SkyTrak App Enhancement and Feature Requests

[Tekbud]

Several people have asked for a way to capture and manage the data. If you are able to connect your Skytrak via network method (not direct) and sync to Skygolf360, and you are able to view your sessions (I know that a lot of people are having trouble with this and 1.9 should address) but if you can do that now, you can simply copy and paste your data from the session history online directly into Excel. Then you can manipulate the data to your hearts content. I was playing around with this last week and it worked very well. Awesome having this data to analyze!

Additional feature/problem - my session history shows some really weird numbers, like that i was practicing for one session for many many days long. It would be nice to get all of that data straight - hoping that is also a part of 1.9.

I also concur with the statement that the challenge slider for distance is impossible to get right. Every time I take my finger off of it there is a shift.

having some targets to hit to even if just straight away on the driving range would be great.

i also agree with having some sort of line on the range up the center, or even just place a set of signs in the center to hit to.

Would be nice with the tracer to show a different color for fade vs. draw based on spin

[freddyc84]

The initial ball data (e.g., ball speed, launch angle, spin, etc.) does not seem to be displayed on the iPad until after the shot is fully processed on the iPad. Can the initial ball data be displayed as soon as it is available on the iPad, which would provide more immediate feedback on shot quality (as opposed to waiting for the entire shot calculation to be completed and displayed)?

[Agolfman]

Just a couple thoughts re: SkyGolf360 data (which has sync'ed flawlessly for me, so far):

1. Would like to have averages shown under the "Show Group" feature, similarly to how the ST app does it. I find myself loading, and rechecking different data (ball speed, then spin rate, then carry distance and so forth) and it's a bit of a pain to compare/contrast as it's done currently.

2. I spend a lot of time with my son in Target Practice mode, it would be great to have those sessions get incorporated (by club used) into SkyGolf360. It's probably half of my shots. Also, I haven't figured out how to have both of us use our profiles at the same time (can this be done?). Usually, one of us is logged in and the other becomes a generic Player2.

Lastly, and I really can't put any higher priority on it, I think there's a big miss here without a true "Combine" mode.

To differentiate from Flightscope, ST should allow me to either be in Driving range mode (default) or a rigorous scoring mode that that rates a practice session objectively. I feel like this is the one thing that might cause me to switch over to Flightscope Xi at the end of 30 days. If there was a plan to offer this and some date range, I would likely hang in there with ST as I think the team has shown a willingness to iterate and innovate. I just don't want to wait a year or more for it, if Sim is a higher priority.

Any insight on this would be most welcomed!

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Almost all of these suggestions from the last few posts are either in the works or staged to be worked on. I will say that multi-user will need to be around for course play, so it's coming.

Again, 1.8.6 is solely devoted to local database and SkyGolf360 issues.

Can you expand a little on the objective scoring of a practice session and how that would differ from just tracking distance or some other parameter's improvement over a period of time within SkyGolf360? Are you saying to develop a scoring method that takes into account distance, offline, smash factor, etc.? Or gives you a higher score if you hit it better than the last session? I suppose that could work, but what if you are trying to practice a shot that you don't want to be straight? What are you comparing to? Only yourself? I'll give this some thought, but please feel free to share what you had in mind.

[Agolfman]

Happy to.

There's a number of use cases here, but let's take two to start with:

1. Use case: general practice session.

For background, I'm a 3 hcp. I have a selectable number of balls to hit in a session, say 75. I vary clubs thought that session with a target (large flag, please!) that represents a proper distance (maybe user defined or preset based on my average distances for each club). Using a more granular point system than in Target Practice mode of 25-50-100, all my 7 irons are objectively quantified against a score potential of 100 points. By objective, I mean an algorithm that uses distance AND deviation from target to score each shot. In Trackman combine, they use a tightening scoring system for each club tied to shorter distances (higher deviation at 60 yards are scored lower that 140 yards). Each shot gets a score between 0-100 and at then end total club averages are quantified.

Maybe, I score an average of 82 over 25 7 iron shots and that becomes part of my session history. My next 25 shots are with a PW and I score an 89....leading me to understand I need to work on 7 irons, perhaps. Or better yet, the average PW score is a 93 on SkyGolf360 for a 3 hcp, and I'm short of that metric.

2. Use case: Skills Training

Predetermined skills testing which varies targets, conditions and yardages. In "random" mode I might hit a sequence of 5 iron, hybrid, drive, SW, etc over a set number of shots. All shots are scored and my totals are stored along with shot data. Same scoring algorithm as above.

Variations: middle iron skills testing, driver skills testing, high wind skills testing, and/or user constructed scenarios.

Anyway, that's my thinking. In short, I'd like to spend an hour hitting balls with a purpose and then conclude I was better/worse than my handicap peers. In theory, there could be data from PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, or amateur baselines established that could be contrasted with my own scoring results. In a synergy play, you could grab all this data from the current trove within SkyGolf 360, segmented by handicap and just use that. SkyNet anyone...? Shouldn't even have went there...

