When will driver accuracy finally be fixed for high speed players?

[Wesquire]

Any updates?

[Dan McWhirter]

I noticed the new Titleist AVX ball has something like metal flake specks in the cover. I haven't tried on the sim, but I will.

[Clevited]

Awesome yeah. If I could I would like to have a white version and a metallic flake version of the same ball and test with multiple clubs. I haven't tried the ones I picked up but I didn't see a white version of them at the store. I will only be able to compare driver strikes then as I find ball speed differs little ball to ball if they are relatively close to the same hardness compression wise, the two I will test are.

[Clevited]

I hit a bunch last night without keeping official track of the data (I was struggling for a while so just got carried away trying to get in a rhythm) I used both a white Taylormade Tour Preferred and a yellow metallic flake Taylormade distance ball. Of the handful of drives I struck well, not once did I get ball speeds above 170 with the white ball, but I did get 174, 177, 177, 172, 172 with the yellow metallic ball. This isn't evidence for what I hope is a more visible more accurately measured ball, but its a good sign that there could be something to this. I will try and do a systematic test this weekend and see if there is any statistically obvious difference.

[brg1875]

That gets you closer, 7mph difference should get ~14 yards but then again it could be the difference of balls.

[Clevited]

Yeah, I am not absolutely sure what is going on. Could surely be placebo too. I might just have been swinging better last night for all I know. I know I hold back some in my garage with a car right next to me. I don't expect 180s ball speed in the garage, but mid to high 170s yes. Weird thing is, I have my swing speed radar on the ground and when I get in a groove, I get that thing to read identical numbers every swing (well within a couple mph of eachother). But when I get consecutive center strikes as confirmed by strike tape, I get completely different ball speeds even with the same ball. 172 one swing, next identical speed swing and nearly identical strike is 177, so strange. Not sure if that is the variability of ST kicking in, or if my club's sweet spot isn't where i think it is and I am border line with the lower ball speed and right on it with the higher ball speed.

I will hopefully find a decent chunk of time and hopefully be swinging well enough to learn something more absolute this weekend.

[Dan McWhirter]

If I wasn't busy putting in a 100 foot long pumped river to finish my ravine pond, in this heat, I'd be doing what you're doing. I'd be examining SkyTrak sensitivities while trying different balls (also to find my best), and examining differing strikes (also to expand my skills).

[Clevited]

So after a lot of testing, I don't find the yellow reflective balls to be statistically better at reading higher speeds. I do think though that it reads better for longer as it gets dirty vs a dirty worn white ball. I am too sporadic to get a 100% for sure on ball speed increase or not. I do feel like I more often get some higher speeds, but they are not frequent enough to statistically show higher average ball speed.

[brg1875]

Thanks for the feedback. I just ordered some used Srixon Z stars in mint condition from a website and I received a a reflective ball that has a purplish tint to it and tried it out next to a regular white z star and there was no noticeable differences in ball speed or spin rate.

Last thing I'm going to do is take my driver to a local dicks and hop on the gc2 there after I'm warmed up and see what ball speeds look like. A year before I received my Skytrak I was averaging a ball speed of ~165 on a gc2 but I'm hard pressed to get >150 with the ST.

[Clevited]

Honestly I feel like that might just give you more head scratching questions. A person really needs to compare to Trackman or Flightscope simultaneously. Radar is the best and more consistently accurate way to measure ball speed and those two devices won't possibly interefere with ST or ST with it. I am still hoping to do another direct comparison to TM at my local club in the near future. I will be recording all shots on both to compare.

[Clevited]

Just to clarify, to compare without questions to accuracy and validity concerning hitting environment differences or flashes of two camera units creating errors, TM or FS comparison is the way to go. I will hopefully end this once and for all with an accurate representation of how much it can be off by when in the 160s-180s ball speeds. Hopefully my swing isn't absolute crap when I go lol.

[Clevited]

Anyone with high ball speed used an SSR to measure it? If you have I would be curious if you have verified its accuracy and how it compares to your ST.

Looking for multiple sources on this as I have been trying it myself but numbers are higher than I expected.

[Clevited]

For those of you that don't know SkyTrak_Seth has announced again they will be testing high ball speeds very soon.

I thought it might be helpful to them for as many people as possible to post the following information.

1) Typical driver ball speed on Skytrak
2) Typical driver ball speed on other device (name the device).

Please only post if you are very confident in the difference. Please post regardless of ball speed being low or high. If we can get a variety it will show them what we see more precisely and help them look for problem areas. Ideally, describe how you tested, if indoor or outdoor, any details that might help Skytrak. This is a big issue to me and others and really the only major thing to me that holds Skytrak back from being as good as it can be.

Here are my observations from a past test.
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1) 172-180 bs on Skytrak
2) 177-185 bs on Trackman

Details: I tested simultaneously near 2 years ago now. It was in an open fitting bay and there was natural light outside but the interior of the bay was shaded, so no direct sunlight and Skytrak was in its plastic protective case. I hit several driver shots during that test and I had made a note that I never saw any ball speed numbers that were higher on Skytrak than Trackman. The range the Skytrak numbers were off by was between 4 and 8 mph low. I also made a note of an observation that horizontal launch angle seemed to correlate with how much it was off by but it was too small of a sample set to be sure. I did not do an average of the shots I took, I merely observed the differences after each shot and noted what I saw.

