Between the pandemic and the hottest Scottsdale summer in the history of the world, I decided that I was going to build my own sim room. I have 2 young sons who golf and play baseball and between Eye XO and Blast caps for baseball, I thought it would be the perfect training room. A lawyer by trade, I am one of the least handy people out there. But with nothing but time on my hands, I decided to do it myself. At the time of this post we are almost done and I wanted to walk through what I did to help people know what to do and, more importantly, what not to do. I don't know how to embed pictures in paragraphs but I'll post them all at the bottom.
The only room in the house that was suitable was the "piano" room with big windows and nice floors. With 20' high ceilings I would not be able to mount to the ceiling so I knew a cage would be necessary. I ordered a custom size from Carl's: 119x183.9x156 - a custom depth. The cage is coming this week and I will update once I have that. The only other custom to the cage was that I had the black material on the ceiling of the cage as well for a total blackout.
Given that we plan to be in the house only a few years, I wanted my sim room to be great, not perfect, and somewhat portable.
The floors were the big issue as they are very nice floors and need to remain pristine. I took a couple bids from flooring guys for a layer of gym floor covered by a layer of turf. The bids were all above $5k which I thought was outrageous. So I purchased 1" MMA mat squares from Amazon for a 18x19 room and did it myself. It almost fit perfectly, I only had to trim a little. This was the first real mistake I made. I wanted a squishy feel so the balls didn't rebound like on concrete and I thought these were firm enough. They're firm, but not firm enough. Oh well. I ordered a putting green turf off of Amazon, 9x35 and had a friend install it. Mistake #2 - he didn't listen to me and put the seem going with the strike pattern instead of across it. My fault for not being home when he did. (I did tell him what I wanted, but oh well, when you pay in beer you get what you pay for.) The turf looks fantastic but there are a few rolling soft spots as you walk as the mat underneath bends. It's not perfect and it's not going to be able to be used for a side putting green but it works for a sim room and it was FAR less expensive. And I can live with it for 2-3 years.
I installed bluetooth speakers above where the cage will go. That was based on a tip from Jay from one of his videos and I think it will work out fantastically.
Mistake #3. I needed to protect the window sills and the side wall in case my sons (or significant other who is a beginner) toe one. Reading through the forum, I decided to go with mattress pads. The 2" on the side wall worked really well after I put in some grommets and nailed to the wall. The 3" for the window sills were too heavy and tore through the grommets and had no way to stand on their own. That was a sunk cost. So I purchased two 4x10 gymnastic pads that were firm enough to stand on their own. I secured with a simple pushpin at each end - and now they will go behind the cage and the screens to provide the extra protection
I ordered a TrueStrike Academy months ago and told they are still back ordered so I picked up the FiberBuilt that was highlighted in the forum as on sale from Amazon in the meantime. At least I'll be able to compare them.
As for projector, this was something I spent a lot of time on and discussed with Jay via email quite a bit. I'm not a math or spacial guy and I was totally out of my element trying to figure it out. I read a ton on the forum and got a pretty good understanding. I found a good deal on his Sony and then I decided to go with the BenQ LK953ST. When I told Jay that was what I was going with, lo and behold, he had come to the same decision independently and bought one as well. He has already mounted and gamed his and made a video of it. By the way, this projector is why I have the custom depth for the cage as BenQ told me it needs to be mounted at 13'.
I purchased the Eye XO, Swing Optix and E6 license through Jay and his people because I appreciated all of the work Jay put in to showing the rest of us what stuff actually looks like. I bought TGC through GungHo because I appreciated all of the info he posted on his site.
The major reason for the delay was due to the computer. Working from home I didn't want either my computer or my paralegal's computer to be doing double duty so I decided to buy an independent computer. I was ready to buy in May and my step-son told me that if I waited until October, GeForce was coming out with some amazing graphics cards that blows everything in the market away. He promised it would be worth the wait. I had no idea, but I went with his advice. We ordered an Intel I9 10900 3.70 with the GeForce 3090. I'm just typing letters and numbers, I don't know what any of that means. But he's thrilled. I didn't know it would be a gamer disco desktop, but I'll live. It arrived yesterday and E6 is installed and ready to go.
The plan is to have the cage end at 13', to hit at 10' and have the EyeXO installed in the enclosure at 6.5'. The plan is to have a 77" LG directly to the right of the hitting area for the club feedback and one to the left of the hitting for DirecTV. We'll see if that actually works. All the pieces are slowly coming into place. Please DM me if you have any questions as I have probably though about every possible variation of this thing over the past 5 months. I really need the courts to open back up!
