GCQ Initial Impression/Early Review

[RCorsa]

Anyone following the other thread I figured I would start a new one in case anyone wanted to get impressions without having to hear about the ordeal of a day I had

I got my GCQ on Wednesday but it was held at Fed ex for a day so I received the unit last night. I spent most of last night and nearly alll day today getting the software set up. the Quad only runs on FSX version 3.0 which is a Beta for now (soon to be released). The engineers at Foresight were amazing today and patiently worked on things remotely until I could get it running.

First impressions is that it is beautiful! The case and the display are amazing. The backlight it helpful but in daylight you can read it well. Ergonomically its easy to carry especially coming from a GC2/HMT. If you never move your unit around this is likely less of an issue, but I will be using mine at my club and at home. Some folks thought it looked big from my first photos but the GC2 was a foot behind it so the depth of field was wrong. I'm including new photos (hopefully they work as I did what another member suggested and scaled them down on my laptop as my iphone 7s files are too large)

Its very fast to boot up and the extended ball capture is a huge deal, especially if you go from driving off a tee to hitting off the turf. My 5x5 country club elite mat is really worth it now as I can use most of it instead of a small strip.

Accuracy is amazing. Ball data is right there with Trackman. I took the unit to my pro early this am and we tested them head to head. Ball data was spot on. Club data is better than on Trackman. Club head speed in spot on as are smash factor (Trackman tracks club speed after the ball is hit so the club head speed is always slower, but ball speed is accurate, giving false elevated smash. Impact point is perfect (tested with contact tape)

One of the best new features is the alignment stick. Anyone who has fiddled with GCS/HMT knows its easy to be off a few degrees which screws up your numbers. That is all but gone and ball flight is exactly where they should be feel wise and numbers wise since you are literally setting your target line. This is really great when playing on FSX courses.

FSX 3.0: WOW, detail is much improved especially on 4K. Its more responsive than 2.4 by a lot, not much change on driving range except there is a new shot viewer where you can see your averages etc on the side of the driving range without having to go into the info page. Courses are more clear with better graphics all around (all upgraded to 1.8 version)

Downsides: Yes there are some of those too. Especially being an early adopter. Im having the same issues with lots of my smart home stuff and my self driving Tesla so to be expected. However, the connection issue is a bit of a mess. They have the Quad set up to connect via Wifi, ethernet and USB 3.0 . One of the techs says it also has bluetooth but its not turned on yet. The problem is FSX requires a internet connection to be active and your computer if using wifi (like mine is) can't accept two wifi connections. The same is true with ethernet. Either the wifi is on or the ethernet is on. See the problem? One of the engineers said you can use both but we couldn't get it to work. They understand the issues and I'm confident they will get it working soon. Thus for the time being only USB 3.0 will work and the cable that comes with the unit is small so I had to get a powered extender. Anyway, It was a bit of a PITA today but Im happy now.

Anyway, thats all for now, outdoor impressions on the course to come if we get some sun this weekend..Take care..

[mbuck45]

Holy smokes, I only have 11 feet to screen and that would give me 9 feet behind the tee. I was told that would work. I also was not told about there being a $2k a year fee, what is that for? Is it necessary? Thx!

[Mxwoodman]

RCorsa thanks for writing this up can't wait to hear more as FS works out some of the issues and you get a released version of FSX 3.0. Guess I have a long time to save up for this since I can't golf for 6 months to a year. But I might just add HMT to my setup but will see how the GCQ plays out.

[RCorsa]

Trackman 4 improved indoor play minimally as you now ONLY need 16 feet between the TM unit and the net for it to calculate the rest. In the past with TM 3 it was 18 feet. That is of course minimum space. This is why TM is really used best outdoors or in huge indoor studios.

[p3eps]

According to their website, you need at LEAST 17feet... but ideally 19feet.

https://mytrackman.com/media/f7227c12-c02d-43f9-b829-f6df6065d3d6/8glu1w/Site%20GFX/4.%20TMU%20GFX/7.%20Learning%20Tools/PDF´s/TrackMan%20Operator%20Training%20-%20Setup.pdf

Pages 13 + 14

[RCorsa]

Interesting about the metallic stickers that have to placed on balls indoors. It even states that without the stickers tehe spin rates are "calculated" not measured.

[goatbarn]

That's cuz spin rate is normally tracked throughout most of the flight of the ball when outdoors to determine difference in speech of top of ball vs bottom. No way to do that indoors. So instead, indoors, it counts signals bounced off the sticker before the ball stops. Need at least 2 revs of ball for spin to be measured indoors.

[RCorsa]

Forgot. I guess the $2000/year is for continued license fee/updates etc.

[Misike]

Great write up. The GCQ looks like a beast, sounds like you're really going to enjoy it!

[Dax]

I will not take away from the thread, but will answer some questions above.

First for me, one of the main decisions between the GCQ and the TM4 would really depend on if I needed to have both righty and lefty play without the need to move the unit.

Who ever wrote the distances above where I think they said 15 feet of ball flight plus 10 feet needs to get up to date with where things are at with TM today and not where they were back in 2010, as giving misinformation like this does not help the discussion. The TM4 needs only 16 feet now. The only reason for the decrease is because of the dual radar which enables one to shave two feet off of the distance from the front of the radar to the tee. TM still feels you need at least 10 feet of ball flight data in order to ensure it accurately measures driver spin data. For those interested this is two feel less in terms of indoor requirements for TM3.

I will note that that more distance helps for a few reasons over and above just having more time to see the ball flight. The main reason is that you get more accurate club data with shorter irons and more chances of having the club data displayed. It also enables a much larger hitting area and thus just drop ball anywhere really on your Matt and hit.

