Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. This is easily emulated with an impulse force. The outcome a nanosecond after the ball leaves the bumper is just an impulse. Users can't tell the difference.
So confident and so wrong. The microphysics of pinball are critical to the game, consider the live catch ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjALq96jpJQ ). It's impossible to see with the naked eye, but the reason it works is because the flipper is so powerful that flipper bounces off the stop. That combined with a milimeter or so of give in the rubber allows a live catch. The timing is difficult, but not THAT difficul…
Plus the bonus of an example of causing spin.
Obviously the ball response can be modeled as an impulse. However as you point out the difficultly is that the physics engine needs to calculate a correct result for the ball bouncing (i.e. it isn't simple to calculate the impulse).