SkyTrak and The Golf Club (TGC) Simulation Software

[soccerdude]

Hi Seth. I'm new to this forum but have been reading as much as I can about SkyTrak on this and other forums. It seems that many experienced sim users think that The Golf Club game is the best simulator software out there right now. In fact, if I'm understanding and remembering things correctly, Bubba22 and Zmax were instrumental (please correct me if I'm wrong) in getting ProTee to integrate their sim hardware (and gc2) with The Golf Club software. So my question to you/SkyTrak is simply this: Has there been any thought to integrating SkyTrak with The Golf Club? And if so, what are the odds that this might happen? And if so, when?

[ProTee United]

Willymakit one day you will be able to play TGC with your SkyTrak. We are all waiting for SkyTrak to release it.

[ks-man]

ks-man there are plenty of 7100 yard courses in real life. Agreed that you will need to hit some good drives, but consider it a challenge!

Understood but there are 10s of thousands of 7000+ yd courses already on TGC. As somebody who only hits my "good" drives between 230-250 it just wouldn't be that much fun to play that long of a course. I don't need to hit a 215 yd drive in the rough and leave myself 260 to the green on a par 4. The long hitters have plenty of options so I love finding new courses that are geared to the simulator crowd. The main thing I'm seeing though are many of the ProTee courses are between 6100-6250 yds. There seems to be a gap in the 6300-6600 yd courses.

Any chance in the future that when designing a course there will be the option to set Black, Blue, White and Red tees? Or else perhaps using a formula to determine where the tees should be. Seems like you could do a simple percentage of the hole length and get pretty realistic distances.

Black - 100%, Blue - 95%, White - 90% and Red - 80%
Black - 7200, Blue - 6840, White - 6480 and Red - 5760

Then when most of the courses are designed for the console/PC group with real long yardages all the simulator people can play the exact same course with their desired distances. It would work well for placement of fairway hazards too since everything is percentage based. Just a thought.

[ks-man]

But people like playing the same courses, especially the famous real courses. Truthfully if a hold is 40 yards long with an expected carry of 240 there isn't much of a reason that it can't be redone at 90%. Now a 423 yard hole with an expected 216 carry is pretty similar. The other option (which is more similar to real life) is you can simply subtract certain amounts from the tee shots depending on the length of the hole however a simple percentage would be easier.

The problem with playing different courses is that many people want to play the famous real courses. There are so many championship courses out there that we would all love to take a shot at. However playing them at 7400 yards won't be that much fun for people who struggle to hit a 200 yard drive.

[haysuess]

Hopefully they can figure out a way to make this happen. The problem with simply shortening holes is that it changes the playability of the course.

A dogleg hole with a 50 yard closer teebox might mean you can take a shortcut that is unfair. Or it might do the opposite and make it harder, because in real life the tee boxes are not all just lined up front to back. Sometimes they are 25 yards to the left or right, and farther out.

Something is better than nothing, but the percentage solution would just be a bandaid. Plus, it would be infinitely easier if you just added a 1.25x boost to your Driver, then the rest of your clubs could play as usual.

Now that I think about it, that's probably what they'll do. Instead of dealing with course changes and teeboxes for tens of thousands of courses, it would make much more sense to simply boost your distance (which from what I remember, is already going to be implemented in the initial release).

[ks-man]

I doubt many simulator players would accept a 1.25x boost on a driver or any club. The point of the simulator experience is to replicate as best as possible what it is like on a real course. Bombing drives 300 yards would take you out of the experience. I've played many major championship courses despite only being a 16 handicap and not a long hitter. I don't tee it up from the tips and then move my ball forward after seeing where my drive landed which is essentially equivalent of using a power boost. Thankfully there are a number of courses that are in the 6200-6500 range including Augusta and Pebble. My comment was mainly that with what I believe would be a reasonably simple solution (even if it is a band-aid) brings a lot more of the courses into play without turning us into an unrealistic superman.

[MrHogan]

So u can't play yer missus or ur kids? Everyone tees from same tee? Pffff

[m3w]

The only problem with implementing that later is the fact that 80,000+ courses are now obsolete, and have to be redone to include multiple tee decks.

[haysuess]

I don't see why they'd be obsolete. The current tees would remain the "championship" tees, and any added tees would be moved forward.