The final thing i will note is that TRackmans software is awesome and the combination of the software with video analysis is amazing. Combine this with a great library of sample swings from the pros and the flexibility to normalize for different balls and the optimizer really make the software stand out.

Having said all of that, I do think this new GCQ sounds pretty amazing.

[RCorsa]

As far as the right/left thing you would have to move he unit as the quad sits a few feet in front and towards the target slightly ahead of the front foot of the golfer. Obviously it needs this view to visualize the club face and where the ball hits. Trackman sits behind you. You are right and I posted it that its 16feet for TM4 and 18 for TM3.

To to be honest I'm not sure why it would be a big deal to move the unit for a lefty. It's small and easy to move plus you can align the shot anywhere using the new alignment stick.

As far as TM, I've used the TM4 extensively. You still need to keep the thing aligned via the camera app to get accurate data. To say "just drop the ball anywhere" is a little misleading. TM4 is better than 3 but I was just dealing with this on a TM 4 two days ago and you need to keep it in a reasonable hitting strip or the data is missed or screwed up. The quad however has a huge hitting area now. It really is a massive upgrade.

Honestly I think TM 4 is a great unit as well if you (a) have tons of hitting room or use outdoors only. I agree their software, learning tools, and the included camera is a big plus too but as far as actual technology and data I think it's either a wash or maybe the quad has the edge (mainly because of club data) as after all the ball only does what the club tells it to do and TM underestimates club speed and doesn't get club face angle as well or strike location at all.

[p3eps]

Who ever wrote the distances above where I think they said 15 feet of ball flight plus 10 feet needs to get up to date with where things are at with TM today and not where they were back in 2010, as giving misinformation like this does not help the discussion. The TM4 needs only 16 feet now

If you actually read my post it said that it needs 'about' XX feet - and that these are from memory and aren't exact numbers. I then posted the link to the Trackman data sheet on my next post and the correct numbers.

[rrobinson]

RCorsa - thanks for reviewing your new purchase! I am definitely intrigued by this new product. Some questions I have:

1) Are the white dots mandatory to get club data feedback? Do you really need 4 of them on every club? Won't they wear off after awhile?
2) Is there any lag after you hit a shot and the data is available/shown in the apps?
3) Can you use TGC with it?
4) Are there any annual subscription costs?

Thanks!

Rob

[Js1010]

1. Yes, you need to stickers to get club head data from HMT or the GCQuad.
a.You can do 1 sticker but will only get limited data (Club Speed, Attack Angle, believe Club path, but no face angle, lie angle, hit location etc.
b.Yes, they can wear out and need to be replaced. Guess it depends on how often you hit them I have noticed that I will start not getting Club Face, lie angle, location information when one of the stickers is damaged. If you use your clubs outside then you will need to replace the stickers.
2. No lag at all if you are using FSX. Ball takes off as the ball hits the screen.
3. Current word only FSX will work. I still am curious what will happen if they ever enable Bluetooth.
4. There are no annual subscription costs that are necessary, at least not for Gc2 /HMT. I believe they do have a protection package you can buy. The 2k annually are trackman's annual cost for software updates.

[Dax]

As far as the right/left thing you would have to move he unit as the quad sits a few feet in front and towards the target slightly ahead of the front foot of the golfer. Obviously it needs this view to visualize the club face and where the ball hits. Trackman sits behind you. You are right and I posted it that its 16feet for TM4 and 18 for TM3.

To to be honest I'm not sure why it would be a big deal to move the unit for a lefty. It's small and easy to move plus you can align the shot anywhere using the new alignment stick.

As far as TM, I've used the TM4 extensively. You still need to keep the thing aligned via the camera app to get accurate data. To say "just drop the ball anywhere" is a little misleading. TM4 is better than 3 but I was just dealing with this on a TM 4 two days ago and you need to keep it in a reasonable hitting strip or the data is missed or screwed up. The quad however has a huge hitting area now. It really is a massive upgrade.

Honestly I think TM 4 is a great unit as well if you (a) have tons of hitting room or use outdoors only. I agree their software, learning tools, and the included camera is a big plus too but as far as actual technology and data I think it's either a wash or maybe the quad has the edge (mainly because of club data) as after all the ball only does what the club tells it to do and TM underestimates club speed and doesn't get club face angle as well or strike location at all.

You are correct sorry, the hitting are for a TM is about one foot wide (the width of the TM unit) by about five feet in length with the best location for club data being somewhere in the middle of this area.

[Js1010]

Dax, what is the delay when using TM with E6 or JPNG Simulation? Does it pick up chips and putting?

[p3eps]

One of this things I wish Foresight would do that Trackman 4 has is the ability to integrate your iPhone.
With TM4 you can put the app on your iPhone and use it as a slow motion camera. It instantly pulls the video off the phone into the TM software for analysis.

I hope that FSX v3.0 has a way of choosing the frame rate of attached cameras - rather than using their default.

[Dax]

To the question above, it's probably two or three seconds with my TM3. My putting is handled with a sensor from Trugolf. Chipping from about 12 feet or more gets a read, but nothing less.

I have still not run into a situation where I could not hit a shot Around the green for the most part.

To be honest i was underwhelmed with e6 and so most of my time is spent prescribing right off of the TM software which really is amazing IMO.

[mmlincon]

Let's get this back on track with the GCQ and FSX 3. I'd like to see a screen shot of the sharper FSX for sure. Will you be working with Foresight again this week to get the connectivity issues resolved? Running multiple networks on a PC shouldn't be too difficult unless you have overlapping IPs. I'd hint at just going with bluetooth