Can someone explain four seasons Golf to me? i.e. Golf Simulators...

Factual Questions
1

There is a place near where I live that is called Four Season’s Golf - it’s a golf simulator place. Now I like Golf - and I like some video games [no I won’t tell you my age] but I can’t get my head around Simulated Golf.
This is what I think it is, please tell me if I am close:

I think you can bring your clubs - they set you up in front of a screen where you are playing sawgrass or pebble beach or st.andrews or somewhere cool…and you tee off as usual and the ball goes to a specified place depending on how hard you hit the “screen” then you line up the rest of your shots…I’m not sure how you putt though…
So am I waaay off? Should I be frequenting this place as it looks like it is packed all the time…Is it fun?

2

I use to play at one of these when I lived in Alaska, as the outdoor golf season is barely over 4 months.

The one we frequented used infrared or ultrasonic sensors (I forget which) to judge not only the speed of the ball, but also the direction. It would then calculate the distance and direction of the ball, and project a little white ball on the screen that followed the calculated trajectory.

Then it would display a still image from the calculated lie, along with the yards to the pin. The area between the tee and the screen was a putting green, and once the computer calculated that you were on the green, it would send you to one of ten marked locations of the green to put from.

It was fun, and a little more challenging than an indoor driving range. However, it was easy to pick up bad habits that would reveal themselves when the outdoor course opened in May.

But I enjoyed it.

3

How do you putt?

4

Ahem:

5

Or you could just live in a civilized part of the world where we play outside all year round. :cool:

6

Except when a hurricane blows your neighbor’s mobile home onto the 17th fairway.

7

We just mark that “ground under construction.” And remember, you never have to follow your ball right up to that alligator. There’s a rule for that.

8

We had the same rule for caribou.

9

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
The one we frequented used infrared or ultrasonic sensors (I forget which) to judge not only the speed of the ball, but also the direction. It would then calculate the distance and direction of the ball, and project a little white ball on the screen that followed the calculated trajectory.
QUOTE]

Are there any places where the system can also detect and account for hook/slice ?

I was at a golf pro shop that had an indoor cage to test out clubs. It could take photos “up from under the tee” showing club-path and also club-head-orientation (‘square’ contact or not). I’ve wondered if any of the “indoor courses” have been able to incoporate that to figure out hook/slice. The pro-shop thing did estimate direction & distance like the indoor ranges but did not estimate hook/slice.

10

I’m thinking about going today - it’s 20 degrees out and I’d like to swing the clubs a little.

Then if we move to AZ, maybe I won’t have to worry about this so much.