Skip to content

F-14 Tomcat (Williams 1987)

A long-lived VPW build spanning from wrd1972's early premium work through a 2025 Lite refresh. Notable for establishing the clear flasher dome construction technique, BlendDisableLighting for filament meshes, wire ramp rendering with Octane, and the DOF solenoid stuck-on bug investigation with UseVPMModSol=2. Collaborative build between wrd1972, benji084, sixtoe, flupper1, cyberpez, iaakki, djrobx, apophis79, and lumigado.

Build Story

The F-14 build began in 2020 and remained active through 2025 with a Lite refresh adding staged flippers, PWM migration, and DOF fixes. It served as one of the earliest showcases of Flupper's dome flasher system and Octane wire ramp rendering.

Table-Specific Details

Mechanisms & Hardware

  • Clear Flasher Domes -- F-14's ear-shaped flashers required a split mesh technique: delete back faces of the dome mesh to prevent the cap texture showing through, and create a slightly larger duplicate mesh for the "lit" state. Each dome rotation must be handled via script, not mesh rotation, because texture coordinates are fixed to face the camera.
  • Staged Flippers -- Added by Primetime5k in the 2025 refresh. F-14 benefits from staged flippers because skilled players use partial-flip shots extensively, enabling staged passes and controlled target shots.

Art & Visuals

  • Wire ramps rendered using Blender with Octane renderer -- described by VPW members as "the best looking wires I've ever seen." Octane provides physically accurate metal reflections and thin-geometry rendering that VPX ramp objects cannot achieve. Results imported as mesh primitives with baked textures; separate invisible VPX ramps handle physics.
  • Crosshair insert color correction: The large center crosshair insert is white plastic, not green -- a common error across virtual recreations dating back to VP9. The insert appears green when GI is on because green rubber bulb covers sit on the GI sockets underneath. When the three white flasher bulbs fire, they obliterate the green GI and the insert appears bright white. Verified against IPDB photos of blank F-14 playfields.
  • Insert brightening when GI off: Flupper's insert lighting script includes a multiplier that increases insert IntensityScale when GI is off, simulating eye adaptation.

Physics & Gameplay

  • Ramp sound direction detection uses ActiveBall.vely to determine ball direction: negative vely = ball moving up (toward backbox), positive = moving down. Apophis79's improved pattern separates on/off sounds into _Hit and _UnHit subs to handle corner cases where a ball barely hits the switch then rolls back.

Known Issues

  • UseVPMModSol=2 DOF stuck-on: Setting UseVPMModSol = 2 caused DOF cabinet solenoids to activate and stay stuck on at table startup, specifically diverter solenoids (S21/S22) and center kickers (S5/S6). Changing to UseVPMModSol = 1 eliminated the erroneous activation. Workaround: add MAX100 duration limit in DOF config.
  • Collection corruption: Objects accidentally added to wrong VPX collections caused cascading bugs -- jet lights permanently on, slingshots not pushing ball, and unexplained brightness changes. Fix: verify collection membership after any bulk editing session.
  • PF reflection value of 20 (up from 9) caused major stutter on some systems. Diagnosed by comparing property-by-property between stuttering and non-stuttering versions.

Techniques Developed Here

See Also