[BadEddieKit]

The ability to import height maps! Without having actual elevations from LIDAR, as other golf games provide, it's really limiting its potential. Any idea if this feature is in the works for the future?

[Williamhotel69]

The ability to import height maps! Without having actual elevations from LIDAR, as other golf games provide, it's really limiting its potential. Any idea if this feature is in the works for the future?

Probably limitation due to consoles. Should be integrated with pc though.
Also wish pc users could edit and add objects. Then I would switch to pc instead of ps4.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[HB_Paul]

Each course built in the game can be played across all platforms so if we did a bunch of work to support PC only we would lose this feature of the game.  As such we don't allow any user created objects in the game since they would isolate a fraction of the courses that were created.

Also, we have 1000's of great courses that people have made, either from their imagination or RCRs, I don't think we are limiting potential without allowing people to import height maps. 

[BadEddieKit]

Thanks for responding @HB_Paul. But aren't the TPC courses built with actual height maps? Not sure why everyone couldn't still play the courses across all platforms?

[ErixonStone]

Thanks for responding @HB_Paul. But aren't the TPC courses built with actual height maps? Not sure why everyone couldn't still play the courses across all platforms?

It's not that they couldn't be played.  It's that consoles couldn't handle the design process.  It would mean that the PC version of the designer would have to be fundamentally different than the console version.

The beauty of Unity 3D is that you can deploy the same code to many different platforms.  What you're asking for is HB to deviate from that and complete a different version for the PC platform.

[ErixonStone]

And, based on the amazing renditions of many iconic courses like Augusta, Pebble Beach, Oakmont, and, yes, Sawgrass done by community members, there really isn't a need for this technology.

[HB_Paul]

Thanks for responding @HB_Paul. But aren't the TPC courses built with actual height maps? Not sure why everyone couldn't still play the courses across all platforms?

Erixon is part right.  There isn't a way on consoles to upload height maps into the game.  Right now we're not at a point where we want to have that much of a divergence between the PC version of the game and the xbox/ps4.  Its already enough work having to support mouse & keyboard controls for everything in the designer and getting those to work correctly as well as the gamepad controls.

On top of that, the texture that you use as a height map would have to be stored with your course, that increases the amount of space we need to use on our server for a course when you publish it by a good chunk, then that would have to be downloaded with each course when people play.  Each render texture is 20-30 times the size of the average course file in the game so things would slow down quite a bit. 

[Tuco]

Thanks for responding @HB_Paul. But aren't the TPC courses built with actual height maps? Not sure why everyone couldn't still play the courses across all platforms?

Erixon is part right.  There isn't a way on consoles to upload height maps into the game.  Right now we're not at a point where we want to have that much of a divergence between the PC version of the game and the xbox/ps4.  Its already enough work having to support mouse & keyboard controls for everything in the designer and getting those to work correctly as well as the gamepad controls.

On top of that, the texture that you use as a height map would have to be stored with your course, that increases the amount of space we need to use on our server for a course when you publish it by a good chunk, then that would have to be downloaded with each course when people play.  Each render texture is 20-30 times the size of the average course file in the game so things would slow down quite a bit.

Thanks, Paul.  It's great to have these kinds of explanations.