I've done the Trackman combine and came away super impressed, particularly with how much data can be available in their cloud across all their users. That's the future my friends, at least for those who might be somewhat competitively motivated.....I could care less how well I play on WGT, I only care to take what I do indoors and make my outdoor game better.

[Agolfman]

I should also add one thought about the scoring algorithm, because y may have just been asking about that....

I'm no math major, but I could start with something like this and then hope it gets improved by the wisdom of the crowd.

Score = 100 - (Distance deviation % + Target deviation %)

So, let's say for two different targets of 150 yards and 50 yards, that each target is missed 5 yards short and 5 yards to the right.

150 yard shot score = 100 - ( (5/150) + (5/150) ) or 100% - (3.3% + 3.3%) , resulting in a shot score of 93.4

50 yard shot score = 100 - ( (5/50) + (5/50) ) or 100% - (10.0% + 10.0%) , resulting in a shot score of 80.0

In both case, if my simple geometry is correct, the player would be left with a 21' putt at the hole, being 5 yards short and 5 yards wide. That should be a better result for a 150 yard shot than a 50 yard shot, IMHO....

Another thought here (if you're familiar with Richie3Jack's work, might be targets based on Zones, which he defines as Danger Zone (175-200 yards) and Birdie Zones (inside 150 IIRC). Pretty good PGA Tour data has been analyzed on that subject previously.

Does that make sense?

[paschmann]

Agolfman - I like these concepts. Great ideas.

[Agolfman]

I'll post this here as it's relevant to my post above on a scoring formula. I copied/pasted all my data off of SkyGolf360 and dumped it into Excel.

Using the formula above, I went through each session and calculated a score for each shot, averages for each club, and an average for each day's practice session. It's not a bad approach, somewhat useful, probably with some gaps...

I am seeing a couple things:

- the bad shots do in fact punish you more on the short clubs, if distance or direction is missed
- my warm up shots are ususally wedges, so that drags down my averages a little for those
- I used two main distance variables: my actual yardages used for each club that I play to (i.e., 9 iron = 140 yards total), which have been fairly constant for the past 10+ years; and a "SkyTrak Factor" of 5% to represent the slight distance loss I'm consistently seeing for all my clubs. The ST Factor is applied to reduce my outdoor yardages for the scoring calculation and generally has normalized the data to my satisfaction.

My intent of that Factor is not to start an argument, rather it reflects my experience over the past several years that validated my outdoor yardages, club gapping, etc. I've been on Trackman, Flightscope, and GC2 more times than I can count...an have also done Trackman Combine as additional context. My Trackman session of a couple weeks ago for Ball Speed was exactly 5% greater than my ST. As we say here in #PatriotsNation, "it is what it is..."

Lastly, I think I've gained some insights about where I should spend more time practicing....and now have a nice competitive session goal of 90%+ that I can now shoot for in each session.

Feedback appreciated and welcomed.

[driverdivots]

Love where you're going with that Agolfman. That would be great for practice sessions.

I don't own a SkyTrak yet, but just from what I've seen, I can think of a features that would be handy.
- grouping shots by color. I know when I get mine, I'll be doing many ball fittings / club fittings. Comparing clubs/balls by colors would be perfect.
- overhead view of the shot groupings. I'm not sure if this is a current feature, but I don't believe I've seen it. That would be great to see how tight the groupings are at different target distances.
- SkyTrak combine. I'm pretty sure this is very similar to what Agolfman has already explained. It would be cool to have this sort of test, and post the scores online to compare to other ST users.
- delete shots? This may already be possible.

Again I don't yet own a ST so please take everything I say with a grain of salt. Just thinking ahead!

[jon.summy@aol.com]

1. Save settings....don't want to have to keep changing.
2. Slider on Challenges needs to be direct input....kind of a beating trying to work the slider.
3. Practice....ability to place some targets out there to hit at would be great.
4. Would like to be able to see all shot statistics on the Challenges.
5. Combine would be great!

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Thanks Agolfman for the details. I'll start laying something out.

Most of these other suggestions are already noted - but glad to see so much interest in a combine!

[Nicknku]

Not sure if it has been mentioned.... I don't have the time right now to read through the thread, but a toned down app for a phone would be nice to have that would just spit out the data.

[apljb]

+1 for the combine

[keithpbz]

I would really like to be able to mark a good shot or bad shot with a thumbs up or thumbs down button. Similiar to the swingbyte app. Or be able to delete shots, adding a delete button next to the replay shot button. That way it can delete the last shot hit. And when viewing session when you highlight shots those are the shots used in the averages at the bottom instead of all shots from the session. Also apex height and descent angles.

[johan14]

Dear SkyTrak,

I have seen some accessories in Japan website of SkyTrak photos attached). Any plan for to have those accessories available in our market?

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Those just look like concepts to me, but yes we are working on a shield/riser for the US. Even though Japan has the SkyTrak hardware, we aren't affiliated as far as software/accessories/etc Unfortunately we keep running into delays, but yes still working on it.