Adjusting Protee results to match reality

[Archv6625]

I've FINALLY got my room build finished, and just fired up the system in its more or less permanent setup for the first time. Only thing that isn't permanent are cameras - they aren't tightened to their location yet.

I'm getting some anomalies though, and its late, and I can't reason my way to the needed adjustments.

1. (least important) If I try the protee range, even with the golf club disabled (and restarted in the interface), I get no results, even if the interface itself shows numbers. I just get a red square in the top-left corner.

2. Is it odd to have your clubhead speed read high on Protee? My typical clubhead speed is 109-114(from multiple bridgestone ball fittings). 116 is almost a wall for me - I can get to 116 without swinging out of my shoes and falling off balance but any more and I really don't get much more speed and I just look silly falling forwards, backwards, over the ball and any other direction physics dictates. Well, I can consistently hit 118 as set up. I just expected to be down a few MPH being that I haven't been to a course or range for months and I'm indoors. I'm TOTALLY cool with more clubhead speed, just want to make sure its right. Also, my carry distance with my driver is a bit long - its been in the 260's on the TGC range where 245-250 carry I think is more realistic to what I see on the course.

3. Most annoying and probably the easiest to fix - unless I make a massive effort to hit a banana slice, the system detects everything as a pretty massive hook. I normally hit the ball right to left, but this is excessive - 40-50 yards. In fact, I was within range of hooking a ball onto dry land on the TGC water driving range. Yikes. There has to be something off in the setup of the system or my alignment, I just can't think through the geometry right now.

And last - is there any idea if/when the ability to offset the center line of the image will come? my setup is about 1' off center due to a bulkhead in the ceiling intruding in the high vertical space in just the wrong place.

Thanks.

[Bubba22]

Protee should work. Make sure you hit save after disabling the golf club in the interface. Also make sure in the settings that use E6 has False written. Save and exit the interface and restart.

Is it just the driver giving high club head speed? Check your settings to make sure they are at 0. Check club face and path settings in interface and use recommended settings.
No way to offset centre that I know.
Post some screenshots.

[TaS]

116 mph clubhead speed and only getting carry of 245 to 250 in real life? That seems off to me. You should carry it about 275 to 280 with that clubhead speed.

[GSF_Admin]

First thing you need to do is to make sure the lights are setup correctly and the 2 light beams are not crossing eachother. The light needs to be white and strong (not orange and weak looking). Also make sure you hit the ball from the white TEE position and not from anywhere else.

When you system is off center you will still need to hit straight forward. The center of the sensor mat will be you straight line (0 degrees). If you try to line up towards the flag (to the left) the ball will always go left.

When thats all ok, you need to check the sensors. Instructions are here: http://csc.protee-united.com/entries...ng-the-sensors

The front row of sensors is the ball track sensors. Make sure there is only 1 sensor lighting up in RED. When resetting the sensors by covering one of the 4 big holes on the back, ALL sensors should go OFF (not checked) and the timers (numbers in C1, C2 and C3) should be running like crazy.

[ProTee United]

Thats a great starting point.

[Richard_Askren]

116 mph clubhead speed and only getting carry of 245 to 250 in real life? That seems off to me. You should carry it about 275 to 280 with that clubhead speed.

All depends on his launch angle. A low launch angle of 10 degrees or lower will see carry distances in that range even at that swing speed.

[Bubba22]

As well as spin.

[Archv6625]

I have no idea what iron club head speeds should be, but the distances on my irons are in the right ballpark for this time of the year - slightly short of what I would expect but I'm certain I'm not making good contact with them - and the penalty seems about right.

All depends on his launch angle. A low launch angle of 10 degrees or lower will see carry distances in that range even at that swing speed.

Well - that'd all be good if I could hit the center of the club. My smash factor is commonly below 1.4 and often in the low-mid 1.3's. Launch is typically 13-15 degrees and its calculating total spin in the high 4k-low 5k, which is a bit high when comparing to what I saw on the ball fittings. Also - 116 is really the far end of what I get - if I were to average 10 good swings, I bet it would be in the 111-112 range.

Oddly enough, I wondered the same thing (CHS vs distance) before I had any measuring equipment so I put some impact tape on the club - the pattern is from basically the bottom of the club to just above middle and probably 1.5 golf ball widths wide. Definitely something I'm working on.

Thanks for all of the suggestions - I have the homework for tonight.

[Archv6625]

I think there were a couple issues going on.
I had the light from the putting sensor overlapping with the light from the club sensor slightly (but nowhere near the sensor pad), remembering a Zmax suggestion, so I re-aimed that.
I also zoomed my projector out and reset it so the center of the image aligns with the hitting location.
THere was a little bit of debris on the left side of the back sensor, so I cleaned that up as well.

End result is that CHS, distances and spin are much more in line with what I would expect. My CHS with driver was in the 107-110 range, which is much closer to what I would expect to see, peaking at 114. The massive hooks are gone too, so all in all, were getting there.

Chipping is difficult so far - chips are going much shorter than I would expect. Cameras are getting the ball streak OK on those though.

Also, if I try to hit a punch shot, the vcam almost always reads the club, not the ball. I have attached a screenshot of that. Any suggestions on how to adjust that?

Thanks.

[Bubba22]

What vcam method are you using?

[Hoosierdaddy]

Here are the issues I see with the screen shot.

