Tittle X golf simulator with real clubs, real balls and E6 sim software.

[Chuck]

Well, I promised a video showing the Tittle X golf simulator using real clubs and balls. So here it is. In the video I mention using something called "Mighty Mend" to thicken the shaft of clubs when the clip doesn't grip well. It's actually called "Mighty Fixit" and it's a thick elastic plastic tape that seems to work well for this application. You will want to google it. My fault on that mix up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_40VOUXEBQ

[Chuck]

DANGER. Don't listen to me. I broke one of the clips today using that 3W club in the video. Just like in the video, the clip slid down the shaft from my swing and hit the club head and struck the ball with such force that it broke two small tabs on the clip and the chip went flying. The tittle chip is OK. but the driver clip is damaged and the chip won't click into place anymore. Sad. Just to show what happened here are some photo. In photo2, there is a side-by-side comparison to good clip on the left, and the damaged clip on the right. I have the PT clip (for the putter) which I discovered fits the clubs with narrower shafts so it's not a complete loss. Shoot... I had already played 9 holes, hit one birdie, when this happened. Right now, I'm trying to think what would work best as a repair or fix for this.

[Chuck]

Well I found out something new about the TittleX device. It doesn't need the plastic clip to operate. I was aware that the clips had a Hall effect chip for the devices sensor to read the ciub type. But as it turns out, the chip doesn't need the clip to operate. So I thought I would revive and old idea for making my own cradles. Basically this uses a cheap golf wiffle ball cur in half and two zip ties.

I had no problems with this on the driver taking full impact with real balls after at least 50 swings. On the irons, I had needed to put the chip in the cradle before tightening the bottom zip. The narrower shaft made the pocket too small to fit the chip in. Clearly it needs some more experimenting on the irons. One observation I noticed on the driving range with real ball strikes, It fades the shot nearly 100% of the time. With the "impact" wiffle balls, it draws and you can see both of those in the video. So there may need to be some tweaking that needs to be done.

[Chuck]

Well, my wiffle ball cradle is work very well, and I've done my D, 3i, 7i and SW. I've been on the E6 driving range trying each club with the following; NO-BALL, Foam Ball, MaxFli Plastic "impact" ball, a Real ball with the Tittle chip. The physics system of Tittle is definitely not designed for real balls. I suspect, they have a parameter for the ball mass in their physics but it's set to 0 or something artificially low. Once your in the wedges, it seems that NO-BALL and real ball doesn't matter as much. Both of those are about equal. So with wedges and putter, it looks good and feels about right for real play. On the driver through the irons, it appears the torque exerted on the club by the real ball mass impact is recorded as an open face, and in my case they all predictably fade (as typical for R-handed).

So, it looks like if you want realism in your short game, use real balls. If your doing the Wood and irons, plastic balls will give a more realistic simulator result.

[Chuck]

I have a new update on the Tittle-X golf simulator cradle replacement that I wanted to share. After some experimenting using tittle with real clubs striking real balls, while the tittle X device could handle the ball strikes, apparently the physics used to model ball flight is off. Basically on real ball strikes the the inertial of the ball will torque the club face open and cause a fade or a hook for the RH golfer. (A draw for a LH golfer). In addition, the club head speed is slowed down due to the inertia on impact. Both aspects are missing in the physics model of the Tittle X. So when playing you will get ball flights like that recorded in photo 1. In that photo, red lines are the ball flight for real balls, black lines are ball flights with foam balls. When the clubs swing speed are down to chipping and putting speeds, it seems that it doesn't matter as much. Indeed, I like putting with real balls over foam as the realism is superior.

To really enjoy the E6 golf simulation with real clubs, you need cradles for them. While the 'clip and slip' seemed to work OK for me the clip was loose on many club shafts. So after breaking one of the clips (the D leaving me with two narrow PT clips). the wiffle ball cradle is now what I use, and it took less than 15 minutes to get the whole set outfitted. It works that well with the Tittle X device. So here is a video I made to show you all the wiffle cradle in action with foam balls, and with real balls. You will get to see what the differences are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLvCCGN8Ur8


The wiffle ball cradle in action;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6LnvcYl9YA

Enjoy and have a good laugh. Haha.

[Chuck]

I've played several of the courses now on E6 using the Maxfli plastic impact balls. Everything seems to have the characteristics of good simulator physics with this ball type (Ie, straight ball strikes and reasonable distances). It does pretty good. I even place a T24 with an 84 on the Wade Hampton course in tournament play (online). It wasn't a bad feeling seeing that my rankings were comparable to other golf swing capture devices. I did excellent in some of the 'closest to the hole' on-line play and it played very realistic with the irons given the lighter ball. Optishot has a better handicapping system which makes it nice since it groups you with people in similar skill levels at tournament time, but E6 adds the ball tracker (tittle device in this case). I'm back on Optishot now, enjoying the Quail Hollow course (optishot calls it Pheasant Hollow). On my second round, I shot a 79 on it which was amazing good for that course with 4 birdies, 1 in the front 9 and 3 in the back. But it's amazing how quickly a triple boggy kill your score card, which I did on hole 17 after a drop into the creek.

By the way, has anyone ever noticed how optishot water hazards seem to have a gravity all it's own?