For informational purposes

[CatMan]

I'm sorry Skulldaddy32 for questioning your 140MPH swing speed and telling you that players may have an issue with it. How silly of me. I didn't know you where the longest driver champion. It I knew that from the beginning I never would of questioned it.

[Maverick]

The ProTee tour consists of ProTee system and GC2 users. We don't have a single player that can hit around 300 drive consistently, much less carry 300 on a flat hole even though the settings will allow it. If you guys agree to make it a video game league where everybody is hitting the ball longer than they do in real life, then so be it. But then you guys should stop accusing each other of cheating and just have fun.

[SkullCandy32]

There has to be standards that we have to go by. The "Board" needs to put together a set of standards and settings for the Optishot that EVERYONE has to follow as far as settings. With the Optishot and how squewed some of the results get....as long as we all have the same settings...who cares if someone hits it 360 off the tee. if they have the right settings and Optishot is letting them hit that....let them hit that. My real drives in the "Real World" are 315-320 average. Well i played a round with Catman and he had me doubting myself in everything, and I thought all my stuff was pretty darn good considering the time and effort i put into getting all this set up correctly. Point being we need to get the SETTINGS all the same, which is pretty much all we can control at this point. Its a game, make it fun. If someone has the same settings and hits it a little farther than everyone else..well..maybe this is more real world that we think.

[braycobb]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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 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]

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.