Foresight FSX Ver 2.0 Review

[Yongchai]

This is my own personal opinions on Ver 2 of FSX by Foresight which was released sometime in Feb 2016.

FSX system requirements are as follows:

Operating System: Windows 7 or greater (64 Bit Required)
Processor Speed: I5 or greater
Memory: 8GB system memory
16GB if using the swing analysis camera (purchased separately)
Video Card: Stand Alone Video with 2GB of memory or greater (Recommended: Do not use AMD, rather NVidia GeForce 750ti or greater)

If you want to know what FSX is about, read the review of FSX Ver 1. For this, post i'll be focusing on what has changed in Ver2 and what i feel can be improved.

The most obvious thing that has been changed is that Foresight has integrated all 3 modules (play, compete, fit) into a single unified program called FSX. You might not think it's much of an improvement, but it comes with the benefit of not having to exit and load a new program everytime you want to change your mode of play (ie. Moving from playing on the course to practicing on the range is now easy and much faster). Also, when you load up a course, it takes a while for the textures to load. However as long as you stay within the same course for any other mode of play, the course loads up immediately. (Having 8gb of ram comes in handy here, i had 4 gb before, and i had to reload the course every single time. So if you are on a budget, upgrade the ram first for FSX) So not a big change in terms of gameplay, but great in terms of a time saver.

This new version also fixed a pet-peeve of mine which was having to log-in every single time you loaded up the program by saving your username and password. Nothing great in the scheme of things, but one of the most appreciated changes in FSX.

One quirk to the main interface page is that the 3 modules sometimes still acts as different programs. If you enter one module, you have to back out to the main interface page before you can interact with the other modules. Not a big thing, but it'll be nice if from 1 module, you could just click on another module and carry on, instead of having to back out to main page first.

Another problem i have with FSX is its Full screen mode. (I'm not sure if this is unique to FSX or happens to all programs). My current setup has a projector with FSX and a side monitor in front of me sometimes running kinnova (a free recording app) or some other programs and one issue i found with running in Full-Screen mode on the projector is i can't interact with the apps on the side monitor properly. Whenever i click on the side monitor, FSX will stutter and minimize on the projector before i can click on anything in the side monitor. After finishing on the monitor, i have to maximize FSX again which takes time to start-up. The current solution is to run FSX windowed (but then you don't get the full screen effect and there's a distracting border), and you can then click on the side monitor without having FSX stutter and minimize. So it'll be nice if foresight can fix FSX such that running full-screen mode still allows effective interact with side monitor without minimizing.

With all the changes to the UI, Foresight still needs to fix the brightness/saturation/ contrast ratio in FSX. I am using Optoma's GT 760 with 3,400 lumens projecting on a 16ft by 10ft screen, which does an admirable job but admittedly is slightly overwhemed by the large screen size during the day time. But by comparing to other sim software, it seems FSX should be able to fix many of the projector's short-comings but doesn't. The color palette used on the course is too dark so i have to turn up the brightness and contrast on the projector, but when i do that some buttons/parts get washed out and becomes barely legible. Foresight needs to make the courses more vibrant and compatible with other graphics so that they can co-exist on the same brightness/contrast setting without having to choose between either being able to see the course or discern the buttons.

Moving on to the play side of things, not much have changed here. I admit i have not spent much time on this module as i don't have huge chunks of time to commit to finishing 18 holes and the provided course (Tenton Pines) just wasn't that inspiring after my first playthrough to make me come back for more. So it's probably not a complete list of things that have changed, but just a few things which they have advertised and i've noticed.

In the set-up menu, FSX now allows you to choose if you want to allow players to hit practice shots, enable lie penalty and a new scoring system for putting called fast putt (I think these are new).

In practice mode, you make a swing and it'll will show how the ball will fly and land with a side panel popping up to show you all your ball numbers. If you're happy with your swing and the results, you go back to normal mode and see if you can replicate the swing when it actually counts. This is obviously illegal in golf, but if you're trying to break your own personal best, or see what kind of score you can post if you don't screw up, then this practice mode is useful. Though it'll be helpfull if the practice mode was slightly more accessible instead of looking in the menu to activate it.

The lie penalty option is abit of an enigma because you don't know what kind of penalty you're going to get. Is it a flier lie or is it a distance and spin penalty? FSX doesn't tell you so there's no way to prepare for it and you might as well hit it as if there's no lie penalty since you could either hit it long or short. To implement the lie penalty properly, FSX needs to tell you what the penalty is so you can account for it accordingly.

The fast putt scoring system is one of the most innovate ways i've seen so far of scoring a putt. Basically, once you're on the green, you get 1 putt. If you hole it, it counts as a stroke, if you don't hole it, it measures the distance left in inches and counts each inch left as 0.1 stroke. So if u are 2 on and made a putt with 4 inch left, your score will be put down as 3.4 and the decimal scoring carries all the way through 18 holes without rounding up or down. This is the perfect scoring formula for those who believe a 1 inch putt shouldn't be counted as a full stroke and also a great equalizer for sim golf putting when interpreting slope is not as obvious as it could be.