1 No club selected. The game selects the club but when your getting things set you have to select the club your hitting. That's why you have sliders for woods irons and wedges. it takes different settings to get a good reading.
2 background is to bright
3 gain appears to be to high (this might help the background issue).
4 there is not enough greyscale on the slider. Turn down the gain and raise the grey scale up. the club head becomes less of a problem.
5 why do you use tee offset on a wedge? I only use offset for driver.
6 the ground is to high. You should be able to see the streak from the tee spot when you get it set right.

It looks for the first straight line. and if you get the streak to start at the tee spot there is no problem finding a straight line. Or at least that's my experience with that problem.

I use PT1 on all settings and I can get all clubs to read correct shots. Wedges can be an issue some days, but for the most part I can get a 58 degree flop to read 95% of the time. Never had a reading of over that.

this might not be the recommendation from others but that is what I would do to correct the club head issue. Good luck. Just remember small adjustments sometimes make a world of difference.

[Archv6625]

Bubba, I'm using PT5

Hoosier:
1: I'm using the protee interface on one monitor and TGC driving range on the other -which is why I didn't have a club selected.
2/3: I turned the gain down
4: I bumped the grayscale up as well. This helped significantly.
5: Never thought about it. Must have changed it once before I started hitting anything and never put it back to default.
6: I aimed the camera lower. This seemed to have the biggest impact.

And I also aimed the putting light back towards the main sensor just a bit so the circles of light just barely intersect. Seems to be much better now. I was playing around with some flop shots and hit a bunch like the attached that showed a fault. It presents both a logistical problem and a software problem. If I really go after one of these, I'm going to be close to hitting the putting light. Also, it seems like I'm over the max launch angle. Is there a way to bump that up without causing problems somewhere else?

[Archv6625]

Next question as to matching reality and the sim - I'm still struggling with the ball flight - essentially everything I hit is still a rather aggressive hook - club face is often around 10 degrees closed to club path. I guess this isn't so far out of the realm of possibilities, but even when I try to hold the clubface open, it still shows closed. Its still cold and I haven't hit balls outside, so I guess I could be hitting a bunch of hooks, but the severity is out of character - crossing completely over the fairway I"m playing and most of the way over the next one. I almost never hook the ball that badly on a course.

Also, my iron distances are coming up short. I know I can adjust for that in the interface, but I don't understand how with a direct measurement they would be as far off as they are. I do have a rather unusual launch with my irons - I tend to launch them high with a pretty neutral attack angle, so they don't have a ton of spin. I"m wondering if that's the issue because the calculation expects a more typical launch.

[Hoosierdaddy]

Club_path_correction_Driver=-1
Club_path_correction_Wood=-2
Club_path_correction_Iron=-3
Club_path_correction_Wedge=-2
Club_face_correction_Driver=2
Club_face_correction_Wood=3
Club_face_correction_Iron=3
Club_face_correction_Wedge=4

Adjust these numbers in the settings file(alt E). Save and close everything (all screens) then restart the interface each time you make a change. Don't make huge adjustments all at one time. Your numbers will be different than what I posted here. Just keep adjusting until your shot looks normal. When I do this I always have someone else hit balls with me to make sure it looks real to them also. I have the luxury of having players that draw the ball and players that fade the ball normally so I am pretty confident that my setup is real close to perfect. The numbers posted here are not my numbers. I copied and pasted them from another post.

One other thing I see is that I don't see your legs in the screen shot. Where is the camera placed? I think you should see your legs on either side of the ball at address. Start with the camera in PT1 mode (in the settings file) and get the red box just below the ball on a tee. the camera should be pointing 90 degrees to the ball path line. Then when you change to PT?. change the angle of the camera just slightly to put the ball just ahead of where the red box was, keeping the level the same. You can't move it far or you will have misreads on the mid irons consistently. I move it a ball length or less forward. This gives you a little more angle before the ball goes out of screen as your screenshot shows.

You can also change the max LA in the settings file to 60 it looks like it is there but you can check. I can't get anything to read consistently over 58. But for 99% of the wedge shots it will read correctly once set correctly.

Once you get it set correctly write down everything and keep it somewhere. Every once in a while you will need to tweak it. Camera's get bumped by a stray ball, or the enclosure moves slightly, I don't know what causes it. But somehow things change. So keep it close and if you start having bad things happen just small tweaks will bring it back. Then the next time it goes out of whack you go back to what you wrote down and it all works again. I might have to make 3 tweaks a year.

When I said to move the bottom I meant to lower the ground. You have to get the ball at the start of its flight in the frame with the red line and box at the correct spot or the software will try and find the first straight line, which will be the clubhead. I am not exactly sure how the software works, but if the first line on the bottom of the screen is the club it follows that even though it is not normally a straight line.

[Archv6625]

Thanks for sharing the settings - I think I started there - those may be the Zmax numbers. As far as the screenshot, I have the camera behind me and a couple feet in front of me. I'm lucky enough that unless I'm really close to the ball - for example an open stance for a chip, that my legs are just out of the lit zone. If it catches the ball streak just right, there's a leg-width gap in the streak.

The vCam is actually working really well now (within the limits of the system of course). I actually used a level I trust completely that was square to the sensor and playing line within 1/16" and counted the pixels from the bottom of the frame to the top of the level and they were the same at both ends of the 4' level.

Do you think my relative lack of spin compared to a typical launch could be causing issues with distances?