For informational purposes

[Vincent_Vega]

I'm going to leave this link here. Feel free to look at it if you'd like. This is the highest swing speeds on tour in 2014. Notice their average and even the fastest swing they recorded in the entire season. The tour average for all players was 113 mph. Optishot isn't perfect and I think we all knew that when we bought it. But with calibration and tweaking, you can make it very representative of your real life results. If you average the same swing speed as some of the longest hitters on tour, then by all means, keep bombing it. But, if you know that your real life driving distance is being grossly overstated, please dial it down. This is supposed to represent a golf simulation as if we were all playing in our local dog fight on Saturday mornings at the club. This isn't meant to be Tiger Woods golf on Playstation. End rant/

http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02401.2014.html

[SFR]

I know the max smash factor of 1.5 thing but what I wondered is what you guys can boost the system to its max, and then get with a 100 mph swing speed for the driver.

So let everyone boost to the max, then it will be fair.

[Mike80]

Yeah, this is very difficult because there is no way to force settings. I am one of the persons who want my Optishot exactly how I really play in real life. I have to reduce my distance percentages to 92% otherwise I am hitting ridiculous distances. This has to be something everyone does to honestly match their real distances. But the fact is most people are not going to reduce their distance. Not sure if it's because they just want the extra edge, or feel less of a man having to reduce their distance to what it was hitting a minute before the setting change or what?

Like it was stated earlier, it's easy to know what your drive distance should be. There are a ton of charts online that show what distance your driver should go per swing speed. Go to a pro shop and they can help determine your real swing speed with there fitting equipment. Also whatever your swing speed is with a driver isn't the same swing speed for all your irons either. Obviously everyone has agreed Optishot is a little generous with giving a lot of extra distance for a 95 MPH swing speed. Someone stated above that they know it's giving them more distances. So the big question is why don't you adjust your distance percentage if you know its giving you more distance? Don't you want it to replicate real life golf?

Optishot gives all the settings to calibrate your clubs to match your real distances.

Anyway, I have my percentages reduced to exactly real life golf and I have more fun that way. I just wish more people would so I'm not playing against like Tiger Woods. Like someone mentioned this is a simulator not Tiger Woods golf on the Playstation. Wouldn't it be more fun to have tournaments with people being average golfers vs. playing against professionals.

Also here's another point. Look at the ProTee tour. There tournament scores seem to be more realistic. Bubba or Zmax, does the ProTee make it harder for people to increase their distances and cheat or is it just more accurate right out of the box?

[Cklguy2013]

To answer your question Mike I would say that the ProTee distances are very accurate, I hit my clubs very similar distances to what I do in real life, without having made any changes to the default settings, notwithstanding a 5% reduction in my wedge distances which seemed to go a little to far. As a reference point I'm a low single digit golfer who swings between 100 - 105, and I generally, with good contact, get a carry of between 240 to 250, just as I would in real life, and I would rarely see a drive over 270 with carry and roll. Personally I want my carry distances as close as possible to real life to make the sim play more realistically.

[Maverick]

The ProTee is very accurate at default settings. The default settings are tuned using GC2 and Optimal Flight. But if one wants, he can tweak the settings to hit 400 yard drives straight as an arrow or play like Tiger Woods very easily. We have been playing online for a few years now. You might call us pioneers of online simulator golf. . The rules have been tweaked over the years and they are very clear now that everybody must use default settings. If adjustments are needed, it must be very minor and must not be more that 5%.

Another rule we have is that your rounds must be played online with at least one other player. We allow solo play only if it's necessary and the player must stream the round live and the scores must be entered live while playing. Since we use turn based play with TGC, your playing partner will see your shot and everything that you do. This allows everybody to get to know everybody's game. If a guy was driving it 220 a week ago but now drives 280, it will be noticed and questions will be asked.

Also, the handicap system is very fast. If a 10 index all of a sudden shoots 2 under par rounds, his handicap will drop like a rock. We also have the ability to verify settings that are used during play. We hope to never have to resort to such actions. I have no tolerance for cheaters. If caught, they will be booted from the tour and possibly the forum.

