Trackman 3 indoor unit with E6 feedback

[Honum]

Those of you that really dislike the E6 software, have you tried the full package, and not just the demo with Cog Hill. I got the demo first to try it out, and Cog Hill really sucks. The other courses I've played since then on the full package that I have now are of a completely different quality I think...much better looking. Played Pebble Beach earlier today...mhmmm...so good looking...too bad I lost so many balls off the cliffs

[bubba22]

Honum I have both the Red Chain and full E6 and much, much prefer Red Chain. Still waiting for Perfect Parallel or the new Red Chain software.

My understanding is that ZMax is right in that even the Trackman III measures spin and axis tilt but uses club data (loft, attack angle, path, face angle etc) indoors to determine spin axis. Outdoors measurs spin axis well ok but indoors not so much. Honum can you get spin axis with wedges indoors? My understanding is that wedges are harder to get the club data vs drivers etc indoors.

[Honum]

Yes Bubba, I get spin axis on all clubs, including wedges.

[ZMax]

I also have the full E6. I even wrote a review/comparison which can be found in this forum.

Honum, can you post a screen capture of the a shot analysis, from an indoor shot? Perhaps this Trackman III is a different animal, but if it can read putts, have you asked Trugolf why it's disabled? I also hear that Flightscope machines can not read putts.

[playsted]

I'm pretty sure that Trackman radar can't be used for putting. The radar can see the ground but it needs line of sight to the ball which your putter will be mostly blocking. Last I heard (few weeks ago) they were planning on incorporating a separate putting sensor similar to Trugolfs (IR based). It's possible they've found a way to get enough information from the putting stroke and limited sight on the ball to use it for putting.

[bubba22]

Well that's good because indoors it usually struggles with the wedges. I just got off he phone with Trackman rep and he told me again that indoors Trackman III measures total spinand uses club data to "get" spin axis tilt. I asked if it directly measured spin axis and was told no.

[ZMax]

I just got off he phone with Trackman rep and he told me again that indoors Trackman III measures total spinand uses club data to "get" spin axis tilt. I asked if it directly measured spin axis and was told no.

Thank you very much for confirming this fact bubba22. I wrote about this last year in my Trackman thread.

[bubba22]

I'm pretty sure that Trackman radar can't be used for putting. The radar can see the ground but it needs line of sight to the ball which your putter will be mostly blocking. Last I heard (few weeks ago) they were planning on incorporating a separate putting sensor similar to Trugolfs (IR based). It's possible they've found a way to get enough information from the putting stroke and limited sight on the ball to use it for putting.

Exactly what the rep just told me!

[CPA]

So just to get it correct- I thought TM 3 outdoors took all the data being swingpath and ball flight and then calculated clubface angle using New ball flight laws.

If you take spin axis out of the equation isn't the end number going to be rubber?

[CPA]

So just to get it correct- I thought TM 3 outdoors took all the data being swingpath and ball flight and then calculated clubface angle using New ball flight laws.

If you take spin axis out of the equation isn't the end number going to be rubber?

[ZMax]

CPA, you got it right. The result of that calculation is then used to estimate spin axis. I wouldn't go as far as to call it rubber though. I'm sure the outcome is decent for most purposes. Would I pay $15K+ to have this indoors? Absolutely not.

[Honum]

Here you go, screenshots from TrackMan Performance Studio (TPS) and from E6 showing a 7 iron shots. If the spin axis had been calculated in TPS it would have appeared in orange numbers, not white. I'm affraid your US sales rep is outdated on his knowledge. A lot has happened over the past year in ball tracking indoors as I've said several times

I'm from Denmark (home of the TrackMan) and have been at their headquarters several times and have direct contact with several people there, including Fredrik Tuxen the inventor of TrackMan and author of the new ball flight laws, so I'm not making things up here

TPS:
TPS_screenshot.jpg

E6:
E6_screenshot.jpg


(numbers are metric...sorry...but that's how we understand them over here )

Best regards,
Jon Honum

[bubba22]

I agree with ZMax. If indoors I would get a GC2 for sure especially given the Trackman price, plus better simulation with the Gc2. Outdoors Trackman/Flightscope are great products.

[ZMax]

Noticed that spin axis is in italics. According to Trackman, italics meant it was estimated.

[bubba22]

Honum we should ask Trackman to come on this forum and explain how they measure spin axis indoors. I don't think the US rep is out of date, in fact he told me his information is 100% up to date. Because the numbers were in white doesn't mean it 1000% was measured. Trackman indoors absolutely uses club info on top of measuring total spin to derive spin axis. Being in Denmark, you should get the main Trakman folks to come on and explain how they measure spin axis indoors. Any contacts?

[Honum]

I stand corrected, thank you ZMax, I forgot that they changed from displaying it in orange text to italic in a recent update

I would NOT be concerned about the accuracy though. There is a reason it's the system used for clubfitting even the best in the world at the OEM manufacturers indoor tour fitting centers.

