Best Budget simulator hardware

[Wilson Campbell]

Hi all,

Anyone compared or have suggestions/recommendations about budgets simulators under £500 (I am from UK). The ones I have come across are below and the things I have found so far:

R-motion - has good support and from a good company. Runs on PC and now phones/tablets. Had problems with clips now ok but extra clips cost alot.
Phigolf - start up, cannot find any independent details on accuracy etc (some major companys now start to sell) - seems to be phone/tablet only based
Title - seem to have been replaced with t.ile name (prob taken to court about name and had to change) - not much on accuracy plus seems to be issue with real golf balls. seems to be phone/tablet only based
Optishot - need an special area to control lighting and tape on drivers etc.

Need it mostly to help practice in terms of face angle and sing path. Simulation also needed as bonus and to help with distance control.

Anyone's experience etc would be greatly appreciated.

[Wizard of Coz]

I personally would wait and save some more $ and keep looking for a good deal on a used gc2 or used skytrak.

[Wilson Campbell]

Would be hard to justify the expenditure in the family (i.e. wife lol). We do not have a lot of free money. Have been monitoring ebay for a month now and skytraks are still retaining a lot of their value and have only appeared twice in uk. Also an issue with it going faulty on second hand (unknown how well treated etc) without warranty backup and or transferring accounts for software as already registered. If any one has experience of purchasing a second hand skytrak maybe they can comment on that issue.

[Stonebattle]

You may want to look for a used P3proswing( out of business now), say on ebay. Not perfect to be sure, but it provides a reasonable experience and lots of good club data.

[Wilson Campbell]

Thanks for info: checked on ebay but they seems to be selling the in UK second hand as referbs and in the £1000's.

[abenjami]

I personally would wait and save some more $ and keep looking for a good deal on a used gc2 or used skytrak.

I second this.

[Bubba22]

I agree with that.

[FaultyClubs]

Need it mostly to help practice in terms of face angle and sing path..

The skytrack and gc2 don't measure face angle or club path. A used Protee system is probably the cheapest quality system providing club data.

[Burtgolf]

I have R-Motion and once you have it set right on your clubs then it is a great tool for face angle and swing path. The fact it comes with simulator software is a bonus. I have SkyTrak now but will use the R-Motion on my phone app while I am hitting SkyTrak on my PC. I am just using them both for swing improvement so I have not purchased the SkyTrak TGC software yet where you can use them both during TGC play.

For your budget I think R-Motion would be a great start. Just be prepared to explain to the wife in a few months why your needing to add a SkyTrak or GC2 to your set up

[Wilson Campbell]

In the r-motion does it allow you to analyse swing path with a full 3d image of path like on a swing analysers.

[Burtgolf]

Wilson Campbell .. I dont think I would call it a full 3d image of path but you can scroll left and right but its still a view from behind. I rarely use that part and instead I use the numbers it provides to determine the path. If you go to their site and about halfway down there are three pictures of the screens you get with the phone app.

https://rmotiongolf.com/

To use the TGC that comes with it you will need a pretty good PC with updated graphics card. They list the specs on the site as well.

[Anansi]

I've used R-Motion and PhiGolf, both are decent products, but I ultimately returned both. My use case requires a mobile setup, as I break it down after each use. For this reason I've prioritized tech that can be run easily from mobile devices like phones and tablets. I second the recommendation to wait, save your money, and buy a launch monitor in the SkyTrak or GC2 price brackets. If you really can't wait, I suggest that you ask yourself what data is most useful for your game at the moment, and buy a device tailored to fit that need as closely as possible. Be careful though, club data devices are cheap but the data can be questionable.

R-Motion:
If you have sufficient space to swing real clubs at home, and you already own a decent computer, RM is a compelling offer. I was able to get TGC running on a 2014 MacBook Pro using BootCamp. It wasn't super-snappy, but it was quite playable. The companion mobile app shows estimated ball flight, as well as common swing metrics if you tap into the menus, but it is otherwise graphically dated. My unit came with updated clips, but they would spin around the shaft of my clubs after a few hits. Adding tacky tape helped. More problematic was the fact that the R-Motion sensor is kept in the plastic clip by friction alone. I noticed that it would sometimes start slipping out, and I would adjust them regularly. Unfortunately, while at the range testing the mobile app's accuracy, I looked down and the sensor had slipped out of the clip and flown down range. Thanks to an eagle-eyed stranger it was recovered, but it happened again less than a week later. RM's customer service was FANTASTIC. They sent me TWO sensors to replace my lost one, as well as a handful of clips. Unfortunately, the first of these replacements met a similar fate. The second was returned. I was spending too much time worrying about the sensor, and it was affecting me mentally when I practiced. R-Motion's dated mobile graphics, and the lack of a proper retention mechanism left me very frustrated. Overall, when used on the range, the mobile app's shot shapes appeared accurate enough for my purposes. The data on club face and swing path can be questionable when the device shifts position. I recall striping a drive at the range straight down the middle, looking at my phone to check if RM picked it up, and noticing that it showed a massive slice. The sensor had twisted on the shaft. Whoops.

