[jeffield]

I am looking forward to crooked stick. Is that the south carolina one?

[RockManDan]

So there are no variation in real courses?! They are all the same?

Dan, you would not recognize if a course was made with lidar data unless your told. It would go something like this:
Dan: "This is a great course!"
Someone whispers: "Dan, it is made with lidar data"
Dan: "Ofcourse I could see that with all those lumps and bumps, I hate it!".

I can tell a LiDAR/OSM  course within a few holes.... most on the very first.  An original course done well with LiDAR data only has the possibility of being decent.......  it I haven’t played one.  Like I said previously in this thread.... I’m not really a fan of RCRs in general

[Sandsaver]

I am looking forward to crooked stick. Is that the south carolina one?

No, Crooked Stick Golf Club is in Carmel Indiana, a high end suburb of Indianapolis.  It has hosted the 2009 USGA Senior Open and was where John Daly won the PGA Championship as a last minute substitute.  It is in the regular course rotation for the BMW Championship.

[MERACE]

No, Crooked Stick Golf Club is in Carmel Indiana, a high end suburb of Indianapolis.  It has hosted the 2009 USGA Senior Open and was where John Daly won the PGA Championship as a last minute substitute.  It is in the regular course rotation for the BMW Championship.

If my memory serves me right, I believe that the “infamous” ADX321 is a member of this course and a personal friend of Pete Dye.     


-MERACE

[Stan Solo]

ADX  ?       .... never heard of him

[RockManDan]

He hasn’t been around for quite some time.....  I don’t recall him posting about anything about TGC2019.

[jeffield]

I am looking forward to crooked stick. Is that the south carolina one?

No, Crooked Stick Golf Club is in Carmel Indiana, a high end suburb of Indianapolis.  It has hosted the 2009 USGA Senior Open and was where John Daly won the PGA Championship as a last minute substitute.  It is in the regular course rotation for the BMW Championship.

Hey, you stole that logo
 I remember that night but ill still play your course anyway. 

[TaS]

I haven't been limited by plant meter on any lidar courses.  But you have to be smart with the masking. 

I think there is probably just some overall burnout going on.  I'm pretty exhausted with how manual certain design tasks are. 

[mthunt]

I spend my time using the simulator version of TGC. Playing RCR’s is amazing. The lidar tool allows you to get super accurate RCR’s and cuts down design time but a whole bunch. My home course Mississaugua took 150 hours between TGC and TGC19. Castle Pines took under 20.   Anyone who’s ever been on this site knows that Dan hates lidar but from my perspective its a huge game changer.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Crooked Stick will be better than Castle Pines. My point wasn’t saying that I’m a super star but that Lidar cuts the work down tremendously.  Castle Pines is a fun playable version.  Crooked Stick will be fantastic I’m sure

You can make a quality course in 20 hrs?  Lidar must do just about everything for the designer/ person creating the course.  After this initial 20 hrs is there plant meter leftover to allow for more hole detail?   Its good to have accuracy/ i dont know how to use it but it has to allow for surrounding aesthetics if its going to be great.

mhunt must be a superstar Lidar designer!  Twenty hours!  I already have nearly 100 hours into my RCR of Crooked Stick GC, and am close to but not finished.

[paddyjk19]

LiDAR is brilliant in the hands of a designer willing to put the hours in, the same as good fantasy courses take a long time.

The problem is this tool allows people to quickly make something that roughly resembles the intended course. It’s therefore opening access to completing RCR’s.

In one way this is great as it’s encouraging new designers but at the same time it’s letting new designers bypass some basic learning curves.

My first LiDAR course came out great but I also knew the course inside out thus allowing supreme accuracy, that said it still took me 150 hours plus. That’s just what it takes to make a very accurate recreation in my opinion if you’re measuring everything and refining constantly

[Thrangar]

Lidar has been good to me, but its not a win all situation, I have come to see, that in the wrong or lazy hands it just as bad as the CC has been.

But 90+% of the lidar I have played has given "golf" back into the course design, Tee to green feels more right, to me...along with this it also helps keep/protect (built in planter restriction) those courses that are really good, on my favs list, that I would otherwise remove because they are horrendously over planted with grass and bush, and turn the experience into a slideshow fest.

Lidar gave the game back to me, or at least extended it for me

[jeffield]

Interesting comments on it.  I guess a good lidar designer has to learn which version of lidar to use and how large a plot to undertake with it to make it look its best without sacrificing the plant meter too much.    It is great for the fairway and green accuracy.   
   I wonder how the initial tree covering works with it.   Does it lay down all of one type of tree and then the designer has to go in and change/edit that?

[AndersNM]

Interesting comments on it.  I guess a good lidar designer has to learn which version of lidar to use and how large a plot to undertake with it to make it look its best without sacrificing the plant meter too much.    It is great for the fairway and green accuracy.   
   I wonder how the initial tree covering works with it.   Does it lay down all of one type of tree and then the designer has to go in and change/edit that?

Trees from Chads tool are not great and it eats up way too much plant meter. Much better to plant trees yourself. With proper masking, max 1/3 of the plant meter should be taken up by the lidar data.

[jeffield]

Interesting comments on it.  I guess a good lidar designer has to learn which version of lidar to use and how large a plot to undertake with it to make it look its best without sacrificing the plant meter too much.    It is great for the fairway and green accuracy.   
   I wonder how the initial tree covering works with it.   Does it lay down all of one type of tree and then the designer has to go in and change/edit that?

Trees from Chads tool are not great and it eats up way too much plant meter. Much better to plant trees yourself. With proper masking, max 1/3 of the plant meter should be taken up by the lidar data.

Interesting but, when planting trees manually the old way that ate up a lot of plant meter and you never got the amount of coverage you were looking for.   So it became known that when designing a course from scratch the best thing to do was to have high tree coverage upon initial creation and then remove/ adjust tree types as you went.... in doing this initial high tree coverage you didnt use any plant meter and you started with a map full of trees.   Maybe this is where lidar falls short in its advantage of recreating a course from scratch.

[Sandsaver]

Interesting but, when planting trees manually the old way that ate up a lot of plant meter and you never got the amount of coverage you were looking for.   So it became known that when designing a course from scratch the best thing to do was to have high tree coverage upon initial creation and then remove/ adjust tree types as you went.... in doing this initial high tree coverage you didnt use any plant meter and you started with a map full of trees.   Maybe this is where lidar falls short in its advantage of recreating a course from scratch.

You are right about planting individual trees eating up plant meter but wrong about not having high tree coverage with a Lidar plot.  Even though when you start the Chadgolf process of importing terrain you have no trees, plants, rocks, etc., after you get the importing finished and the course into TGC 2019, you can then turn the tree, plant, grass all the way up in the "Terrain Settings" menu and there will be beaucoup nature on your plot with no increase in the meter.  You can then remove them to your hearts content!