CPA, you can see which parameters are true measurements and which are calculations here: http://trackman.dk/mediakit/Pro-brochure.pdf

[Honum]

I'll give it a shot bubba22, sending Fredrik Tuxen an email now...can't guarantie that he will "spill the beans" on how TrackMan derives their data on a public forum though

[bubba22]

Cool Honum. No one is stating that the Trackman is not accurate, but lets be honest it is a debate which system is the best indoors - camera vs radar. My pick is camera system but not saying that the radar is crap, in fact radar based systems are great outdoors when there is a long area of measurement. Indoors they are challanged. Having said all that , having all the pure data in the world is only as good as the alghorythms used to show what that data means and in your case the E6 software will represent what your club and ball data does. Do you find E6 forgiving?

[Honum]

Bubba22, no, E6 does NOT calculate any data when integrated with TrackMan. The way TrackMan / E6 integration is made, it is TrackMan that does all ballflight modelling. I get exactly the same results in E6 as I do in TPS. If you look at my screenshots above, those are two different strokes obvioulsy (can't run both TPS and E6 at the same time), but you will see that they are pretty close to eachother and within the variance from stroke to stroke even when all measured in TPS.

There is a configuration for "gaming mode" which simplifies the calculations that TrackMan does to not have any delay from stroke to display on screen, but you can run it "true" aswell with the full TrackMan flight modelling. TrackMan draws out the full ball flight and E6 only comes into play if you hit scenery (trees etc) and roll depending on wether you're in fairway, rough or worse

[ZMax]

You're welcome Honum. I agree with what Bubba22 said above.

[bubba22]

So explain that again. Trackman generates the ball and club data and how does it feed into E6? It uses its own ball flight alghorythms and only the E6 visuals?

[Honum]

Yes, that is correct. E6 is only visuals and "impact" with scenery.

I'm pretty sure TrackMan wont put their name on anything that calculates ball flight for them and puts their integrity in question when it comes to measuring ball flight

[ZMax]

That can't be right. I think Trackman sends the club and ball data to E6. That's it. E6's own ball flight modeling uses that data to simulate the ball's flight. Perhaps a call to Trugolf is needed.

[Honum]

I spoke with the developer who codes the OEM software integration with E6 today, and he said that when the configuration is changed to full calculation as opposed to gaming, the result is EXACTLY the same as in TPS (with the obvious exception that the ball will drop if you put it in a tree ).

What I derived from that was, that it was TM that handled the ballflight. I'm atleast not seeing any difference between E6 and TPS in terms of my ballflight.

[bubba22]

Its possible. Trackman would have had to rewrite and replace the E6 engine/algorythm with teirs. Its possible.

[playsted]

Trackman reps have told me the same thing, e6 doesn't do any ball flight calcs, just takes the information and displays it and does things like calculate roll based on terrain and collision with trees etc.

As far as Trackman spin axis and accuracy indoors I think people are misunderstanding the system a little bit. The system tracks the ball movement for 10 feet (minimum) and is able to measure spin rate (it requires 1.5 revolutions in that 10 ft to measure spin, so low spin rates on drivers can be problematic). From there it doesn't take a PhD to calculate the spin axis. The outdoor unit isn't greatly different. It doesn't calculate spin axis using all the ball flight either because the flight will be affected by wind etc.

[bubba22]

Ok just got off the phone with E6 Trugolf tech. They told me that with the Trackman, E6 uses the Trackman (or any other sim at that matter) data and uses their own engine. Someone is misinformed either Trugolf/E6 or Trackman. Its possible for them to use Trackman's engine in E6 but that would be a very big software upgrade. Again its possible.

[bubba22]

playsted you don't think that mesasuring spin axis is hard? How do you suppose they measure it from simply having total spin?

[playsted]

playsted you don't think that mesasuring spin axis is hard? How do you suppose they measure it from simply having total spin?

Once the ball has left the club face, the only thing affecting the flight is gravity (know the magnitude and direction) and the air/ball interaction (drag, spin effects). By quantifying the magnitude and direction that the ball is changing in direction over the flight, you can calculate the direction of the force vector due to spin, which is perpendicular to the spin axis. I don't know the exact method that Trackman uses but conceptually it is not complicated.

I have no doubts in the ability of Trackman indoor to measure and predict ball flight. I think it's likely the most accurate at predicting where the ball would have landed if it was actually hit outside. I'm just not sure if it's worth the extra cost and extra space needed. The e6 software has also gotten worse reviews on here.... add that to not having putting, things start adding up against it. That said I'm still seriously considering one for my indoor sim.

[Kball]

This is a little bit off topic, but has been mentioned several times in this thread. I currently own a GC2 and am a single digit handicap and I do believe you can effectively practice chipping and putting on the GC2. It obviously is not as good as the real thing, but line up 10 to 15 footers and see if you can drain 5 out of 10 or something similar. I wish the sim software had a short game mode where you could practice getting up and down. I also would like to see the sim automatically line you up for the perfect line assuming a speed that gets you X inches past the whole - that way you take the reading the green issue out of the equation.