Being a nerd helps
The idea came to me shortly before the pandemic, in 2019.
I've always been a nerd. In 1989 my father brought home the first Olivetti 286 at 16mhz which I dismantled in a short time to understand how it worked. Luckily, my classmate Marco Manfredi was always there to save me, he is a true genius. Like that time when with Norton Commander, a program used to view files on peripherals, I decided that the config.sys and autoexec.bat files were superfluous, only to later discover that they were used to start the MS-DOS shell, Windows 3.1 did not exist yet.
On that PC I had installed the first games like Accolade's Winter, Golden Axe and of course, Flight Simulator 4 with blue sky, green ground, blue water and many lines. Mind blowing.
Grown up on bread, butter, sugar, PCs and video games, I knew it was possible to simulate the game of golf by hitting real balls.
First phase - Sensors and cameras
After a quick look into the wonderful world of the internet, I had found the ideal system for me.
Using photosensors that read the shadow of the club face projected by two spotlights downwards, you can calculate speed (like the tutors on the highway: the time elapsed between the turning off of two photosensors in line, gives the speed), direction and angle at the moment of impact. Then there are two high-speed cameras, one placed laterally to detect the angle of the ball's launch relative to the ground and the other, placed above the ball, to detect its trajectory to the right or left. Putting all this data together, in a fraction of a second you get a virtual representation of the shot. Simple and effective system.
But the thing that I found very interesting was the use of a software that allowed the modeling of DIY golf courses. This made it possible to reproduce our Folgaria course, as well as a thousand other imaginary ones.
Once the system was found, the entire structure had to be built. There are companies that sell the complete Frame + Simulator package, but the cost is tens of thousands of euros and they are a closed box, you can't model courses at will and they have an annual subscription so the hypothesis was not even taken into consideration. I was sure I could get by.
The construction
Obviously during the construction phase there was a minimum of planning but, being a novice, it was more like building by imagining any gaps, trying to anticipate them.
The sensors had their own shape and size, components purchased on the internet and assembled. With these specifications I started building the base, a sort of honeycomb to be able to move it easily and in four squares, so that I could dismantle it if necessary.
Once the four blocks were made, to simulate the grass I initially used synthetic grass left over from the renovation of our tennis court, then I decided to replace it with pressed carpet, much more efficient and easy to clean, also inserting a layer of rubber between the carpet and the aluminum panels, so as to simulate the softness of the ground.
Once the base was finished, it was necessary to procure the impact sheet and build the support structure for it.
You can't use just any sheet because the ball hits it at over a hundred kilometers per hour, it must be elastic to absorb the impact and not deform, much less break. The sheet was made in England, an excellent quality/price compromise.
The first support structure for the sheet was made of aluminum with ninety-degree plastic inserts with a fine-mesh black net on the sides to prevent the balls from coming out laterally in the event of incorrect hits like the classic shank, when the ball hits the joint between the shaft and the club face starting at forty-five degrees to the side.
Unfortunately this system turned out to be too fragile, so I had to redo it by building a structure entirely of wood with lightweight corrugated panels covered in rubber on the sides feather.
Projecting the video
One aspect that I had not considered was the distance between the PC and the projector installed on the ceiling, which is not a small thing since there should not be cables grazing around the room.
HDMI cables, for good video quality, have a "throw" capacity that does not go beyond 6 meters. With that length I did not go very far. My nerdiness also helped me in this case.
Knowing that it is possible to pass the video signal through network cables, in this case I had shielded CAT.6 ones, the only need was two " signal transformers" from HDMI to LAN and from LAN to HDMI.
In a very professional manner, near the computer, at the bottom behind the impact sheet, I installed the box with wall socket and RJ45 insert, hiding the cables of network in the gaps and made to reappear at the top, near the video projector, positioned at the right distance from the sheet. Once everything was connected, here is a nice image of the virtual driving range.
After doing the tests, everything worked perfectly .
The digital version of Folgaria
I created the first version with Google Maps and lots of photos, however, the elevations were a bit rough. Having played golf for many years on that course, I knew the behavior of the ball and tried to adapt the terrain to what I saw in reality. Then the turning point.
I knew about the existence of the LiDar system and, searching online here and there, I discovered that I could use the raw files to model the Folgaria course almost perfectly
I then contacted the provincial technical office which, in a couple of weeks, sent me the requested data because the necessary ones were not found on the cartographic portal. They were very kind.
To make a long story short, I designed the course on a special portal, outlining all the fairways, greens, bunkers and so on using satellite images. In this way I had generated a mask with precise GPS coordinates, just like a drawing, even if made of data.
LiDar files are also made of GPS coordinates. Using specific programs, with these raw files you can generate points with three coordinates X, Y and Z readable by the simulator's course editor. The connection of all these points creates the virtual terrain. The denser the number of points to be connected to each other, the more precise the plot will be but, the larger the file will be.
It is not possible to have millimeter precision, the file size would be too large, something must be sacrificed. Not much since the courses modeling software does not provide for terrain with changes in slope for example at right angles, so the terrain is smoothed in any case.
As mentioned, both the mask with the course drawing and the LiDar files for three-dimensional modeling use GPS coordinates. So logically, by superimposing the mask on the digital terrain, everything should match and so it did.
Since it is a "bare" terrain, it was necessary to insert all the furnishings such as trees, streams, boulders, objects of the course and so on.
Knowing the course by heart and having many photos of the area, I was able to insert everything exactly as in reality. Everything is positioned accurately but, not being able to create customized three-dimensional models such as the Maso Spilzi where the clubhouse is located, I had to adapt what was provided by the software, so the buildings are not faithfully reproduced but I got close using those provided. The following video shows the result of two years of tinkering
In words, it may sound like something extraordinary, but in reality, by applying yourself for a moment and understanding the system, it's nothing more than a tedious but stimulating job in terms of research and solving the continuous problems that arise.
It's all online; it's enough to read, invest time (the pandemic has provided plenty of that), and put the pieces together.
The real work was done by those who designed and developed these amazing software programs from scratch.
The digital Folgaria course was not made only for our simulator, if you buy the video games PgaTour 2k21 and PGATour 2k23 with Tiger Woods on the cover, among the available courses it is also possible to play the Folgaria course, both on PC and Xbox and playstation