I'm sure it presents some technical issues, but they could be overcome. To me it's not a big deal, but I can understand why some people would want it.

Do other simulators have multiple tee boxes?

[haysuess]

One thing I mentioned in another comment, that I remember reading about, is that you can easily boost stats of individual clubs (or all clubs), so you could set your kids power to 1.5x or something to make things more equal. They'll probably just stick with that method for people who want to play shorter courses.

[Joko]

Eat my shorts skygolf. Release the kraken.

[Ironstrokes]

Yea skygolf/skytrak, are we talking days, weeks or months here, if it's the latter then it'll suck but so be it, just getting tired of being hopefully that this is the day everyday for the last like 2 months. At least if we know it's months away we can shut down our hopes and dreams here for a bit haha. Any luck finding any more info on your part bubba? Definitely appreciate the info you've been able to give us about the software and all thus far as well

[longhornlove]

Seems the natives are getting restless. Myself included. Bought all the parts for my PC in March. Just built it two weeks ago. Didn't really get anxious until then but was thinking a few days away then...................now we wait.......................more.

[Bubba22]

I just checked again with Skygolf folks and they told me that TGC will be available in mid Oct. Let's hope this is true!

[haysuess]

If not, you might want to join witness protection, LOL. If you're real name is indeed Bubba22...

[Ironstrokes]

Ah sweet! Thanks for the Intel bubba! As always, I'm not gonna get too excited until I see it but always good to see rough estimate in the meantime. It gets me to the next point in waiting at least. When we have no word at all it just feels like it's never gonna happen. Thanks again

[JohnMeyer]

Only thing I can see holding this up is if there are any concerns with the PC app side of things. Seems some are still having connections issues, wouldve thought they'd want that all stable before releasing Sim options, particularly as its all gotta be backend license checks etc. Be great if there was a demo too. 14 day trial or something would be good.

[luv2golf]

ks-man there are plenty of 7100 yard courses in real life. Agreed that you will need to hit some good drives, but consider it a challenge!

Yes, understand everyone that you CAN'T change the tee's. If it's 7,100............your playing every yard.

[haysuess]

You will be able to boost your clubs, individually, or as a set, so you could simply boost your driver by 1.25x and play the rest normally, or boost everything by 1.1x as well. It's a much easier solution than creating extra sets of tees for tens of thousands of courses.

They could even add a multiplier/divider to the listed yardage of the course. So if you boost your clubs 1.1x, the listed yardage shows as .9x or something. That way the distances would seemingly be listed 'normally', so you could still hit the expected club.

I hope that makes sense.

[luv2golf]

So u can't play yer missus or ur kids? Everyone tees from same tee? Pffff

Hey MrHogan, I agree 100%. It's a fail that you can't have different tee boxes or adjust the course yardage. I'm not going to beat myself up at 7,000 + yards. Even when I travel and play tour courses, I stick around 6,500 to 6,800. The only course I've played over 7,000 was Chambers Bay last year........you could putt the ball 100 yards that course is so fast.

[mthunt]

TGC is first and foremost, a video game. Everyone in the game hits it the same length. I'd be shocked if they ever come out with different tee options. It's a long shot. If they do, great, if not, I'll live.

There's lots of selections at every length now.

[MrHogan]

Maybe they shouldn't charge simulator money for it then and charge video game money?

[Bruce]

if you can't afford it, don't buy it. Play the range or get the $100/year WGT 20 course pack.
I drive a Prius, just because I can't afford a Bentley and I'm very happy with it.

[MrHogan]

my comment is lost here obviously, it was in response to the first and foremost its a video game...
its tongue in cheek

[MrHogan]

Bruce - you should drive a Pruis because you want to save the planet regardless of whether you can afford a Bentley.

[ProTee United]

Massara Golf Club.

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Hi guys, sorry I haven't been to this thread in awhile. As far as the integration goes, things are definitely working. However, TGC is waiting on a new & improved SDK from us prior to release. I'm not going to, nor can I give a date for release, but I can tell you that they will receive what they need from us later this week and it should be fairly plug-and-play. It's just business after that.

[ryanoneill1]

What does SDK mean?

[mthunt]

Software Development Kit