St Andrews The Old Course 2022

[morvio100]

Reckon Linkster's got his work cut out ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0xMWmIXxrA

wow...great piece of 3d modeling or what !..those textures are absolutely spot on..

Reckon Linkster would give his right arm to be able to source that dem/3d models/ etc etc

Good luck with it ...

[linkster]

Lol!

Yes that is some impressive 3D work! Even the recent 2022 Open coverage had some extremely good computer generated graphics. Normally I think that 3D work is not necessary for enjoying a round of golf in Links, but I am going to have to eat those words after watching The Open last weekend. The natural stadium atmosphere created by all those tall town buildings is definitely part of playing the final hole of The Old Course.

I've decided to give the 3D work my best effort. Still playing with how to do all those buildings. Is it better to go with a basic box shape building and use a hi-res texture for the facing or create a detailed mesh and use small, plain textures? I am thinking the detailed mesh is the way to go for me but am open to ideas!

It was probably a mistake choosing The Old Course to debut what a LIDAR accurate terrain can do for a golf course but too late now to second thoughts!

[morvio100]

Tbh Linkster, I reckon what you have achieved so far is terrifuc... baseline !....(hope the sand grains in the bunkers are scaled just right, by now..??_, ) this is true you have put massive pressure on yourself with that username(Linkster)(kinda like Maradonna naming his son Maradonna, that kid is gonna have alot to live up to, that kid is likely gonna buckle under the pressure a start self medicating with all the pressure !!) lol...reckon you should dig up Danial Watson for the pano, Danial seems quite elusive, last reports of his sighting he was living under the stairs in his grandmothers house with only his trusty laptop for company,,also reckon you should outsource the 3d work, apparently even R Miller and Mike Jones recruited whole crews of people to complete courses, reckon the Old Course is a serious amount of work for one person, all on here I'm sure commend your effort...be interesting to see how accurate you can get the topography

[MrT]

Lol!
It was probably a mistake choosing The Old Course to debut what a LIDAR accurate terrain can do for a golf course but too late now to second thoughts!

Maybe. Or maybe not! One of my coaches once told me "go big or go home!" A football (American) coach of mine used to say "... this is how we separate the men from the boys"... Given what you have done already, this is your chance to Links' eternal glory. If given the choice between 10 normal cars and 1 Ferrari, I would choose the Ferrari. It will give me emotions that the other 10 cars cannot provide, not even combined.

[MrT]

Just curious to find out if the development of this important course is continuing. At least, I am looking forward to it.

After devoting some TLC to your course, I think that you will need to make it a little bit harder for I managed to score a -7 in M/Fc and with Wind and medium to difficult pin placements.

No hole in Links has frustrated me more than the Road Hole (#17) at St. Andrews Old Course. Games where I was shooting for -8 have changed dramatically for the worse (as usual) when I got to this hole and the wind was not optimal or I hit the ball not ideally. The Road Hole bunker is a very deep bunker against the front left of the green and when playing to the upper tier of the green, it is incredibly steep. I am literally scared of this hole.

Used to the current version on Links I thought that there is no way this is the right hole. Instead, after spending one hour on internet looking for nearly every video I could find, pictures, etc.. I must say that you captured it incredibly well. I actually send the ball in the "Nakajima sands" on purpose to play from there.. Getting out it is not tough, getting out and stopping the ball near the flag, well... I used a a bit of foul language. Bravo.
You have actually contributed to bring a little peace between me and this "bastard" hole. There is no hotel and shack yet, but even the drive, going to the right to get a better angle to the green is not without dangers. I did not have the time to study the other holes with the same level of scrutiny, but I must say, the more I play your course, the more I am convinced you are up to something good.

I got par on this hole by the way.

One question: did you devote any special attention to the rough? The reason I am asking is because I think that those I ended up on, by design and by mistake, played a bit too easy. When playing at Champ level, the angle of the terrain must be factored in the shot, something not as crucial in Amateur or even Pro level. Well here there was not a lot of need to compensate the shots.

Overall, greens feel a bit easy even in M/Fc (definitely feel slow in Sc/Fc), but that comes from playing the current Links course by comparison and I have not gone to great extents to study your course against the actual courese. This is an area where I am not sure I have any good advice, though.

I hope you get a chance to finish this course, because you may be up to something really good. People like me who are fanatic^2 for realism are always looking for latest versions of real courses.

I also encourage you to make #18 legendary because it is one the greatest views in all of Golf,one that even people who do not play golf get to remember... and maybe you can have the 1924 British Track & Field Olympic team running on the beach nearby like in that famous sequence in Chariots of Fire ;-) Oh... and please do not forget the pipers ! Please, pretty please!

Keep up the good work and thank you.

