Tiger Fan wrote:Gary
Is there any particular data we should be looking for to help us recreate real courses? Do we just need overhead images and yardage or is there a lot more data required if we want them to be fairly accurate?
Checking out the PGA tour site I see some courses have full flyovers of each hole and tons of info while others have nothing more than par and distance.
Excellent question for those of you who want to get started planning things now.
Obviously overhead images/hole layout and yardage are going to be needed. After that its up to you really how realistic you are trying to make the hole. One factor you can set on the hole is green speed so it helps if you know which greens are more difficult/sloped than others so that you can change the setting on your greens to make them easier or harder or just average. The other factor you can set at any location is the slope of the terrain there in terms of yards above or below the hole. If you don't set the slope factors your course will play flat - not that that is not ok and some courses are flat but if your course is totally flat it will take out some strategy since you won't need to adjust your clubs for slope. Of course maybe you might be creating a totally fictional course or just your local muni course and that's all it is so its not necessary to add slope if it doesn't exist but if it does it will make the course play more realistic.