Early thoughts on TGC vs PG

[st_golfer]

Okay, last night I played 5 holes on PG, enough to make an initial impression.

First off, my initial experience was like others, lots of the PG Sim connector crashing. I uninstalled PG, rebooted, and reinstalled PG. Problem solved for me. I recommend anyone having crashing issues do that.

So, after that I dug in and played 5 holes of Bandon (it was way late for me). Immediately you can see where it is way better than TGC in many aspects. It is not perfect (pun intended) yet, but really good for a v1.0 game.

First thing it is better than TGC in is its ability to store multiple local players permanently, and assign each of those players different default tees. This is huge and until TGC deals with this it will never be my first choice for local multiplayer games, period. That is huge for those of us with kids that want to play as a family.

As it pertains to the ball physics, PG is much more realistic in terms of side spin, or at the very least actually matches what you see in the SkyTrak range. I know TGC is aware of this, but it's another thing they need to get dealt with ASAP. I don't hit 300 yard laser straight bombs, but neither do I hit 215 yard banana slices like TGC would have me believe. PG replicates my soft to medium fade as I would expect.

Putting is another area where PG shines over TGC. TGC rolling everything as a 6 on the stimp and having no variation between courses is just plain unrealistic. I am not dropping putts left and right in PG compared to TGC (I did drop 3 from around 10 feet last night, never had that happen in TGC), but the end results are much more like I see on real courses in terms of my putting speeds and leaves.

Now, what are things TGC does that I wish PG would do? I gotta admit, the audio effects in TGC are better. As annoying as the announcer in TGC can be, I got used to him and the absence of that in PG is noticeable. Also I like that TGC integrates the simulator numbers within the game, whereas PG has it in a separate window. Also TGC makes it much easier to preview a shot (that may just be a learning curve with PG but it's a plus to TGC as of now).

There are two things I saw that I am going to report to the people at perfect parallel to look at, both regarding the lateral aiming via the arrow keys. First off on the putting green the initial press of the button will do something totally different than expected. For example I press the right arrow key and the first thing it does is jump a few feet to the left. From there it works fine. The second thing is each time I press the arrow key, the laser light on the skytrak blinks. I've never seen that happen in E6, WGT, or TGC. Not sure if that is an issue or not.

Bottom line, if I could only keep one sim, it would be PG. I'll keep an eye out for updates for TGC which hopefully addresses the issues I stated, but I don't see me playing TGC overmuch for the near future. Some of that is the "shiny new toy" aspect of PG. But some of it is legitimate reasons that I think PG is the superior product already.

[Shardak]

>>First off, my initial experience was like others, lots of the PG Sim connector crashing. I uninstalled PG, rebooted, and reinstalled PG. Problem solved for me. I recommend anyone having crashing issues do that.

Glad its not just me! I couldnt get more than a few shots before a crash.

I re-installed PG, and am happy to report that I have not had a crash since.

[Tekbud]

Great that a reinstall has addressed these issues. I wonder what the root cause is? Did you both have Perfect Golf game installed prior to purchasing? As in, had you been testing the game out for a few weeks etc? Just curious...

As far as PG preview - It's actually very good. Use F3 and it will zoom you into the target. Also, F5 allows you to just free view wherever you'd like. On top of that you can find a view you like and then actually hit the shot and it will follow from there.

[st_golfer]

"Did you both have Perfect Golf game installed prior to purchasing? As in, had you been testing the game out for a few weeks etc? Just curious..."

Yes, I did.

[Shardak]

For you guys that like the graphics in PG better, are you seeing things differently than the attached screenshots?

What I notice here is very low-res grass textures. I dont know if TGC actually models 3d grass (it looks like it does), but PG is just a flat green texture.

The desert hills and brown dirt textures look terrible, like a 15 year old game. And the lighting overall is dull and lifeless. TGC has a very HDR look to it, which is lacking in PG.

TGC is not perfect, but grass and lighting are miles better.

Screenshots taken on Ultra-High settings. Hidden Canyon GC. I am getting 60-80 fps

[st_golfer]

No the golfer is not there in sim play.

[TorchRedRob]

yeah, to me the PG shots are more realistic. HDR always looks fake to me. Cartoon-ish is an accurate description, I think. Either way, I think it's great that the two options exist to fit the eye of the beholder. It's a great time to be into sim golf, no doubt

[FaultyClubs]

I've played PG for a while and definitely agree the desert and dirt textures are weak, grass is better but could be improved. You get used to it though. Neither game is perfect.

[RW76]

At the end of the day I'll most likely get both, I'm holding off on TGC for now as I am running from a laptop and it runs PG great but not TGC. I also like the different tees on PG and to me that is really the main issue.

It's early, but very happy with PG.