[Mike80]

Thanks for the response! Yeah, I agree. That's why I tweak the settings to match my real distances. It's just frustrating hitting 240 yard drives against others consistent 270 yard or 300+ yard drives when I know the Optishot is being very generous. Or I could fall into that group and take my reduction off and hit the 280 yard drives like everyone else...LOL.

[Maverick]

I forgot to add that since the ProTee also measures the ball, bad hits will be reflected in the game. That's a big reason why the scores on the ProTee tour are more realistic compared to score in the Optishot tour. I'm a 9 outside and my scoring average on the ProTee tour is 79.9.

[Mike80]

Thanks for your input Zmax! My response was to Cklguy2013. I must have been typing when you entered your response. Thanks for the info about how you handle this in Protee simulation. Also you brought up a good point about Protee reading ball flight so mishits result in bad shots, unlike the Optishot.

[Throttle]

Guys I hate to break the bubble but I have tested the optishot side by side with a GC2 and since it only uses club speed as your main launch parameter it will never be accurate for distances.

For example I have hit 10 swings in a row on a GC2 where my club speed varied only by 1-2 MPH, then jump on the Optishot and it had a variance of 1-9 mph on those same type of shots. This is with taped clubs, tweaked lighting, tweaked opti club settings and hours of testing etc. 16 IR sensors can only guess so much... You change your attack angle by one degree or you swing path and face by one degree and all bets are off on what type of shot the opti will display. Even if you used an iron byron on the thing it still would not be 100% for every shot. One drive would carry 250 the next 280.

It is what it is, an affordable "simulator" not a true launch monitor. Have fun and ease up on the guys who can bomb it because the game is really just being a "game". It errors on the side of making your bad shots look better than they are. My real life drive rarely ever goes over 250 yards with a sweet spot hit (yes I am a wimp with just a 92 mph swing speed). The Opti would give me 280-290 on at least 5 of the holes during a round, even when I didn't hit the sweet spot which has no chance of ever going that far.

Just use your handicaps and have fun until you upgrade to a real system.

[MrHogan]

Until optishot allows all tweakable settings to be locked down by the tournament organisers i'll leave the settings on 100% even though i have to drop my driver down to 82% to simulate real life driving distances. I will create 2 profiles online & offline.
Real life hcp 7. Shoot level par on average on optishot. On commercial simulators i never shoot my real life hcp often more like 17 over.

[braycobb]

As I stated above, the swing speed is fairly accurate for me. Prior to online play, I had the Driver Distance % set to 95 to lower the overall distance. Yep, I changed it back to 100% when I we started the league figuringg that would put things on "equal" ground.
However, I have seen a "problem" with tweaking the settings......I set things up on the range. Those tweaks don't translate to the course. For example, I set the 95% Driver distance on the range based on the average distances I was getting. On the course, the affect isn't the same. I realize there are other factors.....wind, slope, fairway speed, etc. So, what would we expect to tweak our settings to? Range?
If we do that, I can 100% guarantee we will still be having the same discussion!
Bottom line is that distance is only one part of the game. If I can't hit a green or putt worth a darn, I'm still not going to put up a good score.

[MrHogan]

We leave them all on 100% it's the only way to have level playing field, even if it is very fake. I'd like one day for optishot to faciliate this lock down feature in online play.

[Vincent_Vega]

Well alright... Guess I'll be pushing mine back up to 100% for my next round too then. Just thought I'd start the discussion. Like I stated in my original post, the Optishot isn't perfect. It's a budget simulator, it is what it is.

[Mike80]

You can tweak the settings very easily to match your real distances and get your drives closer to 250 yard drives vs 270-300 yard drives. Braycobb you mentioned it doesn't match from driving range to course. It should. However you can go in practice course play and hit drives and tweak your club settings while on the course. This was good discussion and I guess in the end I will agree with Mr. Hogan. I'll just have two profiles then and put my online profile back to 100% so I can stay competitive with the field. That's unfortunate because I wanted this to not become a video game and represent realistic golf. I know its not perfect but Optishot provides the settings to do this very easily if a person wanted to tweak it.

[braycobb]

Understand all of the above.....My main point was that regardless if what we do with settings/tweaking it isn't perfect. No matter what we do, we will continue to have "discussions" over distances because someone doesn't believe another players numbers. We are seeing that now.

[braycobb]

By the way, I would much prefer my settings to represent real world.