I will update this as we go through the week if I can figure out where in the hell to buy 1.5" aluminum piping...
The only room in the house that was suitable was the "piano" room with big windows and nice floors. With 20' high ceilings I would not be able to mount to the ceiling so I knew a cage would be necessary. I ordered a custom size from Carl's: 119x183.9x156 - a custom depth. The cage is coming this week and I will update once I have that. The only other custom to the cage was that I had the black material on the ceiling of the cage as well for a total blackout.
Given that we plan to be in the house only a few years, I wanted my sim room to be great, not perfect, and somewhat portable.
The floors were the big issue as they are very nice floors and need to remain pristine. I took a couple bids from flooring guys for a layer of gym floor covered by a layer of turf. The bids were all above $5k which I thought was outrageous. So I purchased 1" MMA mat squares from Amazon for a 18x19 room and did it myself. It almost fit perfectly, I only had to trim a little. This was the first real mistake I made. I wanted a squishy feel so the balls didn't rebound like on concrete and I thought these were firm enough. They're firm, but not firm enough. Oh well. I ordered a putting green turf off of Amazon, 9x35 and had a friend install it. Mistake #2 - he didn't listen to me and put the seem going with the strike pattern instead of across it. My fault for not being home when he did. (I did tell him what I wanted, but oh well, when you pay in beer you get what you pay for.) The turf looks fantastic but there are a few rolling soft spots as you walk as the mat underneath bends. It's not perfect and it's not going to be able to be used for a side putting green but it works for a sim room and it was FAR less expensive. And I can live with it for 2-3 years.
I installed bluetooth speakers above where the cage will go. That was based on a tip from Jay from one of his videos and I think it will work out fantastically.
Mistake #3. I needed to protect the window sills and the side wall in case my sons (or significant other who is a beginner) toe one. Reading through the forum, I decided to go with mattress pads. The 2" on the side wall worked really well after I put in some grommets and nailed to the wall. The 3" for the window sills were too heavy and tore through the grommets and had no way to stand on their own. That was a sunk cost. So I purchased two 4x10 gymnastic pads that were firm enough to stand on their own. I secured with a simple pushpin at each end - and now they will go behind the cage and the screens to provide the extra protection
I ordered a TrueStrike Academy months ago and told they are still back ordered so I picked up the FiberBuilt that was highlighted in the forum as on sale from Amazon in the meantime. At least I'll be able to compare them.
As for projector, this was something I spent a lot of time on and discussed with Jay via email quite a bit. I'm not a math or spacial guy and I was totally out of my element trying to figure it out. I read a ton on the forum and got a pretty good understanding. I found a good deal on his Sony and then I decided to go with the BenQ LK953ST. When I told Jay that was what I was going with, lo and behold, he had come to the same decision independently and bought one as well. He has already mounted and gamed his and made a video of it. By the way, this projector is why I have the custom depth for the cage as BenQ told me it needs to be mounted at 13'.
I purchased the Eye XO, Swing Optix and E6 license through Jay and his people because I appreciated all of the work Jay put in to showing the rest of us what stuff actually looks like. I bought TGC through GungHo because I appreciated all of the info he posted on his site.
The major reason for the delay was due to the computer. Working from home I didn't want either my computer or my paralegal's computer to be doing double duty so I decided to buy an independent computer. I was ready to buy in May and my step-son told me that if I waited until October, GeForce was coming out with some amazing graphics cards that blows everything in the market away. He promised it would be worth the wait. I had no idea, but I went with his advice. We ordered an Intel I9 10900 3.70 with the GeForce 3090. I'm just typing letters and numbers, I don't know what any of that means. But he's thrilled. I didn't know it would be a gamer disco desktop, but I'll live. It arrived yesterday and E6 is installed and ready to go.
The plan is to have the cage end at 13', to hit at 10' and have the EyeXO installed in the enclosure at 6.5'. The plan is to have a 77" LG directly to the right of the hitting area for the club feedback and one to the left of the hitting for DirecTV. We'll see if that actually works. All the pieces are slowly coming into place. Please DM me if you have any questions as I have probably though about every possible variation of this thing over the past 5 months. I really need the courts to open back up!
I will update this as we go through the week if I can figure out where in the hell to buy 1.5" aluminum piping...
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