PhiGolf:
At first glance, PG's device checked all of my boxes. The sensor sticks into the grip end, a welcome change after my experience losing R-Motion's sensors. The device comes with a "swing stick", a shortened club designed as an indoor swing trainer. It makes two clicks when swung correctly, one at the bottom of the swing, and the other at the finish. It is well-weighted, but I swapped the grip out to match my real clubset. The sensor can be used in real clubs, and is designed out of the box to be able to handle hitting real balls, which distinguishes PG from a similar device by Tittle. The PhiGolf app runs exclusively on mobile devices, and I was pleased that a computer was not required for practice or sim play. The mobile app is one of the best in class. It has quirks and occasional bugs, but overall it offers some compelling features. The PG app has a built in driving range that shows simulated ball flight as well as a swing analysis screen with common swing metrics. The range also includes a putting feature that I found to be a wonderful tool for practicing distance control. In addition to these practice features, PG has a built-in simulator that can handle four-player local multiplayer stroke play, as well as closest to the pin play. There are a handful of courses included, and the software does a good job of auto-selecting the correct club. One particularly slick touch is the use of the sensor to aim. Tap the button on the club sensor and it goes into aim mode. This allows you to play an entire simulated round without touching your phone. The built-in sim has low-quality graphics (think N64), but I found that this mode was my preferred sim. PhiGolf is also integrated with WGT, and you can play real courses for a modest $2/month subscription fee. One course, Wolf Creek, is included free. I dislike the weirdly offset camera view for many shots in WGT, (imaging playing sim golf with an occasional third person view where the ball is in the corner of the screen) so I usually used the PhiGolf sim instead. If PhiGolf released a course creator for their sim, they could have a runaway hit. Unfortunately I have recently become quite distrustful of PG's data. The putting mode in particular has been giving me strange numbers. For example, it showed a -5 degree club path, even while I was using a spare 2x4 to guide the putterhead on a straight line. I'm working with a coach, and I was hoping to use PG to help aid my swing changes. I'm now viewing this device as more a toy than a potential practice tool, which is a real disappointment.

Conclusion:
I was hoping to find an inexpensive, reasonable accurate sensor that could provide simulated ball flight, club metrics, and sim play. So far, the devices I've tried have all come up short. I've concluded that my best course of action is to save for a launch monitor, and I'm keeping a close eye on SkyTrak and Uneekor. If it was still available, I would likely purchase a SkyPro as a "bridge" device, especially since it integrates with SkyTrak. At the moment, I'm likely to simply purchase an Apple Watch (a device I've long coveted for a variety of reasons) and use the free Zepp app to provide limited data while I hit into a net.

[keither5150]

GSA is releasing a new product called Vistrak. We are in the Alpha testing stage. Once Beta opens up to the public, a small number of units (10-100) will be sold at a discounted price of $750 USD. https://www.golf-simulators.com/vistrak.html.

Vistrak will offer more than you expect for money. Ball speed, LA, HA, spin, spin axis, club face, club path, club speed, and horizontal deviation of sweet spot.

This is a new product for GSA but it looks very promising.

GSA works with various 3rd party software. It also will come with one course at no charge. Club fitting software should be available within a year of beta release.

Any questions regarding Vistrak and be directed to me as GSA does not monitor this forum.

GSA has existing products that offer a high degree of accuracy. You can view some of them in action by searching Keither5150 on YouTube.

Thanks Keith

[Solstice72]

Do you have to pay for TGC2019 anew to GSA to run Visatrak?
Secondly, what the advantage of more than one Visatrak I.E the 3 being the dream setup?

[keither5150]

As long as you have a working license for TGC 2019, you can transfer it over. 2 cameras get the job done. 3 cameras gets the job done ….. all from the ceiling.

[Solstice72]

That is attractive, the ceiling, and data. So more than one Visatrak is desirable, not redundant? That putting is still the most accurate in the business? And don't worry buddy, I've gotten all your videos for over a year on YouTube

[Donnygonegolfin]

I have a P3ProSwing and Desktop PC for sale if you are still in the market!

[PatriotMan]

Do you still have the P3ProSwing for sale?