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Optishot Simulator Review

Great review JB and you came away with the results I was expecting. Even with its flaws if I had somewhere in my house where I could use this I would buy it. Ceilings are just not high enough so maybe in the next house.
 
might seem like a silly question but here goes;
How loud was it when you hit the pad, was it a loud hard plastic Whack!!! or a muted sound like hitting off a mat? Hate to drive the rest of the house mad with whack! whack! whack! every few seconds...
 
JNRadio said:
might seem like a silly question but here goes;
How loud was it when you hit the pad, was it a loud hard plastic Whack!!! or a muted sound like hitting off a mat? Hate to drive the rest of the house mad with whack! whack! whack! every few seconds...
Click to expand...

Combination of the two. Not as loud as hitting off of plastic, but louder than hitting on a mat with a foam bottom. I would not say it was painfully loud though.
 
JNRadio said:
might seem like a silly question but here goes;
How loud was it when you hit the pad, was it a loud hard plastic Whack!!! or a muted sound like hitting off a mat? Hate to drive the rest of the house mad with whack! whack! whack! every few seconds...
Click to expand...

JB said:
Combination of the two. Not as loud as hitting off of plastic, but louder than hitting on a mat with a foam bottom. I would not say it was painfully loud though.
Click to expand...

As someone who was in the other room at times when he was using the OptiShot I can say that it's not terribly loud. I noticed the noise but it wasn't bothersome to me at all.
 
couldbeu said:
JB- it sounds like full shots the ball speed was off... but what about shorter shots with wedges... 125 yrds and in?
Click to expand...

Depends on the type of ballstriker you are in my opinion. If you take divots with your swings, we found some issues with distances in all shots. Not as bad as we got closer, but still not real accurate in terms of ball speed. If you are more of a sweeper/picker, the issues might not be that far off with the shorter irons.
 
I'm definitely a sweeper, shallow divots even with wedges, unless I'm trying to get a little extra spin. I'd love to give it a try... If I could use it to "accurately" practice wedge shots that would be a bonus.
 
I have two questions for you JB. How was putting?

My ten year old takes canyon-like divots, with very limited club head control. How well do you think it would hold up to a beating?
 
mdbuschsr said:
I have two questions for you JB. How was putting?

My ten year old takes canyon-like divots, with very limited club head control. How well do you think it would hold up to a beating?
Click to expand...

Putting was just like the rest in that it was good, not great. You can also set it to 2 putt. I am not sure about how it will hold up as we only had the device for 30 days. But I take a good size divot and it seemed to work okay.
 
Gamma said:
Any input on whether it detects fat and thin shots?
Click to expand...

Im not sure its accurate in that aspect. Thin seems to be shown as fairly okay is coming square. Fat will come up shorter like any swing that hits the mat.
 
Thanks for the great review JB !!

Bummer....I am really disappointed in the accuracy on this unit.
I was really looking forward to picking this up in the very near future, but now....no way.
Not until they improve the accuracy.

Thanks again !
 
looks really neat...but dark room? high ceiling? $400? 3 friends? .... :dohanim:
 
A buddy of mine just got one of these this Christmas, I will post his thoughts when he gets a chance to break it in.
 
The high ceilings alone would keep me from getting this. I wouldn't want to take a chance with my irons, let alone my woods! The accuracy is disappointing, though not totally surprising. Would have liked it to be more accurate than it is, however. If I found one of these for half the price somewhere (ebay, Amazon), I might get it if I had somewhere to use it!
 
Thanks for the review JB.

For better or worse I have to consider the accuracy, the need for tall ceilings, the room light issues and the price and bounce that off of going to the heated bay range. Fortunately I have access to one. That is the problem in my case. $400.00 buys lots of buckets of balls, enough to get through the winter and then some. I really don't value things like course selection and playing a simulated round as that important in my case. I need to hit the ball in the winter and keep my swing from falling apart. From the sound of it at least for me it would either have to be about twice the unit it is at that price point of half the price it is now at what looks like current performance levels. That is likely unrealistic based on the current state of the technology. I suspect i would have more interest if i did not have access to heated bay ranges.
 
Hey JB,

Thanks for the review, Would you buy one after the testing you did?
thanks
 
I bought the Optishot back in the middle of December and FINALLY just got my garage-mahal setup finished on Thursday. I read JB's review and it was excellent. I pretty much had a lot of the results/problems that he did in his review. Some of which I was able to fix or improve, others I wasn't. But, for what it's worth here is my experience so far...

