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?

[Dax]

1) No. Go for AMD if this gives you budget to get a better graphics card.
2) We strongly recommend Nvidia. More stable.

GTX970 4GB is a really good card. Runs very well.... or something even better/faster if you can afford it.

Just an FYI, but I believe they have found the 970 to be more like 3.5 GB. But in my opinion this does not really change anything as it is a great card.

[goodmatt78]

Well, I screwed the pouch on this on. The 35% discount on the HP envy isn't available today (I should have pulled the trigger yesterday)....down to 20% off. For this price, I am looking at ABS options on newegg. Now I might as well wait for black friday or cyber monday and see what pops up.

[goodmatt78]

"Holiday30" is back and valid today on for the HP Envy 750 SE w/ GTX 970 on www.store.hp.com. I just picked on up with i7 6700K, 256 SSD, 1TB HDD, GTX 970 and wireless keyboard and mouse for 1K Plus tax.

[elibott]

What a fantastic deal from HP. I just pulled the trigger on it. Now I don't have to go through the hassell of building my computer.

[TorchRedRob]

As another option, newegg has some good deals right now. I'm considering pulling the trigger tomorrow on the following build for $1155 (after rebates):

i7 4790K
MSI Gaming 5 motherboard
G.Skill Ripjaws 8 GB DDR 2400
EVGA GTX970 Gaming ACX2.0+
Rosewill Blackhawk case
Corsair 750W 80+ Gold certified
Intel 535 240GB SSD
Corsair H50 Liquid Cooler
Windows 10 Home

For reference, the HP 850qe is also about $1160 for a similar liquid-cooled setup (it has 16GB instead of 8GB)

For an extra $150-ish over the hp 750se or xt, you can build a really good custom rig right now.

[goodmatt78]

What makes you say this is isn't better?

HP ENVY 750se Desktop PC
Product number: P5Q80AV#ABA

•Microsoft Office Trial
•No Additional Security Software
•Home and Home Office Insert
•HP Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
•7-in-1 Media Card Reader, 4 USB Ports (Top), Audio [Top 2USB2.0, 2USB3.0]
•Integrated Sound
•12GB DDR4-2133 DIMM (1x8GB+1x4GB) RAM
•256GB SATA 2.5 TLC Solid State Drive
•1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6G 3.5 2nd HDD
•SuperMulti DVD Burner
•500W Power supply
•HP Wireless 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 1x1 with Bluetooth M.2 NIC (Stone Peak 1)
•4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 [DL DVI-I, HDMI, DP, DP, DP]
•6th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K processor quad-core [4.0GHz, 8MB Shared Cache]
•Windows 7 Professional 64
Processing
Estimated ship date:
December 11, 2015 1 $1,026.19

I was also looking at an ABS with i7 4790k and gtx980 for 1200 on new egg. This one (hp) I added in goodies and saved 200.

[avantix]

Very comparable. Difference would be motherboard and overclocking ability as well as possibly flavor of the video card. Not sure what video card variant and clock speed HP will be using in their systems. The 4790k and 6700k are almost neck in neck in performance although the 4790k has been around longer.At the end of the day the Gaming 5 motherboard with its Z97 chipset would edge out the 6700k's motherboard. Big box builders use very vanilla motherboards with no bells and whistles. Lastly 500W is juuuuust enough to power that config. If you start playing around with overclocking which is quite fun you may start to experience problems when video and cpu draw more wattage. For me the case cooling configuration and the option to go gold or platinum power delivery were the deciding factors. I've been installing HP, Dell and Lenovo/IBM for 20 years, they are good office systems but not really gamer material. Still at that price with that config it's very tempting.

[avantix]

I have almost the exact system as TorchRedRob and it's blazing fast. In my opinion the Z97 chipset MSI gaming 5 is far superior to the HP motherboard in the Envy and the 4790K in conjunction with the MSI OC Genie push button and walk away overclocking system should easily outperform the latter. Also, a mid tower case can push/pull much more air when you add 4-5 cheap 120mm case fans whereas you are severely limited with Dell and HP cases. I'd be interested to know what variant of the GTX970 is used in the HP system. I will say though that the HP deal last week with the 980ti card for just a little over 1k was smoking hot and almost impossible to beat.