[wbond]

Can anyone comment shot to shot time between TGC and PG? Just wondering if one is better than the other?

[V8burble]

I'm a GC2 user and I don't notice any significant delay on shots with either. SkyTrak owners?

[Sledge0001]

About the same. 2-3 seconds before the shot is registered.

[ks-man]

There are two things I saw that I am going to report to the people at perfect parallel to look at, both regarding the lateral aiming via the arrow keys. First off on the putting green the initial press of the button will do something totally different than expected. For example I press the right arrow key and the first thing it does is jump a few feet to the left. From there it works fine. .

I'm surprised this hasn't been fixed. I asked about this a while ago and was told that it works correctly in the public version. It is one of the biggest reasons I don't like PG as much. I prefer using the keyboard to the mouse however that is impossible around the greens.

[FaultyClubs]

I think both TGC and PG are great and in my experience the fun factor high with both.

Both are steadily improving. PG has just completed a big update and TGC has one coming (see: http://golfsimulatorforum.com/forum/...7948#post67948 ). Both companies seem committed to future improvements.

Presently, I could live without PG but couldn't live without TGC mainly due to TGC's courses.

Once PG catches up with the courses then either one would be fine. PG would have to have an outright buy option though, perpetually renting software isn't my cup of tea.

[st_golfer]

Okay so I am backing off on my praise of PG for a bit. Less than 24 hours after the reinstall the crashes are back in force. This is unacceptable having paid real money for it. Will be sending my logs in and hope this gets corrected soon.

[ryanoneill1]

Do you notice the crash on a particular course or all of them? Does it seem to crash at a particular hole on certain courses? I have been testing with Skytrak for months and only had 1-2 crashes. PG is really good about recreating the issue and fixing the code if that is the issue. If you can easily recreate might be worth to test in mouse play to see if it's Skytrak specific logic causes the crash. Might also check the CPU usage during the game on a course that crashes.

[wilson]

Thats a shame to hear, since the first one i had on installing i've played 9 rounds so far and not had a crash.
I've found a bad course out of bounds issue, but nothing that stopped the game running.
Sometimes these things are GFX related to drivers etc. One of the benefits of iPads i reckon.

[TorchRedRob]

Just played Amen corner on PG (with a 6 iron and a foam ball, but it was still pretty awesome!) The course looks well executed. Man, regardless of if you prefer tgc or pg (or get both), this is really cool. When I was drooling on aboutgolf sims in the big box store 10 years ago, I certainly didn't think I'd ever have this technology at this price point in my basement. Good stuff!

[Sleeping_King]

I have been on the verge of pulling the trigger on the HP Envy deal with the gtx 970 or 980 for a few days because I believed I would need it for TGC. However I'm now starting to lean towards PG. I'm not a PC gamer. Would that setup be overkill for PG. if so what would you recommend?

[wilson]

I have a 3 year old i5 16GB and bought an SSD with a nVidia 770 cause it was on sale.
My Par2Pro screen isn't an HD screen so I have no use for such razor sharp trees or even the textures. I played with the PG sliders and anything over 1/2 didn't make a difference to the quality from 9ft where I hit.
So overall I'm pleased I didn't spend a fortune and feel I have great visuals still.
I think it depends so what on how finicky you are overall and the screen type you have (and projector)

[Sledge0001]

Well after 18 holes of Black Swan on Perect Golf here is my take. And yes, I have my flame suit on....

For me the pros with PG are putting and action around the green seem to be much more realistic when compared to TGC. My drives and fairway shots did seem inline with what I would see in the real world with no crazy skyhook drives the entire round. Sand shots seemed a bit easier when are close to the green. I love the mini map feature and how it allows you plan where you want your ball to land. The pace of play was quickened significantly by removing the scorecard at the end of each hole. I only had 2 flop shots not register which seems to be better when compared to my TGC play. I liked the ability of being able to select different Tee boxes as well. I had 0 crashes of the PG app during my round but I did have 1 time where I appeared to have to "re-arm" the Skytrak.

The negatives of PG for me where the graphics. Maxed them out with my 980ti but they are no where near the caliber of TGC. The grass and sand textures where not what I was hoping for. I did find that chipping instead of a long putt from on the green results in a non realistic shank regardless of how good the actual chip / flop shot was. I was not able to keep the putting green floor map (the one that shows the speed and the breaks) after each hole. Resetting this everytime I reached the green was painful. I found that moving the putting direction on the green frequently resulted in an alignment that wasn't anywhere close to the pin/hole which I consider to be a major flaw. The lack of any club or ball related data is a bummer as well. The comet tail tracers on the ball where terrible. I ended up shutting them off. My biggest complaint / frustration with PG is how the ball lands when you hit long shots. It seems as if the ball goes straight for days and then drops left or right in an unrealistic manner. Yes my shots did go left and right but the ball cameras did not do a good job at all at giving a smooth trace of where he ball was headed. The ball roll seemed visually unrealistic however distances did seem to be accurate.

