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PerfectGolf Ground Physics Testing


We've been working hard to complete our 'in game' physics. Take a look inside!
Now we are happy with our 'inflight' ball physics, we have been working hard to incorporate our latest ground physics build into PerfectGolf.

Using a number of easily adjustable variables, we are able to create almost any type of surface material for our virtual balls to interact with. Bounce, Friction, Viscosity, Malleability, and Roll Friction can all be adjusted to create a lifelike experience no matter what type of surface we hit the ball onto.

As opposed to the launch and 'in flight' ball data we have available, the ground physics is much harder to quantify as there is little available data to support the reaction of various types of grass and other surfaces on a golf ball - it's much more of a 'touchy feely' thing!
With so many variables to take into account it's taken a while to get values we are happy with all lengths of shots with different clubs on different surfaces but things are progressing well. From low flying but high spinning wedge shots which skip forward before spinning themselves to a halt or 2 iron 'stingers' which bore through the wind and chase down the fairway, we can now produce all these shots and more in PerfectGolf

Video to follow shortly..
  • Nemesis, Sinewiz, TimBoch and 12 others like this


17 Comments

 

To see a larger version of the video go directly to our Video section of head on over to vimeo by right clicking on the video above and choosing that option.

    • wutzi69, reblmebn, 03111941ms and 3 others like this

Impressive! Minimum-viscosity-maximum-bounce golf promises to be quite a treat...

    • AZWIZ likes this

Impressive! Minimum-viscosity-maximum-bounce golf promises to be quite a treat...

 

Yeah, kind of like Royal Birkdale in a drought :)

    • AZWIZ likes this

Will we be able to set up course conditions to produce the bounces displayed with the driver in this video? It looks great!

    • AZWIZ likes this

It will be interesting to set bunkers with different viscosity for each course so some sand is soft while some sand is firm.

Perhaps a percentage of plugged lies for sand can also be set would be good too?

 

Peter

    • AZWIZ likes this
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Maverick Spirit
Jun 29 2013 11:31 AM

It will be interesting to set bunkers with different viscosity for each course so some sand is soft while some sand is firm.

Perhaps a percentage of plugged lies for sand can also be set would be good too?

 

Peter

Not just physics testing with different sand textures but, various types of rough textures, both landing in the rough and coming out of the rough and landing on different textures.

 

And then of course, the testing needs to incorporate winds of all speeds and directions onto all surfaces. Then add uphill/downhill slopes into the mix and don't forget lie, that also affects the physics. Not to mention fades and draws and weather conditions.

 

Mav

    • AZWIZ likes this

Opening up all the settings in CourseForge really would be a can of worms and I've seen situations in other games where amazing courses didn't get played much simply because the creator set up his physics with the bad settings making their course unpleasant to play.

 

Therefore, it's more likely that we'll decide on a set of defaults with the option to vary them inside of PerfectGolf so you can set the green speeds, rough length, bunker softness etc which will in turn give each individual course much more variety as you get to play it multiple times under very different conditions and at different times of day.

    • Dazmaniac, Unique, Davefevs and 1 other like this

With v1.07 and Links 2003 it was possible for designers to set 'Course Conditions' pre set in the course file, but some worked better than others.

 

I think like MJ says it's the safest bet to keep everything within Course Forge as uniform as possible (using the presets within the Asest Tool) but to allow the user to be able to tweak the settings in Perfect Golf for individual rounds and tournaments.

    • Davefevs and AZWIZ like this

This is going to be AWESOME!,lots better than TWPGATour online.Thank you all for inventing a golf game,that is going to be as close to real life as possible,Cant wait.

    • Erik Lugris and AZWIZ like this
@MJ @daz I think you are both right.....although I quite fancy the idea of being able to set my own course up the way I want, I think we have to let the pre-game settings determine conditions. Otherwise first time players would spend half their round figuring out how the ball will react
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HeavySwinger
Jul 04 2013 06:01 PM

Letting beta testers give feedback on how realistic the ground ball physics seems is fine, but I had hoped that Perfect Parallel could use their connections with ShotLink to get data from real shots by pros under real conditions.  I had also hoped that real grasses would be used as the basis for textures and their corresponding physical characteristics.   That way the course designers would pick what grasses to use for their fairways, rough and greens along with how closely it is mowed and how soft the surface is kept (soil subsurface and watering).  That leaves the weather conditions and type of tournament (open championship vs regular tour vs amateur round) to invoke different course conditions as options for the player or tournament host.  Designers could design their course with options based on tournament type which would vary mowing height and possibly fairway width accordingly.  I know this is a lot to ask, especially for the early versions of perfect golf, but I would hope that the game could evolve around this basic concept or it may be impossible to ever achieve this kind of realism.

    • Erik Lugris and Grindalways like this

It's amazing to me how many things some folks want in setting up player options and course conditions.  How much time do players want to spend going through a chamber of options just to play the game?  How many different conditions can players become acquainted with in order to build on their experience and improve in the game?  I'm sure you guys will figure it out!

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J.H.Buchanan
Aug 09 2013 02:59 AM

Seems just great so far once you get it tweaked for all the different landing types like fairwayrs, greens, rough, cart paths, cement etc. I only noticed a concern when I was hitting into a slopped fairway the ball would roll and roll and barely stop - switching the roll friction setting corrected this but then it made it kind of stop to fast on a level part of the fairway - you know what in real life on a slope it rolls fast then stops at the bottom of the slope but the deep physics of the 3D imagery of this build seems to allow it to roll and roll because it is on a slope which is expected but because it does not roll fast it just takes the ball a long time to finally stop but to have the ball roll significantelly faster on the slope part of a fairway - to fix this may be a headache may even be unfixable but overall a long roll on a fairway that occurs every once in a while would not be an issue it only happened with me a few times in the Alpha Build.

looks real good i hope it wont be to hard to play

i dont mind a game to be a challenge but not

so hard that you cant enjoy it

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HeavySwinger
Aug 09 2013 11:06 PM

Right now I am looking into STIMP meter measurements.  According to Wikipedia, the stimpmeter is designed to roll a ball at 6 feet per second and then measure how far it rolls in feet on level ground.  I think I can do this with the alpha build.  I would like for STIMP readings to be available for each course so conditions could be set to match real life tournaments on that same course.  I would also suggest that course conditions be rated as amateur, pro, open tournament and major tournament or something along those lines so that those playing realize what level of difficulty they are encountering.

I really like the concrete effect. Be fun, if that could be incorporated into the actual game, that groups could set up as a tournament for their members. The scores would be ridiculously high, but a lot of fun to try. Looks like you guys are coming right along with the Perfect Golf development. I'm burned out at World Golf Tour. WGT, is one big commercial ad site with a golf game thrown in to sucker you into playing. I have little else I can play at the moment. I've gotten better, as so many of us displaced TWO players have. There are a lot of players from TWO at WGT, so, our friendships have continued. I can't wait until the initial release of Perfect Golf. I know, the game will be the best game on the Internet, and i'm sure, the virtual golfers will be playing as soon as the release date arrives. All take care, and keep up the good work. 

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gdubbombsit4bird
Dec 04 2013 08:48 AM

man..cant wait till this is ready for play!!...looks like its gonna be the crem de la crem of virtual golf...Im getting kinda of burnt out w/ WGT...played all their courses and they hardly ever get anything new..so ..needless to say..getting old...anyway you guys look like your site is gonna be the place to play...no doubt!!....later....gdub