OptiShot 2 Golf Simulator review

OptiShot 2 Golf simulator

MSRP $499.00

“For the hobbyist watching the dollars, Optishot does a decent job of recreating links.”

Avg

Excellent for shot shaping and iron conditioning
A wide selection of detailed well-known courses
Multiple game modes and reliable online play
A seemingly indestructible structure

Against

Technical limitations mask mistakes in your swing
The short game is unreliable
A lot of additional equipment is required. And additional courses? $30 each

For a low-tech game that involves a club, a ball and a walk in the sun, golf simulators are getting advanced really fast. The Optishot 2 is a far cry from the technology found in advanced training tools with military Doppler radar systems like the Trackman — which runs up to $19,000. Priced at $499, it forgoes the kaleidoscope of microwaves in favor of simplified tracking software built into two grounded rows of 48MHz infrared sensors that fire thousands of pulses per second.

This means that the Optishot 2 will tell you a few basic things: swing speed, club trajectory, face angle, estimated face contact and resulting shot shape, all within a few degrees. This results in an accurate simulation of golf, but its technical limitations lead to a certain degree of arcade forgiveness.

Scratch golfers trying to work on the finer points of their game—those looking to identify subtle changes in ball flight caused by equipment effect or inconsistent angle of attack—may find it too limited to be helpful. For the rest of us, the Optishot 2 has proven to be the ideal low-cost practice tool for solving problems in the golf game. But there are some areas where it falls short compared to its more advanced and more expensive competition.

Preparation for greenery

Dressed in our best golf attire, with Arnold Palmers in the mix and ready, we pulled the Optishot 2 out of the box – and paused in exasperation. The Optishot 2 costs $499, but you’ll need significantly more hardware out of the box to get going.

The product comes with an infrared optical swing pad – a t-shirt pad with two strips of infrared sensors – two foam balls, two plastic t-shirts, a 10-foot USB cable and software. You’ll also need a PC or Mac to run the software, a display device (such as a TV, monitor, or projection screen), golf clubs, of course, and enough indoor space to allow for a full golf swing. The manufacturer recommends at least 8 and a half feet; we recommend more than 10 feet.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

In addition, you’ll probably want a practice net, real golf balls or extra foam balls (alternatively, you can “hit” shots without a ball on that), and a grass hitting surface to keep your feet level with the device.

For our review model, we purchased a third-party mesh and turf pad. We ran the software on a Mac Mini and used a Viewsonic PJD-7820HD projector that displayed the course on a screen behind our network. All in all, it’s an efficient setup reminiscent of the golf simulators you can find at big retailers like Golfsmith, albeit with less data. But it also bumped up the $500 starting price by several hundred dollars, and that’s not even including the Mac Mini and the projector.

Optishot 2 includes 15 replica courses (with names like Long Island Black as a litigation-protected representation of Bethpage) right out of the box. You can download additional “Platinum” courses for $30 each, so be prepared to pay a bit more if you want to virtually experience the Old Course in St. Andrews. During The Players Championship, we noticed the addition of a free but usually platinum course called Ponte Vedra, a replica of TPC Sawgrass.

Construction

Perhaps the Optishot 2’s most impressive feature is its seemingly indestructible construction. When it first arrived at our office, some testers cautiously approached it and swung it around so as not to break any parts. Then we realized: this is a black box golf simulator.

As far as the Optishot 2 is concerned, your ball flight will be clean.

Multiple members of the Digital Trends staff have complained about the Optishot 2 (almost always by accident). Every piece of hardware took direct hits with swing speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour, with little more than a loud pop from each impact. The device showed no signs of scratches, dents, broken sensors or other wear and tear. It seemed pristine as if it had just been taken out of the box.

The Optishot 2 comes with a 180-day warranty in case you’re worried about damage. Our experience suggests that there isn’t much to worry about wearing out your devices with repeated iron hits.

Courses

Another advantage of Optishot 2 is its wide range of replica tracks. Whether you’re on the TPC Sawgrass replica greens or the fenced bunkers of the Old Course, you’ll instantly recognize familiar locations. Birds chirp in the distance and crickets chirp, and the ambient sounds of wildlife vary by location. All this combined provides a peaceful environment for golf.

You also have the option to adjust the weather settings. Adjust the wind from non-existent to strong whipping and choose the direction you want or change it on the fly mid-round. Weather options include clear sky, cloudy or foggy. We’d love to see rainy or frosty as options, but given the physics changes it’s understandable that the developers left them out. You can also change the fairway and green speeds.

Among the various styles of play you can choose from – including match play, better ball, stroke play, best ball, stableford, skins and alternative shot – you can also play from a variety of tees, including “par 3” tees that are placed on greens accessible to all 18 holes of a designated course. It’s an ingenious way to play a quick round.

