@GeorgeH
The "detach" command you can see in the pic above.
Don't mind me asking but FP can texture the ball. FP can also use bump, normal and specular maps on textures so... what am I missing?
And explain it to me as if I know nothing about this... which is the case. Unfortunately, I only know bumpmaps are to give that emboss look to stuff to make it like it has, literally, bumps and that's about it.
The ball reflects the playfield so a colourful playfield can be use to a point to give "colour" to the ball.
To better illustrate what we were talking about:
The pic below is from VPX Getaway.
You can see the ball has light being shown on it from at least two sources close by. One is a light within the flipper plastic, and another is from the 1 MIL insert light. These are the "glow spots" on the ball. When the ball moves, you see the these glow spots from the lights change when you get close to each of this type of light. In VPX you can add these kind of lights wherever, and they will show on the ball like this when it gets close. So its common for them to be added for all inserts, and for GI positions. This is something you can't do on FP except with hardware flashers.
Again... in VP you can only see this on the "ball" (maybe some other metal items like the rollover switch). These lights don't have a dynamic light effect on the rest of the objects on the playfield like it does on FP.
When you see some really good looking tables in VPX... the illusion of light and shadows is done in Blender and baked into the textures. These textures need to be rendered for every flasher / light combinations. They are then imported into VPX and changed up throughout gameplay. It's a lot of work, but those guys are getting really good at it.
For FP... the ball reflects the "playfield" texture (and swapping that changes the image on the ball as well).
The playfield reflects the ball image, even if it changes.
FP hardware lights (dynamic lights) projects and affect everything on the table.... the BALL... objects... everything correctly in 3d space like a real light would. BUMP maps... no matter where they are in FP are affected by dynamic lights (except maybe decals, maybe overlays), and will be affected by those lights as they move around, and so will their "bumped" image.
My inserts in RF2 and Silent Hill show this nicely as does the pyramid objects on top of the slings in Silent Hill when the lighter ball moves around them in the dark.
FP is a completely 3D environment at all times. So it simply "works" as its expected when using dynamic lights. What we don't have is occlusion or dynamic shadows to go along with them. That is something VPE will have.