Virtual reels for slot machines

A while back I saw some of the "deconstructing" pages on the website and though it was interesting. I was reading Jean Scott's new book and she mentioned that all slots for decades have virtual reels. My understanding of this is that a machine, whether video reel like Buffalo or the old school physical reel type like the old Blazing 7's, has some internal virtual reel that the RNG stops on and then that's mapped to one of the actual reels. I guess this is just necessary to meet some legal requirement, but essentially this weights the symbols on the actual reels.

That being said, doesn't this invalidate some of the analysis that the Wizard has done on deconstructing various slot machines? I get with Lion's Share that he simply gathered data about how often the symbols appeared and I would think this result is correct. For Jackpot Party, Lion Fish, and Hexbreaker, though, he reconstructed the actual reels through observation and then figured out the return based on that. I would think these results would be incorrect. Even if the reels are constructed accurately, the return is only correct if there are no virtual reels, right? Perhaps with a massive sample size one could discern more accurately the weighting.

Is it perhaps known that the games that he analyzed do not use any virtual reels? If that's the case, is it possible to know if a game in general does not use virtual reels?

Video reel slots have an equal weighting per stop... they don't weight the reels. So the video reel and the virtual reel are the same thing.

Well, that answers that question! Thanks! Is that a legal requirement or do they do that just because it's the easiest way?

Is the same true of bonuses/free games?

Quote: curiousslots

Well, that answers that question! Thanks! Is that a legal requirement or do they do that just because it's the easiest way?

Is the same true of bonuses/free games?

Virtual strips just aren't necessary on video slots because you can have as long of a strip as desired. Physical reels need virtual strips because there is only 22 possible stops on most reels.

Bonus reels act the same way and virtual reels are only necessary on physical reels. For a good understanding of virtual reels search the Ignes Telnaes patent.

Quote: curiousslots

Well, that answers that question! Thanks! Is that a legal requirement or do they do that just because it's the easiest way?

Is the same true of bonuses/free games?

I doubt it is a legal requirement but it really complicates the math if they decided to do it. Like the last poster said..if you want to make something harder to hit, you just add most stops to the reel.