This brings up putting. The grid lines showing direction of slope does not come up automatically once you're on the putting surface. I don't care if there are people complaining about the purity of the game or aesthetics with grid lines showing, if you are playing sim golf and you're trying to make a putt, there's no way you can read the slope without the grid, so it should show up automatically instead of looking for it in the menus. Arrows showing slope could also be a bit bigger and clearer. Also, for some unkown reason, the aiming stick is like 10 feet behind the flag stick and you have to control aiming using the left right keyboard arrows. It'll be nice if you could set the aiming stick by mouse clicking on the green instead of using the keyboard to manipulate the aim stick 10 ft behind where u want the putt to go.

As good as fast putt is, another welcome addition would be to have a 'tiger-eye' option, where you don't have to read putts and the game automatically aims your putt for you like a caddie would. In sim golf where it takes a different skillset in reading grid lines compared to reading real greens, i would rather the game aim the putt for me so i can just focus on the speed and hitting the putt straight.

The mini-map in game is also great. FSX makes good use of the available space to show you a nice big mini-map showing you hazards/distances and ability to click and aim with the mouse. Its now so informative and easy to use, that i spend more time plotting my shots on the mini-map then actually looking at the simulated course. It's not saying much for the first person graphics and view but its a great recommendation for the mini-map.

FSX have also added sound effects and 3D grass. Some of the new sound additions are welcome, such as ball sound effect, and others not so much, like having my AI companion telling my ball to 'get down' when it overshoots the green. (Seems kinda insincere on its part). When i play golf, absolute silence is deafening (thats when all eyes are on you, and the nerves start creeping in) so there is still a host of sound effects that can be added to FSX before the course starts sounding more natural like.

As for the 3D grass, i'm not a big fan of the change because my AMD 5770 hd 1 gig video card can't handle the load (Foresight actually does not recommend AMD video cards.... What?!?) Before the changes, things were relatively decent, but now my framerate has dropped to single digits and the ball seems to be floating in mid-air with the ball bouncing like gravity does not affect it. My video card is not up to their recommended spec (and brand... What?!?) so i can't complain too much about it, but at the same time, other golf sims i've tried with similar or even better graphics does not have this problem, so i think i'm entitled to gripe a little. If the 3D grass was a huge improvement, i probably would just bite the bullet and get a new video card, but all the 3d grass seems to do is just hide the ball a little when the ball goes in the rough, so for me the framerate trade off is not worth it. Hopefully foresight can optimize their software to increase framerates or have a graphical option to uncheck 3d grass so i don't have to spend more on a Nvidia video card.

Moving on to the compete module, nothing seems to have changed significantly other than the before mentioned log-in fix and some UI redesign. The log-in fix comes in most handy here as they have cut down 1 step to starting your game, though 1 quirk i found is that if you have 2 players profile saved, the program assumes you are going to have 2 players competing. If Foresight can fix this such that the program only asks you once, who are playing, then great, but if they change it to asking you every single time, i rather they leave it alone.

I am going to bring up previous suggestions for ctp, that the ground seems too hard and its much easier to roll the ball up rather than stick it at the pin, as well as having the default leaderboard view be 'monthly' rather than 'all time'.

The leaderboard shows yardages in feet now rather than yards, and has been pretty static with very little movement now that decent scores have been posted. This static leaderboard makes things boring and i find myself looking for other challenges at other distances if the board shows scores less than 3ft. A default leaderboard view of monthly (running 30 day cycle) will provide more movement at the leaderboard and provide more incentive for other people to take up the challenge.

Also, a personal gripe is that this new version kept the leaderboards for the driving range, but not for Tenton Pines. I spent alot of time trying to populate that board which makes me sad to see it get lost in the upgrade. So great if it can be restored, otherwise, it just means i have to go work at it again.

Another way foresight can add value to FSX is by increasing the holes available for CTP. Right now only par 3s are included, which means 4 holes. Foresight can easily add another 14 holes by setting up the ctp for those holes as approach shots (starting from 100 yards for the red tees, with 20 yard increments up to 200 yards for the black tees). For a software where many are grumbling about the price, adding holes which are already designed to ctp costs them very little but can be a huge increase in value of FSX.

Another slight change to FSX is the on screen ball finder which tells you where to place your ball so that the gc2 can find it. They have now added a confirmation telling you thats its ok to hit the ball when before, the finder will just disappear once the ball is in the correct location. The irritating part of his is that the confirmation graphic takes too long to fade away, leaving you waiting for 1-2 seconds before you can hit the ball. Also, the ball finder continues to pop-up after hitting the 3 balls in ctp and the leaderboard comes up.