[linkster]

I'm still working on this course, just not with any rush to hit a desired deadline now that The Open has passed. I am actually redoing the course based on a 2m terrain grid from the LIDAR elevations. It doesn't seems like much but going from a 3m grid to a 2m grid actually more than doubles the number of verts to capture the terrain. From my early looks around the course with a 2m grid it seems to capture the small humps and bumps of the fairways better. This should give more difficulty when compensating aiming from an uneven lie. The greens from the first version of this course were contoured using 5 cm lines (2 inches) but I am working with 2 cm contour lines and using more verts in the flatter areas of the green to add a little more subtle breaks to the greens. I think these changes will make the course more difficult but as seen in The Open, The Old Course is not overly difficult to start with.

The way that I am building this course with the most recent LIDAR data seems to be completely different from how courses were done in the past. If I am wrong someone can correct me on this! As with any new method there are growing pains and I think I have learned a lot just from the feedback on this course. It is very encouraging to hear that I am on the right track and the results seem to be accurate to the real course. I have also learned a few tricks on how to speed up the designing process when integrating QGIS with Google Earth images and the LIDAR data. I'll share what I have learned in the next LIDAR tutorial.

If anyone out there has any or finds some straight-on images of the buildings around the 17th and 18th holes I would be very interested in them! I found some straight-on images of the R & A Clubhouse and Hamilton Grand for behind the 18th green. I will use them for the 3D buildings. There are lots of images of Rusacks and The Old Course hotel but they are all at an angle and difficult to use for texturing a building.

There will be a new LIDAR version of The Old Course, just can't give a date of when it will get completed. My problem is that I now have a bunch of major championship course terrains on my computer to play with. It takes about 4 hours for me to get the terrain and overlay image into the APCD. It takes A LOT more to get the course finished for play in LINKS! I'll never be able to build them all so I'll have to pick and choose. There are other designers messing around with courses with LIDAR terrains I created. Hopefully there will soon be some finished releases.

[Adelade]

I am working with 2 cm contour lines and using more verts in the flatter areas of the green to add a little more subtle breaks to the greens.

its nice to see someone else reaching this conclusion and solution. Takes a bit of creativity. Should turn out well.

The way that I am building this course with the most recent LIDAR data seems to be completely different from how courses were done in the past. If I am wrong someone can correct me on this!

Some courses have been made with DEM in the past, which is probably very similar to your methods even if I cant tell exactly how similar in details, but yes, on the whole in the ocean of courses made, those courses are a small minority.

If anyone out there has any or finds some straight-on images of the buildings around the 17th and 18th holes I would be very interested in them! I found some straight-on images of the R & A Clubhouse and Hamilton Grand for behind the 18th green. I will use them for the 3D buildings. There are lots of images of Rusacks and The Old Course hotel but they are all at an angle and difficult to use for texturing a building.

Not exactly what you were asking for, but: I think some of the St Andrews buildings were user-made into freely available 3D objects, which you can access by downloading this APCD uploaded by Dan - https://linkscorner.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=348

[ponkey]

Yes Adelade, quite a few buildings from St Andrews are in the original APCD planting set. I think they might have been in Links2001. They are not very good for the game, they are blurry, but might be able to be used as a guide for creating them in APCD.

I would agree with hose who said the course looks flatter than it should, the 3m grid version. But that is probably down to the surface not hugging the verts.
Changing the edge sharpness to 1 does tighten it up a little bit as would using a 2m grid.

Maybe when you rescaled the z axis points after uploading the dem into APCD a slightly different (less) scale factor might render it better?
Just a thought.
I love the idea of using the LIDAR though, we just need to experiment a little to see what works best, and that is great fun too !!

Peter

[ponkey]

Hi again.

When Linkster said that he rescaled the z axis elevation in APCD using a uniform constrained thingy I thought I knew what he was talking about. But when I loaded up the TCC.crz into my APCD, it turns out I didn't.
I tried selecting all the verts and using the scale button with Uniform constrained selected, but some verts went up and some went down.
I then tried doing it with the surface selected but the same thing happened. How do I get all the verts to drop to one tenth of their height without doing each one separately ?

Thank you
Peter

[Adelade]

How do I get all the verts to drop to one tenth of their height without doing each one separately ?

I dont think there is any convenient way to achieve that (at least not that I know of). With constrained Z scale, Im pretty sure they scale from/towards the average height of all the selected verts.

One possible, but probably impractical solution, would be to add verts at the edge of the plot or something, then pull them down really far until your original selection of verts + those new ones average the height of 0. Then, if you select those pixels together, I believe you could achieve what you're describing with constrained scale on the Z axis. But if your original selection of verts is an entire DEM plot... it might take a nearly endless amount of added verts to be pulled downwards a nearly endless amount in order to achieve that.