Future plans: I plan to do a full bag test vs Trackman in the near future as I just swapped for a different Skytrak in order to obtain sim software it had associated with it. My new one seems to give me an identical speed range as my old one.

Another observation: Speed difference was much less noticeable for sure up to 140 mph. Based on my observations, I would estimate Skytrak read the same or 1-3 mph lower or higher up to that ball speed vs Trackman. I also observed that it read lower ball speed much more often than it read higher than Trackman (personally I feel 1-3 mph is perfectly acceptable accuracy btw). I have not observed enough shots between 140 and 170 mph to state any trends there.

Couple more notes: I do get occasional ball speed readings on Skytrak in excess of 180 mph, but they are rare. I hope to see Skytrak observe this phenomenon as well during testing, and be capable of addressing it with programming tweaks, or identify any possible environmental culprit that could cause it. I personally have tried absolutely everything including playing in the dark. No changes, but perhaps there is something less obvious that makes this occur.

Edit: I corrected how much off the Skytrak was when I did my test. Had to look up my old notes as my memory must be CRAP ha.

[Clevited]

I don't have a lot of details but came across another person that has some evidence regarding this phenomenon. He recently switch to GC2 and his highest recorded ball speed with Skytrak was 159 mph with his driver. He achieved 167 with his GC2 already.

[Blaiser]

To me, the amount of light seems to be a huge factor. My setup is outdoor, and I've tried to get as much shade as possible because the direct sunlight seems to mess things up.

I've noticed when it is overcast and the shade (shadows) are covering my unit then I start getting closer to normal ball speeds. The difference can be about an average of 7-10mph.

If the sun is shinning bright, I can just barely crack 160. If it's nice and shady I'll get over 170, sometimes 180.

I haven't been on a gc2/TM/FS in quite some time, but I used to get 190mph on those. I'm certain I don't seeing that hard anymore, but I'm also pretty certain when I crank one it should be higher than 158mph like I see sometimes.

[Clevited]

Blaiser, thanks for chiming in. Sunlight is definitely a factor when I bring mine outside. I noticed how off it was got much better as the sun went down. I still feel however that indoors after certain ball speeds, the amount ST can be off grows noticeably. When you touch 180 bs, it could be 184-188 bs for all you know? Could be likely if you could once hit 190 on the other machines.

[xludan]

Very interested in the results of Skytrak's independent testing. I was fit using a GC Quad and my ball speed average was 164. The max ballspeed I have ever achieved on skytrak is 160mph in the 4 months I have been using it. Kind of frustrating.

[Clevited]

Any details you can share about your setup or how sure you are it isn't just an indoor swing issue, different club you were hitting issue etc would be very helpful. Thanks for chiming in. Just trying to eliminate any of our human error for ST if possible.

[xludan]

Very interested in the results of Skytrak's independent testing. I was fit using a GC Quad and my ball speed average was 164. The max ballspeed I have ever achieved on skytrak is 160mph in the 4 months I have been using it. Kind of frustrating.

Understandable. I am an electrical design engineer by trade so I've tried messing with every variable possible fix this.

When I was fit for my current driver (Callaway Rogue) it was an indoor fitting off of a mat using a GC Quad. My setup at home is in the garage using a similiar mat. I'm using the same driver I was fit for. I have black curtains on each side of my simulator so background color/lighting shouldn't be an issue. Indoor swing issue could very well be an issue but I doubt it. When I was being fit the ceiling was a height that was even lower than my garage. My current handicap is a 4 so my swing is fairly repeatable. Hopefully this helps.

[Clevited]

Great information, always good to have someone that understands all of the possible issues that could cause variation in ball speeds. Don't want ST to be chasing a wild goose, figured I would try to ferret out anyone that has good evidence of the issue.

Edit: One question for you, what were your upper ball speeds when you got fitted?

[xludan]

The electrical hardware engineer in me is dying to crack this thing open BTW. Very interested to hear about any hardware changes they have in store. If you want any input from an EE's standpoint SkyTrak_Seth let me know.

[xludan]

Understandable. I am an electrical design engineer by trade so I've tried messing with every variable possible fix this.

When I was fit for my current driver (Callaway Rogue) it was an indoor fitting off of a mat using a GC Quad. My setup at home is in the garage using a similiar mat. I'm using the same driver I was fit for. I have black curtains on each side of my simulator so background color/lighting shouldn't be an issue. Indoor swing issue could very well be an issue but I doubt it. When I was being fit the ceiling was a height that was even lower than my garage. My current handicap is a 4 so my swing is fairly repeatable. Hopefully this helps.

My fitting doesn't show max values. It shows an average of 163.7 mph with a standard deviation of 4.5. While not exact it safe to say I saw readings up to 4 mph on both sides of the average (1 standard deviation away)

[xludan]

I forgot to mention that my neighbor is a recently former D1 tennis player and is very long. I am not short and he hits its consistently 20 yards past me out on the course. My guess is his ballspeed is 180+mph. He has used my Skytrak a few times and he gets misreads about 1/4 of the time. I think part of it is that he hits the ball fairly low. We have tried to mitigate this by moving ball back a little bit to get his flight into the camera window but it doesn't seem to help much.