The ups and downs of playing

The Optishot 2 is primarily a game for fun or conditioning the iron, so the inclusion of a short game is useful. But when it comes to your short game or as a method of learning the very basics – or advanced aspects – of the golf swing, the simulator shows its weaknesses.

You can tip the ball, hit it, hit it fat, or find a dozen other ways to screw up golf.

The device has no idea how you hit the ball other than the angle of the face, the path and speed of your club, and whether you made contact with your heel, middle or toe. In other words, this is not an ideal aid for practicing forehands, flop shots and other technical shots. Swing the ball at an absurdly steep angle, but instead of resulting in a low impact, the virtual ball will fly off the clubface in an ideal trajectory and land lightly on the green. Alternatively, you can tip the ball, hit it, hit it thick, or find a dozen other ways to screw up a golf shot. As far as the Optishot 2 is concerned, your ball will fly clean and true.

In other words, there is an element of human awareness of your mistakes – and Optishot 2 assumes you know when you make those mistakes.

The simulated ball is also much lighter than a standard golf ball. I tried to break the ball with an extreme inside-out trajectory and an open clubface — something I unfortunately did on occasion, only to find my ball sailing over the next two adjacent fairways. The Optishot 2’s worst penalty for such an incredibly damaging shot is a cut to the far right of the current hole. Still a punishment, but still mild.

Depending on usage, this can be a positive. As a recreational game for golfers of various skill levels, it is ideal. Someone with almost no golf experience can compete with a handicap of 10 and have a good time. Optishot 2 doesn’t care if the newcomer hits red burners; will get PGA quality ball flight.

Even so, with a little understanding of your golf swing, you’ll know if you’ve hit a clean shot. Firm contact with the included foam balls feels clean and gives a pleasant popping sound. And the grip feels like a grip, regardless of how Optishot’s software registers the hit.

If you’re considering an Optishot 2 for your chip game, use your yard instead.

The device is almost flawless when it comes to trajectory and face angle, where the manufacturer claims the margins of error are very low. The company is right. My misses are usually blocks, and similar to my time on the course, this was my miss on the Optishot 2. My preferred shot is a slight draw, also accurately represented here.

However, the short game is a wildcard. In real life, the short game relies on a wide variety of strokes and methods, including opening and closing the bench to varying degrees to raise or lower the trajectory. Optishot 2 didn’t seem to understand when the bench was set for a lob, or the difference between a throw and a chip. He treated every short shot as the same. The software also made it possible to grip the greens like glue regardless of the lie or type of shot. Executing proper running and jogging is almost impossible.

You can change the trajectory of your shot with five different settings – high, medium high, medium, medium low and low – but it didn’t drastically change the treatment of the different short shots from the game. In other words, if you’re considering the Optishot 2 for a chip game, use your backyard instead.

Putting is also a challenge. The hardware doesn’t seem built for the extremely demanding nature of such a shot. However, you can adjust the game settings to allow gimmies from any range, something our staff prefers.

We couldn’t use the driver with the device due to some hanging lights in our test area about ten feet off the ground, so we can’t speak to the accuracy of the device with those clubs. However, the Optishot 2 allows you to designate any iron of your choice as a driver – or any club as a second club – which allowed us to play from any set of tennis shoes on the virtual courts.

Optishot live

Optishot Live is the online component of the software and is effective for entering a match against other Optishot owners.

You can create a game or join a game – with rules set by the creator – and then play golf as you normally would. Everyone within the game plays independently, and you don’t watch your competition’s shots, but you can vaguely see their performance via a marker in the bottom corner that shows their current hole and shot, and whether that shot landed in the rough, green, sand, or elsewhere. You can also chat through the same frame.

This allows you to play at your own pace, with one player on hole 5 while the other is on hole 3, for example. The scoreboard is updated in real time, allowing you to see how your competition is doing.

Some players seem to have given up hope and the game in the middle of a round, and the somewhat blurry view of other players’ efforts made the online rounds with strangers a bit shallow, but it’s better than the alternative of playing alone if you’re itching to compete.

Conclusion

The Optishot 2 tries to recreate the three-dimensional precision game using two rows of ground-based sensors – and ends up doing an admirable job. It won’t replace your local driving range, but as a tool to improve your shot shaping or iron game conditioning, it does a phenomenal job for the price. However, it falls short when it comes to the short game due to its technical limitations.

The Optishot 2 doesn’t pretend to be a cheap Trackman, though; it does what it claims to do, and it does it well. Those short on practice time and those who spend winters in snowy climates will likely get the most out of the Optishot 2. For less than the cost of a set of clubs, you can play virtual golf year-round by simply walking into the next room of your house. That alone seems worth the price of admission.

Tall

Excellent for shot shaping and iron conditioning
A wide selection of detailed well-known courses
Multiple game modes and reliable online play
A seemingly indestructible structure

Falls

Technical limitations mask mistakes in your swing
The short game is unreliable
A lot of additional equipment is required. And additional courses? $30 each

Editor’s recommendations

Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn