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..

[sorensen]

Trackman Club speed

　

Instant prior to impact

•Center of club face

•Consider face rotation

Toe +7 MPH

Heel -7 MPH
Hope that everyone can read it :-) copy / paste

[RCorsa]

This was no "home brew" sep up but a very expensive recording system using front and rear view high definition cameras and high end software costing tens of thousands. This was not at my home but rather a very high end instruction studio where even lighting is controlled and timed so no flashing is seen or blurring of club /head etc. Think golf tec on steroids. The only thing we analyzed was the attack angles which is pretty accurate and you can clearly see positive angles of attacks with driver that the quad picked up but trackman showed near zero.

[Dax]

RCosa, there has been a few instances here in comparisons between TM and GCQ and in those comparisons I often find it hard to understand if people are performing apples to apples comparisons. Reading your post above still causes me to question this and this all reminds me of the video that was floating around a few years ago when someone was trying to show that TMs data measurements were flawed and then TM rebutted those findings by coming out and stating how they measure.

As noted above TM measures club speed prior to impact (I have read a few posts here that mention it being after). Thus, if comparing club speed before and after impact there would be differences.

As for angle of attack, TM states that this is measured at the point of maximum compression and thus depending on where you are looking you will show different results. TM states that it's accuracy in this measurement is + or - 1 degree. There are also some other assumptions that TM makes when computing this level of accuracy. I would expect that TM has undergone extensive testing to prove this level of accuracy and also that they have supported it by comparing their measurements with sophisticated high speed cameras.

Please knowni am not saying either is right or wrong, but one would need to know how each unit is measuring each parameter in order to come up with an accurate comparison.

[Dax]

Another important consideration that I forgot to mention above is ensuring that everything is level. Even being off by a little could lead to some inconsistent information.

[awisnia]

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.

Can you please explain this feature a bit more? It has to be more that the line on the LCD display. Are those two lasers or lights helping in some way to visualize the target line?

[sorensen]

Can you please explain this feature a bit more? It has to be more that the line on the LCD display. Are those two lasers or lights helping in some way to visualize the target line?

check this https://youtu.be/UJD-0YVgjmA

[awisnia]

Very cool. Just lay down the stick and the cameras align to the same. Next gen stuff. thanks

[RCorsa]

Here are some comparisons with my 8 iron indoors compared to TM4 I took today. Didn't want to spend a lot of time of this as I was working with my coach and his time is expensive. Make of it what you will.

[legendsfan]

That screen looks like Gregg Rogers Golf Performance Center. I'm hoping to receive my Quad next month. Would love to hear more about your experiences with it.

[rrobinson]

You'll love it. For me the best part is the alignment stick and the LCD readout of the club data (dynamic loft, dynamic lie, etc..). I have been working hard on reducing my dynamic lie to zero (more flush shots) and reducing my dynamic loft (more lag). Turns out that I had a slightly steep swing but would have never known unless I had this to tell me. Worth it right there!

[A.West]

I'm surprised there's so little discussion of the GCQuad. Perhaps it's because Foresight hasn't opened up the equipment for third party simulators. The only hope is that they will enable Bluetooth and not encrypt it. I cannot stomach buying old GC2 technology when the GCQuad is better, but I also cannot stomach a fully closed system that virtually everyone proclaims is an inferior simulator vs third party providers. I suspect that Foresight will eventually see that they will make more money opening it up to third parties. Maybe they will follow the Skytrak business model and charge a fee for allowing the third party connectivity, due to its ability to widen the customer base and improve the customer experience. Golf pros aren't going to care about the third party simulators anyway. But the other customer base does.

[Ports]

That's a very tempting. Pm me an offer.

[mthunt]

My understanding is the quad is better outside but the difference inside is really small. Features are better but accuracy is negligible. The barometric reading is nice. The alignment is nice but the GC2 is so damn accurate, how can the quad be that much better. So carry reads 255 instead of 256? I'll live with 255.

[Point280]

I agree mthunt

[A.West]

In terms of technology, I'm not so much focused on accuracy, I'm thinking about the LED vs degrading flash, the larger ball recognition area, alignment, and generally more modern communications systems built into it. In general, it's just the more modern device that should last longer between problems. Does Foresight even have active message boards where people talk about having online tournaments together? Not that I've heard of. Do they actually think that they will have this happen someday? Zombie golf isn't going to do it. Maybe as a novelty for someone paying for 30 minutes of simulator time. But not owners for very long. Foresight salesman suggested I buy a GC2/HMT and then within 6 months I could trade back for a GCQ upgrade. But if GCQ never allows for a third party simulator connection, I don't know that I'd want to do that.
GCQ owners - how much do you enjoy the Foresight software you're using with it? What is the most useful/most entertaining parts of the software?

[col forbin]

Would love to buy a Quad way down the road, but absolutely no rush since bluetooth is disabled at the moment. Salesman told me it will eventually be active, but still don't know if it will be encrypted. Have FSX, E6 & TGC. FSX is really good at getting/extracting data from the GC2, so I imagine it would be even better showing data with the Quad. Range is very good and you can practice a shot by placing it anywhere on a course that you own. Problem is the courses are running on a graphics engine that already looks aged. (i.e. Redchain) Very expensive software as well!! Some courses look much better than others and the 3D grass is cool, but if you take a look at Akron for example, the trees and coloring are cartoonish. I much prefer E6 & TGC when actually playing a round, so I don't really use FSX anymore. It was definitely moving in the right direction, but then they decided to do Zombies.
I got to believe that after some time they will allow 3rd party software. Maybe after initial sales of the Quad slow because all retail and improvement centers have bought one. Residential owners will want more options and Foresight will at sometime have to address this or not.

[RCorsa]

I'm a totally GCQ fanboy as I've had my unit now nearly 3 months. However, Over the last two weeks I'm getting a ton of false HMT type club data from the Quad mainly with my driver. It's showing Hossle hits and far toe hits with in to out angles of 30 degrees and attack angles of 25 degrees down although ball data remains accurate with great ball flight. The quad does have a way to save shot data and I've been sending it to foresight engineers who are supposedly analyzing it to determine what is wrong.

[Andyman33]

Wow and I just got a quote today that my gc2 which is less than a year olds tradenin value is 2950...they definitely are not targeting or taking care of their individual consumer market at all. Sad. Maybe it was a typo?

[Shawk]

I'm a totally GCQ fanboy as I've had my unit now nearly 3 months. However, Over the last two weeks I'm getting a ton of false HMT type club data from the Quad mainly with my driver. It's showing Hossle hits and far toe hits with in to out angles of 30 degrees and attack angles of 25 degrees down although ball data remains accurate with great ball flight. The quad does have a way to save shot data and I've been sending it to foresight engineers who are supposedly analyzing it to determine what is wrong.

How are things at this point RC? Still happy... what are the bugs still (if any)?