Tee Shot Alignment

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Weeler
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Location: Watertown, WI

Tee Shot Alignment

Post by Weeler »

I've got a question about the way tee shots are "set up" by designers on certain holes, on certain courses and whether or not they can be "corrected" and saved permanently. The holes in question are: Augusta National 2009, Hole 15 ( #1880), and Scioto, hole 8 (#2263). On Augusta when you're ready to take your tee shot, if you click on "rotate", you'll see that it's pre-set at 37 left of the target ( way left of the fairway ). On Scioto 8, if you do the same thing, it's pre-set at 16 right. My question is: Can you "re-direct the aim" and save it ? What , exactly, do the flag icon and the striped marker icon do ?? I tried resetting the direction and clicking on either of them, and they only work for the round you're playing, and are not "saved" for the course permanently. Another question is: Why would the designers originally set the aim "off target".
All I can say is, I hope other players are experiencing this same phenomenon so I don't sound totally whacko. Any help on this topic is welcome !

Ron :dunno:
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Adelade
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Re: Tee Shot Alignment

Post by Adelade »

I havent checked out those holes in question (though I remember that Augusta hole 15 feels slightly claustrophobic on the left side with the tree, from the Back tee), but I know how it works.

TL;DR: No, you have no control over it as a player within Links (except for manually each time when arriving to the hole, either rotating the view or simply aiming your tee shot away from the center of your screen). Within APCD the default direction can be changed, but it is an easy thing to miss if the aim should end up off-center in cases where tees are moved from their initial placement, which Im guessing is what happened in these cases.

When the person who designs the course in APCD creates a par 4 or par 5 hole, they have to set an arbitrary point on the fairway where the first shot is "supposed to go to" (on par 3 holes, this point is the center of the green, which is sort arbitrarily set as well, but tends to be close enough). This point doesnt really matter except for purposes of measuring the exact yardage of the hole and it also seems to have some effect on how AI players will play the hole. However, it also determines the default direction that players will be initially rotated towards from tee. That initial camera direction can be changed by the designer, but most of the time no one thinks twice about it because 99.9% of the time there is no reason to change it.

Sometimes, a tee placement needs to be changed after it was initially planted within APCD, for example if a new course update is made. As a hypothetical example just for the sake of illustrating the issue, lets say they in real-life decided to change Augusta hole 12 (the short par 3 hole) so that you hit the tee shot from 50 yards to the right of where the current tee is. The hole direction changes. Then the APCD designer might go and edit it within the APCD course, builds a new tee area, then uses the Move tool to move the old Back tee into the new position. All good, right? Easy to think so, but the rotation does not update when simply moving planted tees, it only updates when deleting and replanting a tee. So what ends up happening is that the new tee's default camera rotation within Links will have the same cardinal direction as before, so it will point somewhere to the right of the green. It can be an easy thing to miss without proper playtesting (which is hard to come by these days), especially when tee moves are a bit more subtle.

If you really want to change it yourself, here is how (course needs to not be locked, and keep in mind a new course save will change the course ID, making it incompatible with the regular course):
Within APCD, go to Planting > Tee > Select , then box select any number of tees of one particular hole in the top view, then select the Rotate tool, then click on a location you want them rotated towards. This will change the default camera direction from those tees within Links.
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bostonlefty
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Joined: January 19th, 2020, 3:55 am

Re: Tee Shot Alignment

Post by bostonlefty »

Was curious, so I checked - Augusta #15 showed 7 right Sciotto #8 showed 1 left

Both holes are "kinda" doglegs, with the set line (on mine) being a very aggressive aim target. As long as I hit it 310 and high 1'll be fine :bookh:

BL
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Weeler
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Re: Tee Shot Alignment

Post by Weeler »

Thanks for the detailed reply, Adelade, but in the cases I mentioned both courses are, indeed, locked. So, when I get to those holes during a round, I guess I can just "see" that they don't look lined up correctly, and change them manually as I have been doing. That's fine.

And, bostonlefty, since your aiming set-ups were different than what I had given, are you sure that you have the SAME Augusta course, since there are several to choose from. If we're playing the same course, I can't imagine the settings being different.
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GoBucks
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Re: Tee Shot Alignment

Post by GoBucks »

Weeler wrote: April 23rd, 2022, 8:05 pm Thanks for the detailed reply, Adelade, but in the cases I mentioned both courses are, indeed, locked. So, when I get to those holes during a round, I guess I can just "see" that they don't look lined up correctly, and change them manually as I have been doing. That's fine.

And, bostonlefty, since your aiming set-ups were different than what I had given, are you sure that you have the SAME Augusta course, since there are several to choose from. If we're playing the same course, I can't imagine the settings being different.
I've seen what you're talking about at Augusta. Pretty sure it depends on the tee you're playing from.
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bostonlefty
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Re: Tee Shot Alignment

Post by bostonlefty »

I'm using the 1945 version, probably why the difference
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