OptiShot Golf Simulator: At home golf solution

Mike Dudurich

Posted 2010-02-08

How does the idea of having a golf simulator set up in your living room or game room, a simulator that not only allows you to practice your swing or practice specific shots, but also allows you to play rounds on courses from around the world?

And how would you like to own that simulator for under $400?

The OptiShot Infrared Golf Simulator may just have the thing for you.

They call it the ultimate in home golf simulation. And it’s pretty hard to argue that point.

Brandon Theophilus, CEO of Dancin' Dogg Golf which developed OptiShot, calls the creation, “Wii on steroids.”

Among the really good things about this system is the requirement to make it work. You use your own clubs. Depending on your own home situation, you can use foam or plastic or even real golf balls. Even better, if you don’t have an area in which you can pound balls, you don’t have to use a ball at all.

Yep, the system features a hitting mat, software and a USB cord to hook up to your computer and a soft foam ball. And it's an indoor-only simulator.

The Optical Swing pad has sensors that detect the club through the hitting zone. Fat shots tend to be slowed down through the hitting zone shortening the distance traveled. The infrared sensors are oriented vertically and systems of this type are unable to reliably detect thin shots.

The sensors are able to detect the face angle, path and club head speed. The numbers it generates -- clubhead speed, face angle, swing path, toe/center/heel face contact and visual feedback of each shot ¬– are translated by the computer and your “shot” is displayed on your computer screen.

You can tee it up, hit it off the mat and even putt (or if you not up to the putting stress, you can use the “auto putt” feature. As long as the ceiling in the room you choose to set up in is 8 ½ feet high, you’re good to go.

The 3DD (Dancin’ Dogg, get it?) Golf technology is a new visual simulation environment created in 2009 and the hype is that the engineers have rendered accuracies to a standard within inches of real. Makes playing courses like Torrey Pines (North and South) Big Horn (Mountains and Canyons) and Bethpage Black as realistic as on those $50,000 models.

Future course releases will be based in part on customer input as to what courses they’d like to play.

If there’s any question about the quality of this simulator, know that this device has been played inside EA Sports Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

If there’s a downside that jumps out, it’s the fact that the device is not officially supported on Mac systems, but is designed only for use with a PC running Windows XP or Vista. Other than that, I’m not seeing glaring weaknesses.

If watching on a computer is a bit confining for you, you can hook up your computer and television and watch on the big screen if you have one.

Want more information? Check out the system at www.OptiShotGolf.com.