to make them selectable inside PinballX.