One issue that concerns both compete and improve mode are the tracers. For the first version, i complained that there were too many ball tracers on the screen so Foresight removed them all except 1, which is too little. In my first review, i gave kudoes to the accuracy of the GC2 and FSX saying how when you hit the ball on the screen, the ball flight will start off from that same point, using previous tracers as a reference point for impact position. But now with only 1 tracer, you lose the reference point and makes it harder to judge the accuracy of the gc2. So put back the tracers (at least 3) or better yet, put them all back, but allow the older tracer shots to slowly fade away with each shot so that you can tell from the beginning of you practice session to the end, how your shot shape has changed.

This brings me to the final module of improve (previously called fit). Best addition so far is the practice mode where you choose your course and the hole you want, and by right clicking on the mini-map, you are placed right at that spot and can begin hitting practice shots from the distance you choose. It would be nice if it could show you the layout of the hole in the selection menu, instead of loading the hole and not finding it to your liking and backing out and selecting again until you find a nice challenging shot u want to practice.

Other things they need to fix is the flight dispersion table in the analysis page. The first few shots are represented nicely on a side and top down view, but once you hit more balls, the table scale goes whacky (eg. 100 yard pitch shots will be shown in a 600 yard scale) clumping all your shots together, making it impossible to see your shot dispersion. I think the scale should never exceed more than 10 yards of your furthest shot in order to give you the clearest information possible.

Another suggestion would be for data collection. Right now ball data is group under club selection. Makes sense, but also abit of a hassle, when you change clubs, you're also going to need to change the distance so its a 2 step process. If Foresight can change it to a 1 step process by grouping your ball data according to target distance that will be nice. Or otherwise, when you change clubs, change the distance accordingly to pre-set individual distances you've saved in your profile. So when selecting an 8 iron, the distance will automatically change to 140 yards. A 1 step process.

The swing capture function has not seem much discussion mainly i think because of the cost of entry (around $1000). So another suggestion that would add value to FSX and make it a definate buy over other competing software is if they could support Apple's iphone/ipad slow-mo camera which captures videos at 120-240 fps. This i'm sure is the same or if not better than the camera foresight is selling. So instead of a single use camera stuck in your sim room, you can get a new iphone/ipad instead at a cheaper price. I don't know what kind of margin foresight is getting by selling 3rd party cameras, but i'm sure it can't be more than what they are making on their own software. So supporting apple's mobile products (or another cheap option, the PS eye at 120fps @ $6!) in FSX would not only add more value for their customer, but also make Foresight more profit by being able to sell FSX to more customer who are otherwise balking at its current price.

Talking about cameras, another long awaited for addition is a new viewing camera mode called chase. I have always wanted a view where after hitting the ball, i could get a player's perspective of the ball showing its flight and peak height before the camera catches up to the ball to follow it on its way down. The new chase camera view tries to provide this, but is imperfect.

There are other options to the chase camera for ball flight but i'll just stick to the closest one to ideal and hope that Foresight will fix it, which is 'chase/none. The first problem with the mode is that after hitting a shot, the camera pans to the right. This might look fancy in demos, but it destroys your perspective of the ball flight. You do not know if its drawing or fading once your viewing angle is from the right, so cut the panning out. Keep it at a straight ahead perspective.

In chase/none, i like how the initial viewing angle does not change (other than panning to the right), but once the ball starts to chase up to the ball and follow it on its way down, the camera loses sight of the ball. (Its such a glaring error that QA should have caught this).

Another problem is how close the camera is to the ball. It'll be nice if the camera zooms out a little and if the ball bounces past the hole, have the camera zoom out to always keep the flag in the picture as a reference point. Also, when the ball bounces up and down, i rather the camera not bounce up and down as well. Keep the camera steady and let the ball bounce.

So for 'chase/none', keep the 1st (ball flight up) part and fix the second (downward flight) part to be something like 'ball/exact' and fix the above mentioned problems and this could be my default camera view. (Though i have grown used to the ball/exact camera mode)

To wrap up, ver 2 of FSX is a nice upgrade (though abit slow to release). For practice, FSX in my opnion is the best option out there. But for sim play, with the graphics and optimization of the engine not up to par with other software, and the price of individual courses (as well as the lack of tools for players to create their own courses), Foresight needs to increase the value proposition for customers before they will see meaningful sales growth for FSX.

As an existing customer, i am happy with this current upgrade and glad to see Foresight continuing to work and support FSX. However, as a new customer, i would wait to see how things shape up in other areas before committing to FSX.

Note: one thing i'm worried about is how it seems foresight has the ability to disable previous versions of their software. Even though i was on the offline dongle version of FSX, with this upgrade i'm on the online version but i can't run the old offline version anymore. A bit troubling since i seem to have a knack for being too forthright in my opinions.