Overall PG seemed more like a video game where TGC seems more of a simulation. Seeing as that I have only had my Skytrak just under a month I have tried WGT, TGC and now PG with the device and my preference is TGC at this point in time. Honestly unless a complete redesign takes place I don't think I'll be renewing my PG subscription for next year.

[Tekbud]

There are green grid options for green only, always on, etc. Also I've never seen a shanked pitch that is odd. I feel quite the reverse pg seems more sim tgc feels more like a video game to me.

[Shardak]

I also wrote a pretty negative review on PG, with the main thing being the bad graphics. I will say that my opinion was based on the first course I played (Hidden Canyon). Since then I have played a few holes on every other available course, and found that the other courses do look much better. Hidden Canyon looks truly terrible!

So there are PG courses that look decent. However the grass textures are just not good in any course I have found, and the ball itself looks poor. So for me the graphics really make putting an unpleasant experience. The green looks like a 10 year old video game. And even though I am getting 60+ fps, the ball just rolls in a choppy way. Its not smooth like a putt in TGC. TGC putting looks and feels so much better, even though TGC greens are all 6 stimp.

Searching PG forums, there is talk of "nvidia-turf" being added at some point. Apparently Nvidia is in some way contributing to the game and may provide 3d-grass. But whether that will actually happen, who knows. There are posts on it going back a long time.

[MainStGolf]

I was gone most of the weekend, so outside of just a couple of range shots yesterday was my first real test of PG. I'm the type of person that gets very comfortable with something and don't take change very easily. So for me I enjoy TGC much more, but a lot of that is due to "my" issue not PG.

That being said . . . I also did not like the way the ball flight was not shown well. When I felt like I hit a draw or something that was fairly straight I was shocked to see it actually turned out to be a fade. As was mentioned previously the voice can be annoying with its limited utterances, but I've become used to it so the silence was painful. The only noise I heard was the ball falling into the cup and it was generally after a double or triple-bogey :-). That did improve over the last 3-4 holes as I got it down to one over on each. I think I pared one hole. I played the Chicago course. Oh wait I also hear my ball hit the wood right before it hit the water on one hole :-).

I echo the graphics. That to me makes PG feel more like a video game. I find TGC at this point to be much more user friendly. I don't like having to grab my mouse to continue to each hole where TGC is the enter button. On the graphics side the sky seemed to be overly bright to the point that I couldn't see the wind direction/speed a number of times. Really forgot to take that into consideration since we don't play with it on TGC (will be glad when that comes back - I actually like playing with it on - I'm in Kansas so I've yet to have a course match what we face here most days)

The ability to play different tees will be very helpful as my son does not need to play the same tees I do right now.

I think a lot of my issues is just not knowing how to maneuver around the software at this point.

I agree also with what is stated that it seems putting and chipping is much more realistic as far as what happens with a ball IRL as far as my game. That may be a huge deal moving forward as that's a big part of the game and having to play one way on TGC and a different way on PG may be too annoying. Not sure at this time.

At this point I'm not regretting the purchase, so that's alway good :-). Just need to spend more time with the software and see what all it can do.

[wilson]

I'm very curious to see how thoughts evolve as the outdoor season progresses. I would think that one or the other will clearly become a favourite of the individual, just due to the different ball flight algorithms that they each use. And how someone perceives their outdoor game during the season will have a bearing on which Sim 'is nothing like' or 'absolutely matches' the nuances of their rounds in real life.
Should be a great case study, as there's not been this many sim'ers in the history of the game (one would assume) to gather this kind of data!

[NKern1102]

Does lighting affect the sensitivity of the laser when it comes to addressing your ball. I can not keep mine green longer than 2 seconds. I am seeing some people with similar issues and then I'm seeing some people having no report of this issue at all. What could be making up the factor causing this for some and not others?

[wilson]

see my comment here:

http://golfsimulatorforum.com/forum/skytrak/67728-introducing-perfect-golf-beta-for-skytrak?p=68237#post68237

[MainStGolf]

Unfortunately my sim game does not reflect my IRL game. I'm much better on the sim than in real life :-(. I think a lot of it is mental, but there are some mechanical differences the biggest being the wedge game. I think my wedge game is pretty darn good on the sim with several hole outs. IRL there are a LOT more chunks and mishits based on the ground/grass combo that I just don't get on the sim. I'll hit my 62 degree all day long on the sim from around the green, but IRL I've had to move more to my 54 to get more consistency. For me distance and ball flight will be the biggest comparison I can make to sim play and putting. I consider myself to be a decent putter.