Virtual Table Wear & Tear
I recently built my first vpin machine and have been thoroughly enjoying it. However, I’ve noticed that sometimes the physics feel more predictable than real-world tables. This makes sense, since it’s programmatic and the virtual tables are always “perfect” in the sense that they always remain consistent with their original design (unless there’s a table update or manual modifications applied, of course).
It made me wonder about the idea of having “virtual wear and tear” where the physics of different components get automatically adjusted over time based on usage, like real tables. Conceptually this might look something like an nvram file that persist across play sessions and applies different modifiers based on number of games played or something like that. So over time, you’d have to adjust your play style to account for the unique configuration of your own specific virtual table. This could even include some randomization to prevent tables from “aging” identically, and of course you’d have the option of overriding or disabling these modifications to go back to the normal table settings.
I realize you could make specific setting changes manually to reflect whatever setup you want, but the idea here is to add some unpredictability to the table over time. Seems like this could add another aspect to virtual tables to make them more like “on location” tables.
Anyway, just an idea I wanted to share to see if anything like this already exists or has been discussed before. Would love to hear any thoughts about why this might be a good/bad idea.