Setup: Super easy provided your computer has the recommended specs.

Durability: It looks/feels like it can take a pretty good beating. No signs of wear yet, after a few hours of heavy use from me and my aggressive swinging five year old. :D

Accuracy: There are three factors that I found that greatly affect the accuracy of this thing and in order they are lighting, alignment, and the type of ball setting. If any of them are off it's not going to be pretty.

Lighting: The first time that I took this thing out of the box and hooked it up I did some quick testing by passing a severely closed or open face across it with a PW and it was off... WAY off. A completely shut down face was showing up as 4.0* open and slightly open was just ridiculous. It turns out this thing needs light, but only certain kinds. I did the same test in my basement under some fluorescent bulbs and no other light and it was dead on. So in the end I have a compact fluorescent flood light shining down directly on the sensors and that seems to be money. I found that with any regular incandescent, halogen, or light from the sun hitting the unit that accuracy was lost.

Alignment: Golf is a game of degrees and if the unit shifts 3* to the right while you keep your same setup you can go from a slight in to out swing and a square face to very out to in and an open face very easily. Keeping the unit straight is important.

Ball Type: This one suprised me... I know that I swing my 8i around 83-85mph, so when I could finally take a swat at a real ball on this thing I was surprised to see a swing speed of around 75. I probably take an average divot, but even when I made sure not to take one at all I was getting similar results. I was going to bump up the settings to account for the swing speed difference when I realized I still had it set to foam ball. I switched it to real ball and then what do you know... 85mph. It evidently is doing a calculation for ball resistance so make sure that it is set for what you are hitting.


Clubs: For all of my irons the sensors pick everything up surprisingly well. Unfortunately my woods and hybrid don't work so good. Probably because they are all basically black. I have got around this by using my 4i for all clubs 4 and up. It works, but it's not as cool. I read somewhere that Dancin' Dogg has a driver designed to work with their system, and that if your driver doesn't work that they will send you theirs at no charge... need to look into that as if that is true I am going to need one.

Misc. stuff:

The unit doesn't sense attack angle. There is an option to set your ball flight from very high to very low to make it more accurate for your ball flight though.

The unit doesn't sense fat/thin shots. Fat shots are somewhat replicated due to decreased club head speed, but thin shots will show up as a regularly struck ball.

Make sure that you have it set correctly for left/right handed. Otherwise it'll do some strange things.

The unit for me has been pretty accurate when it comes to path, clubface contact (heel/toe) and speed. When I hit a big hook, I see a big hook. If I hit a hard cut, it'll cut. It's got some wiggle room towards the center, but all monitors do. I will see the occasional shot that doesn't make sense, but they are pretty few and far between and you can always mulligan it. :D To me, with the irons it reacts about the same as the GG hitting bay, and the ability to hit real balls in an 8 ball battle royale to see which one gets the honor of being in the bag this spring while there is 10in of snow outside is pretty freaking cool. :dance:

I haven't putted yet (too excited to hit balls) but I will check back in after I do.
 
Smallville said:
The high ceilings alone would keep me from getting this. I wouldn't want to take a chance with my irons, let alone my woods! The accuracy is disappointing, though not totally surprising. Would have liked it to be more accurate than it is, however. If I found one of these for half the price somewhere (ebay, Amazon), I might get it if I had somewhere to use it!
Click to expand...

Totally agree Smalls. I saw the commercial for this on GC last night and if I hadn't read JBs review and had the accuracy issues in my head this woulda been one if those 'must have it now' items


Tapatalk, it's not for everyone
 
WicketMike said:
Hey JB,

Thanks for the review, Would you buy one after the testing you did?
thanks
Click to expand...

No I would not. I think they are getting there, and the accuracy was better than a Tiger Woods video game, but it was still not there. Comparing the accuracy to other tools that we have at our disposal showed just how off they really are. While some swings worked okay, others did not and when you factor in other certain elements such as divots, offset, etc... and I just felt as though the device has a little way to go first.
 
jag33 said:
I bought the Optishot back in the middle of December and FINALLY just got my garage-mahal setup finished on Thursday. I read JB's review and it was excellent. I pretty much had a lot of the results/problems that he did in his review. Some of which I was able to fix or improve, others I wasn't. But, for what it's worth here is my experience so far...