Just finished building:

4790k i7 processor
MSI Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard
16gb Kingston fury 1866
500gb Samsung Evo SSD
Asus Strix GTX970
Coolermaster EVO 212 heat sink
750W Rosewill gold rated mod PS
Corsair Carbide spec 02 case
6x 120mm (4 push 2 pull) case fans

[goodmatt78]

Gonna cancel my HP order...just found this (i7 4790K + GTX 980) plus another 25 bucks off via a visa checkout promo code:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...em=83-102-075R

[TorchRedRob]

That's one heck of a deal. Nice find.

[guaava23]

It's out of stock. Was a good deal.

[goodmatt78]

I think I got the last one.

[goodmatt78]

OK....I can probably help another ST owner out if they want. I actually called HP to cancel my order and they offered me another $100 off not to cancel. They also gave me until Jan 15 to return with HP paying return shipping and no restocking fee. So, I now have both the HP and ABS coming. If anyone on here is looking for a PC, hit me up. I will either return the HP or I could sell it to a member here since the deal I got is no longer available. I would just want my costs covered plus actual shipping to you. Let me know if there is any interest...

[TorchRedRob]

I wonder if one were to buy the TGC software from ProTee, could a home-brewed interface be written to make it work, or would one need the SDK from SkyTrak? The parameters look pretty simple on the interface, but I'm no programmer. Getting tired of waiting on TGC to be "official" when in all of the other threads, it's like "ST chipping works great in TGC," and "putting is fine with the ST and TGC."

Given that there are over 1000 responses to this thread (including comments, I guess), you would think that this would be the first to be released. I'm not sure of the SkyGolf revenue model as it pertains to the order of the simulator releases, but it certainly seems that a vast majority are waiting on TGC or PG.

[davray666]

With the GC2 that calculates everything internally in the unit it's doable by just reading the data it provides and pas that on to the sim. That will not work with ST because all you get there is 2 images of the ball. You would have to write all the vision processing software and reverse engineer a few other things.
So yes you need the ST SDK.

[TorchRedRob]

With the GC2 that calculates everything internally in the unit it's doable by just reading the data it provides and pas that on to the sim. That will not work with ST because all you get there is 2 images of the ball. You would have to write all the vision processing software and reverse engineer a few other things.
So yes you need the ST SDK.

Figured as much. I guess I conveniently forgot that the images were all that was getting tossed out of the rapsodo box. Thanks for the clarification, davray! (Although it would be a cool project to come up with a home-brewed processing algorithm once you snag the images.)

[luv2golf]

Or skygolf can just release TGC and be done with it. At this time, it doesn't matter who, I just want to play some sim golf.

[arwin]

Is it worth it to get a 980 card over a 970 for $246 CAD ($180 USD)?

I'm debating over these 2 cards:

970 - http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX53934

980 - http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX55558

The 970 is only $20 but the 980 is $200 off

[voodoo_ca]

How about less on Amazon?

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-CLASSIFIED-Graphics-04G-P4-3988-KR/dp/B00R59FEA0

Crap - Sorry - I thought that you were looking at American pricing... disregard.

[mthunt]

I have the 970 and run pretty high settings with no issues but it's (980) a better card and if money isn't tight you won't regret buying it.

[arwin]

My local store has this on sale right now:

It's a pre-built machine for $1,599.99 (roughly $1,176 USD)
Wish I could've jumped on those US deals but I couldn't because I live in Canada! doh.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX60362

Intel® Core™ i7-4790K (4.00 GHz) Quad-Core Unlocked Processor

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler

ASUS Z97-A/USB 3.1 ATX Motherboard

ASUS Ge-Force GTX 970 Turbo OC 4GB Graphics Card

HyperX Fury 16GB DDR3 1600MHz Memory (2x 8GB)

SanDisk Ultra II Series Solid State Drive, 240GB

24x DVD-RW Drive

Network Adapter Card: 802.11 b/g/n, 300 Mbps

Thermaltake Commander G41 Mid Tower Chassis, Black

Thermaltake 650W Smart Power Supply w/ 12Vdc 52A Rail

Windows® 10 Home, 64 bit

1 Year Parts & Labour