FItness Golf

[alexsmith11]

I have had my SkyTrak for just about 1 year and have been using it with the following set-up

Net Return Home
All turf mat ultimate 5x5
Fiberbuilt Strip cut into mat
Ipad with SkyTrak app and WGT

Recently bought an ASUS GA502 budget gaming laptop as my MacBook Pro is old and unable to run any of the sim software.

I downloaded the Fitness Golf demo and played 9 holes (in offline mode which is really useful for an outdoor setup) yesterday and have to say I’m impressed with the results.

It is really too bad fitness golf doesn’t get its own section on the forum and isn’t mentioned very often, but for the one off price it hands down beats WGT annual fee of $135 CAD.

At first I was worried about the graphics and it looking dated, but honestly, they look pretty good, and some courses look better than others. The sample picture shown on the skytrak page isn’t a good representation of the graphics. They aren’t doing themselves any favours using that as the main picture.

The putting is really hard to get down, I have hit putts off the greens when this never happens to me in real play. I might try the auto putt feature and see how that goes.

All on all, I would say this package is definitely worth while, and I will for sure purchase it once my trial is over.

Hope this helps anyone thinking of getting into the fitness golf sim software.

cheers
alex

[cmckelvmi]

So, you get on the treadmill after each shot to walk/run the necessary distance to the ball, right? This is intriguing to me, but I just don't have the room.

[alexsmith11]

I’m only using the golf mode, I don’t have the space either for treadmill or bike.

[thorin33]

So, you get on the treadmill after each shot to walk/run the necessary distance to the ball, right? This is intriguing to me, but I just don't have the room.

You don't need to use the fitness mode at all. I tried to demo and liked it as well but in the end I purchased TGC (and got the free update to TGC 2019)

[alexsmith11]

I’ll probably get TGC at a later stage also. For the moment my set-up is outdoors and connectivity is a little shaky. Fitness Golf allows me to connect in direct mode and play courses offline without that dependency on a reliable wifi connection.

[SkeetShooter]

I played the demo... I wasnt really that impressed. The graphics arent that bad, but they certainly feel like I stepped back into 2010, what was most worrying for me was the odd penalty values from out of the rough or sand. Chipping was damn near impossible out of the sand as sometimes it would punish me and others it wouldnt. Putting was a nightmare. To be honest, it turned me off from wanting to get TGC... It was a really frustrating experience for me. On the golf course, My fringe, rough and sand play is pretty darn good. Rarely do I get a shot out of the sand that just clears a green or picked clean... Fitness Golf felt like I was trying to play to the game, and not the other way around.

I really wish TGC would offer a trial... Even if it was just the regular TGC and not 2019, so potential buyers could get used to the dynamics of it and determine if they like it or not.

[fitness golfer]

I played the demo... I wasnt really that impressed. The graphics arent that bad, but they certainly feel like I stepped back into 2010, what was most worrying for me was the odd penalty values from out of the rough or sand. Chipping was damn near impossible out of the sand as sometimes it would punish me and others it wouldnt. Putting was a nightmare. To be honest, it turned me off from wanting to get TGC... It was a really frustrating experience for me. On the golf course, My fringe, rough and sand play is pretty darn good. Rarely do I get a shot out of the sand that just clears a green or picked clean... Fitness Golf felt like I was trying to play to the game, and not the other way around.

I really wish TGC would offer a trial... Even if it was just the regular TGC and not 2019, so potential buyers could get used to the dynamics of it and determine if they like it or not.

There is a learning curve for all of the SkyTrak simulator softwares and Fitness Golf is no exception. I suspect you didn't read our user manual (link found below) and/or give the demo enough time to better learn the putting/chipping. All of the Fitness Golf courses have different characteristics (just like real life courses) as chosen by the individual course designers. So, the bunker, rough etc. penalties can vary from course to course and just like IRL you may need to play the courses several times to appreciate these differences. As far as bunker play goes, the FG software is simply taking the ball spin data generated by your SkyTrak to create the ball flight. Unless you are hitting off a mat insert that is trying to replicate hitting out of the sand, none of the simulator softwares will give you a great replication of hitting out of real sand. I'm not sure why the putting was so difficult for you. Every putt tells you the elevation change and our user manual suggests how to compensate for these changes. To read the green breaks, you need to enable the green grid and once you understand this, it is very much like reading the break IRL and you will find that you almost always read the break accurately. We find that this is much closer to reading greens IRL rather than having arrows that show you exactly what the greens do as other sim softwares may utilize. Hope this helps.

http://www.fitnessgolf.net/links.html

[SkeetShooter]

Thanks for responding. I think what I'm trying to say regarding a bunker shot and penalties, is after playing one of those courses 3 times... I think it was some sort of German course? I was in the bunkers a few times. And even if I hit it with my 60* And what I know to be a pretty good sand shot... it would fly a good 50 yards... So that made me think... OK I need to experiment a bit... I came to the conclusion that a flop shot would be the only way to make it work. Unfortunately SkyTrak has a lot of issues catching flop shots because of the high launch trajectory. If I was in a greenside bunker, I was pretty much resolved to a 20% chance of putting that ball onto the green, forget about near the pin.

What I like about TGC (from what I see) It tells you the penalty percentage, so you know that if you decide to hit a pitching wedge from a fairway bunker at 100 yards, you are going to either really muscle it or pick it thin, or club up (Just like you would in real-life)

Putting was just a mystery to me. Several times I blew past the hole with what was an uphill 10-15 footer. I just couldnt figure it out. Thank God for gimmies.I enabled the green views and elevations each time. While helpful, I still couldn't get speed down. I play mostly on municipals IRL but a few of them have some pretty quick greens. I'm not a great putter, but I can usually get it close enough to two putt.

[DrStrangelove]

Do you find the iPad sufficient for Skytrak and WGT? Which iPad are you running.

[alexsmith11]

I have an ipad pro 9.7 from 2016 and it runs both the Skytrak app and WGT just fine. However, I found WGT a little arcade like and gave me strange results at times (like 230 yard 5 iron). Since my initial set-up, I have bought fitness golf and find the gameplay much better, with realistic ball flight.