FSX play quirks

[benzopyrene]

Finding a few quirks and thought Id see if anybody else noticed these as well.

1. Stimp seems way off from normal. I typically play at 10-11 outside and am pretty dialed in to those feels.....these aren't even close. 10 is more like 8, and its painful. This is imo the area that needs the most improvement in the FSX play software.
2. lofted Wedges onto greens just stop... even when there's low spin or hard greens selected. Just not a realistic feel to these shots responsiveness on the greens
3. Lie penalty: when its turned on its great except it penalized you out of the first cut, on the fringe. Doesn't seem to differentiate much between club loft for penalty.
4. Temp effect: don't seem to notice much if any effect of temperature adjustment on the ball flight distance. This is the type of ai I would really like to see incorporated into this software.

Would love to hear peoples opinions (agreeing or not agreeing and why) on these things and any other additions. Cheers!

[siebo]

I just recently came back to FSXPlay to check things out after spending most of my time on GSPro. I downloaded the latest update and for the most part things went very well. After playing several courses. I also noticed that the putting was very slow, even after moving the stamp to the highest level.

[delaloi]

1. Agree the putting seems a little slow. I have mine set on 11. It's hard to compare with real life since in my setup I putt from the matt onto longer turf then into the screen. But I just had a friend over who plays on very fast greens and tried my sim for the first time. It's normally extremely difficult to get the hang of judging putting distance but he thought the stimp was just about right. I dunno - it works well enough for me that I don't see this as a problem. I'm used to it and I don't regard sim putting as much training for real putting.

2. 100% agree. Ever since they "updated" the green behavior in one of the more recent Play versions it has been like this. Now with wedges around the green you just have to fly the ball to the hole and watch it land like a dead mouse. Not realistic at all.

3. I'm ok with lie penalty now, they finally have it working decently after a couple years of failure. I trust that it does what it says regarding the lie - minus 10% ball speed or whatever. 10% less ball speed is not necessarily 10% less carry; the distance penalty seems greater than the ball speed penalty. I assume the ball does what the algorithm spits out (factoring speed, spin, launch angle etc), and on this particular front Foresight certainly know what they are doing.

4. It's always a beautiful day in sim golf land. Seriously, what you suggest would be interesting. I don't know exactly how much difference near-freezing temperatures make to ball flight IRL. Agree this is the sort of thing they should be able to figure out, and that would be a useful feature.

[tkvaughn999]

1. No issues with putting. Its a sim so put on whatever gimmie distance you like 6-8 feet and have fun. I fine it possible to hole a fair amount of putts from 8-15 ft so I enjoy how it plays.

2. Bump and runs play ok as long as it clears the fairway, not sure if green firmness effects it as I haven't changed that setting in a long while. Soft used to be spin everything back and firm was good long spinning anything. Will need to mess around with that setting again.

3. Lie penalty is a tricky one. I think its working pretty well currently althought there is always room to improve its just difficult to get perfect in sim golf I think.

4. I always play my local elevation and 80*. I don't care to play in 30* sim temps. If the wind worked it would be ok but not another thing I care about in sim golf. I want to work on my game and playing a round in 30* windy conditions just aint it for me.

[LordScorpion60]

My .02:

I love the new "softer" greens, especially when trying to compete in PinSeeker since the ball will actually stop now out past 150y or so when landing on a green with decent spin... I love being able to get some zip now and can easily back in shots past the hole now. Love it! I always play on Medium (which got the most changes applied), but Soft was tuned up just a little bit (old Soft was stupid backwards jumping rips off the green, but was still fun to mess around with. Now it's more manageable, but I find Medium the best of both worlds...). Hard is the same bouncefest as it has always been (iirc without looking at my notes), but I won't use it, ever...

Stimp was not changed, but Medium (10) does roll out to around 8-9 (depending on your framerate... ). Test on the FS practice range by hitting a 4.1BS putt and see how many feet it rolls out... Convert the carry yards to be exact... Change your framerate cap to 30, then 60, then unlimited and see if the rollout changes...