Setup: Super easy provided your computer has the recommended specs.

Durability: It looks/feels like it can take a pretty good beating. No signs of wear yet, after a few hours of heavy use from me and my aggressive swinging five year old. :D

Accuracy: There are three factors that I found that greatly affect the accuracy of this thing and in order they are lighting, alignment, and the type of ball setting. If any of them are off it's not going to be pretty.

Lighting: The first time that I took this thing out of the box and hooked it up I did some quick testing by passing a severely closed or open face across it with a PW and it was off... WAY off. A completely shut down face was showing up as 4.0* open and slightly open was just ridiculous. It turns out this thing needs light, but only certain kinds. I did the same test in my basement under some fluorescent bulbs and no other light and it was dead on. So in the end I have a compact fluorescent flood light shining down directly on the sensors and that seems to be money. I found that with any regular incandescent, halogen, or light from the sun hitting the unit that accuracy was lost.

Alignment: Golf is a game of degrees and if the unit shifts 3* to the right while you keep your same setup you can go from a slight in to out swing and a square face to very out to in and an open face very easily. Keeping the unit straight is important.

Ball Type: This one suprised me... I know that I swing my 8i around 83-85mph, so when I could finally take a swat at a real ball on this thing I was surprised to see a swing speed of around 75. I probably take an average divot, but even when I made sure not to take one at all I was getting similar results. I was going to bump up the settings to account for the swing speed difference when I realized I still had it set to foam ball. I switched it to real ball and then what do you know... 85mph. It evidently is doing a calculation for ball resistance so make sure that it is set for what you are hitting.


Clubs: For all of my irons the sensors pick everything up surprisingly well. Unfortunately my woods and hybrid don't work so good. Probably because they are all basically black. I have got around this by using my 4i for all clubs 4 and up. It works, but it's not as cool. I read somewhere that Dancin' Dogg has a driver designed to work with their system, and that if your driver doesn't work that they will send you theirs at no charge... need to look into that as if that is true I am going to need one.

Misc. stuff:

The unit doesn't sense attack angle. There is an option to set your ball flight from very high to very low to make it more accurate for your ball flight though.

The unit doesn't sense fat/thin shots. Fat shots are somewhat replicated due to decreased club head speed, but thin shots will show up as a regularly struck ball.

Make sure that you have it set correctly for left/right handed. Otherwise it'll do some strange things.

The unit for me has been pretty accurate when it comes to path, clubface contact (heel/toe) and speed. When I hit a big hook, I see a big hook. If I hit a hard cut, it'll cut. It's got some wiggle room towards the center, but all monitors do. I will see the occasional shot that doesn't make sense, but they are pretty few and far between and you can always mulligan it. :D To me, with the irons it reacts about the same as the GG hitting bay, and the ability to hit real balls in an 8 ball battle royale to see which one gets the honor of being in the bag this spring while there is 10in of snow outside is pretty freaking cool. :dance:

I haven't putted yet (too excited to hit balls) but I will check back in after I do.
Click to expand...

great info
 
Well I finally putted for two rounds with the optishot last night and it was, well... kinda what I expected. Not too impressive. I have to echo JB's comments in that it is pretty much like any other putting simulator, good but not great.

I had to set the greens at the slowest speed for it to seem realistic to me, and it still was kinda rough. I finally set up the "gimme within 6ft" rule because I found the short putts more frustrating than the lags.

All in all I think that the putting would be good for practicing distance control on long putts and face angle if you are of the SBST school of putting, but to actually practice true putting with this thing is probably stretching beyond the capabilities of the unit.

On the bright side, the Optishot has continued to be pretty accurate on all iron shots (except thins), and playing a virtual round at a famous golf course while keeping the swing in shape over the winter has been a blast!
 
GolferGal said:
As someone who was in the other room at times when he was using the OptiShot I can say that it's not terribly loud. I noticed the noise but it wasn't bothersome to me at all.
Click to expand...

Seems if I get one of these, I need a girlfriend that plays golf and understands the addiction... I have a training club and mine complains that she can hear the "Swoosh" as the club breaks the air... sigh.
 
Does anyone know what changes they made since the initial launch to make it more accurate or consistent? Did THP get a chance to review a new unit for the newsletter?
 
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