Planning SportScreen Sim - Beginner Questions!

[jmaddox55]

First, thank you all for the help! I've been searching these forums for a few weeks and it has been very helpful. I have a fiberbuilt practice station mat and my Skytrak should be delivered in about 8 weeks.

Garage Measurements

• Ceiling height 10'5"
• Support beam height 8'10" - not an issue for swings due to placement of hitting mat
• width 17'11" (wall to cabinets)

SportScreen
I'm about to start orders for my garage simulator. I use the garage daily for 2 cars so a retractable screen is important. I'm going to order a SportScreen. Was originally going to order a 10 ft but am now leaning toward the 16 foot.

I will likely have to mount it from the ceiling but due to the support beam, it would need to hang down about 25 inches from the ceiling. Any ideas? Something similar to how garage door motors are mounted?

Projector

I would like to go 16:9 if possible. Since I'll need the screen about 12" from my cabinets, I should have about 8.5 ft from hitting mat to screen. I would like to have the projector about the same throw distance. Can I have it 2 ft staggered to the right without impacting my picture (i.e. does it have to be centered with the screen for a good picture)?

I'll have the same issue mounting the Projector as the SportScreen.

Also, I want to stay under $1,000 for my projector. I haven't seen anything 4K for this price so seems like I'll be going 1080. Is that what most of you use? Any major issues with this for sim purposes?

And any recommendations for projectors that would work for me?

Impact Screen

My 16' SportScreen will likely have a height of just over 8 feet due to the support beam. How big should my Impact Screen be?

It seems like 100 x 180 (8ft x 15ft) would work unless I should go mo

And if I go with a 1080 protector, would a Preferred Carl's screen work or is there still a reason to go with the Premium Carl's or Par2Pro SQ?

Landing Mat

Any recommendations for a landing mat to deaden balls? Ideally something not terribly expensive that can roll up when not in use.

[Burtgolf]

I have a 16 foot sportscreen in my 9.3 ft high garage. I am only using a 10 ft wide of an impact screen on it though. The 10 ft ones are just two pieces of the rollers where the 16 ft are three pieces of the rollers. I would recommend you get the 16 ft and if you want to customize it to your 15 ft screen you could always cut 1 ft off of one of the roller ends. The black mesh that comes with the sportscreen is only 9 ft tall so if you plan on using the black mesh backing and mounting at 8 ft you will have about one foot of the black mesh left on the roll. I would recommend your impact screen also be at least 9 ft so there is a some of it wrapped around the roll too. This will keep it from coming loose also. Just so you know the black mesh will get huge holes from where the ball is impacting the screen, or I should say mine has developed a huge hole

When I get around to updating mine I will be using the current impact screen (Carls premium) I have as the backing and put the new impact screen (bought the ones from the direct from the mill on here) over the top of it and will more than likely remove the black meshing leaving 2 layers of impact screen still on the fence on this though.

As far as the landing mat I used the rubber floor mat from Harbor Freight and found a 6x9 thin green carpet (think they called it a dog mat) from Amazon. The floor mats are in 24x24 inch squares so I have 2 rows of 5. Once I roll my screen up, I roll up the carpet and just slide the 2nd row on top of the 1st row and slide them both under the screen and then move my mat on top of them so everything is out of the way to move the vehicles back into the garage. Takes me about 10 minutes to set up including booting up the laptop and about the same to put everything back away counting moving cars in and out.

[jmaddox55]

Very helpful! What kind of Projector do you use? I'm looking at getting a 1080p 16:9 short throw, so I'm wondering if the Carl's Preferred (instead of Premium) would work since I'm not going 4K.

[Burtgolf]

jmaddox55 I have the BenQ MW632ST that I use in 4:3 from my laptop and 16:10 with iPad. Ceiling mounted above my hitting area about 7 1/2 ft from impact screen. It does a great job for my needs and I got it for around $200 almost 2 years ago now. I personally did not care much about image quality on the impact screen but it looks just fine to me. I was more into durability and minus some ball marks from not perfectly clean balls there is nothing wrong with the Carl Premium screen currently on there. I only purchased the direct from mill one as a back up and at the price no way I was going to pass on it

[jmaddox55]

Anyone have feedback on the Optoma EH460ST projector?

[mitchbeerwatch]

Anyone have feedback on the Optoma EH460ST projector?

Curious on this as well, I just picked up a EH460T for my build and hoping to have it set up in a week or less. I got it for the lumens, seems like it was one of the brightest models available at that price point.