The lie penalty is only applied to ball speed and nothing else... I helped beta test this (along with the green changes) and asked that the penalty actually be shown (since we had no clue what was going to happen!), so that's why it actually says "% ball speed". Whew! I wish it was applied to carry, but since that has to be calculated after the shot, that cannot be done. So BS was the best compromise... I argued the fringe/first cut 5% was lame, but I tried...

Temp affects are there, just subtle. Here is 32F top and 100F bottom. I have to force mine to 100F to keep the carry numbers accurate to GC3 @ 5K altitude even with barometer on... (When you hit spacebar, the first shot is always the same in a new session. Great for testing things! )

[benzopyrene]

My .02:

I love the new "softer" greens, especially when trying to compete in PinSeeker since the ball will actually stop now out past 150y or so when landing on a green with decent spin... I love being able to get some zip now and can easily back in shots past the hole now. Love it! I always play on Medium (which got the most changes applied), but Soft was tuned up just a little bit (old Soft was stupid backwards jumping rips off the green, but was still fun to mess around with. Now it's more manageable, but I find Medium the best of both worlds...). Hard is the same bouncefest as it has always been (iirc without looking at my notes), but I won't use it, ever...

Stimp was not changed, but Medium (10) does roll out to around 8-9 (depending on your framerate... ). Test on the FS practice range by hitting a 4.1BS putt and see how many feet it rolls out... Convert the carry yards to be exact... Change your framerate cap to 30, then 60, then unlimited and see if the rollout changes...

The lie penalty is only applied to ball speed and nothing else... I helped beta test this (along with the green changes) and asked that the penalty actually be shown (since we had no clue what was going to happen!), so that's why it actually says "% ball speed". Whew! I wish it was applied to carry, but since that has to be calculated after the shot, that cannot be done. So BS was the best compromise... I argued the fringe/first cut 5% was lame, but I tried...

Temp affects are there, just subtle. Here is 32F top and 100F bottom. I have to force mine to 100F to keep the carry numbers accurate to GC3 @ 5K altitude even with barometer on... (When you hit spacebar, the first shot is always the same in a new session. Great for testing things! )

Thanks for this information. Ill check out the frame rate cap.....will have to check the settings I know how to check and may circle back for some help if I cant figure it out. I noticed the ball speed % after I posted this. I love 10% for sand and even thicker rough. Would be cool if they could randomly generate a lie ( flyer vs burried) and also incorporate that into the types of grass that courses naturally grow. ( I know thats a lot, but a guy can dream!) Seems like that's the kind of stuff that AI and a database could help with. First cut should be no penalty, and maybe if anything 10-20% off backspin. Temp to me is where there could be way more improvement. I would love to see ball flight tested with a robot at different temps and swing speeds and use that info to generate decent algorithm. ( is the pic you posted temp difference on a shot?) Anyway, thanks again for the info. Overall, Play has become much more playable for me, and I'm using it much more often.

[LordScorpion60]

Thanks for this information. Ill check out the frame rate cap.....will have to check the settings I know how to check and may circle back for some help if I cant figure it out. I noticed the ball speed % after I posted this. I love 10% for sand and even thicker rough. Would be cool if they could randomly generate a lie ( flyer vs burried) and also incorporate that into the types of grass that courses naturally grow. ( I know thats a lot, but a guy can dream!) Seems like that's the kind of stuff that AI and a database could help with. First cut should be no penalty, and maybe if anything 10-20% off backspin. Temp to me is where there could be way more improvement. I would love to see ball flight tested with a robot at different temps and swing speeds and use that info to generate decent algorithm. ( is the pic you posted temp difference on a shot?) Anyway, thanks again for the info. Overall, Play has become much more playable for me, and I'm using it much more often.

You bet! Dynamic lies would be sweet!

Yes the images are: Top @ 32F - Bottom @ 100F

[ENadeau]

When determining the best stimp setting I usually jump to a putting green and place the ball at exactly the same distance in game as my screen distance. So for me, I'll drop a ball on a totally flat green 10' away and hit a handful of putts where the ball dies at the screen. If the ball stops at the cup in FSX Play, I typically go with that. Makes it easy to tell family and friends that 10' in the game is ball to screen distance.