Golf Sim Clubhouse Forum

DC#1 wrote:Thanks for all the help Viper. I had to add the DVD drive to virtual box and check the pass through box. Then I could install PGA. I see what you mean about 4 clicks instead of 3. Weird.

Excellent! Glad you got it going.
Yeah, the clicking is now a double click to start, then as per normal.
Let me know if you find any issues besides Truswing not working properly.

Ok, probably talking to myself but found something of interest. I'll post it for anyone who might come along and read this post.

I installed PGA 2000 on my old Win XP machine and had a play with it. I never played PGA 2000 at it's peak, I was a Microsoft Links player. At some point later on, I bought PGA 2000 and started messing with it. I always had trouble with Truswing. I know people said it was great but I really didn't think anything of it.
Now that I have PGA 2000 on a XP machine, thought I would give Truswing a try. My god, it is super good!

So what's the difference? Why hate it and now like it?
I put it all down to the computer mouse you use. By the time I first played PGA 2000, PC mice were becoming fancy. I always owned good quality mice. On the XP machine I just installed PGA 2000 too, I use a super cheap mouse. It's no more fancy than the typical mice we would've all been using in 1999/2000.

Well, with a basic and very simple mouse, Truswing is brilliant! When I played it with my fancy modern gaming mouse, I really struggled for any type of consistency.

The game was made when there was nothing but basic computer mice available. I mean, back then fancy would mean your mouse had a scroll wheel!
I'm now convinced you need to play this game with a very basic mouse similar to the hardware that was around when the game was released and Truswing is great!

What does this mean for Win 10 and the VM? I'm ditching it because Truswing doesn't work and I'll play PGA 2000 on my old Win XP system.

I'm over 20 years late but think I finally discovered PGA 2000.

Viper ! I totally agree with your tru swing thoughts. I always played tru swing and my game deteriorated after about 2012 and could never find that magic that I occasionally had in the mid to late 2000's. Tried different mouse with no luck and came to the same conclusion you discovered.

The absolute best experience is probably to use a ball mouse. I remember some people would swear by it and wouldn't play anything else. The cheap optical mice of the time would not pick up the movement correctly if you moved too fast and the result would be a weak shot. I played a ball mouse with no issues until I got a new computer in 2004. It came with a cheap Dell optical mouse and this was an issue for me but it only happened once in a while so I played through it. For today's mice I wouldn't think that would be an issue. I would guess the problem with today's mice is software acceleration messing up the timing of the swing. In the old days there was something called "enhance pointer precision" in the windows mouse settings that you could uncheck. That setting still exists but in today's fancy mice something similar could be a setting in the software that comes with your mouse that you also have to turn off or it could be built into the mouse driver with no way to turn it off. I don't play the game enough right now to know for sure with the newer mice and my swing would be bad no matter what I tried right now until I got some practice in.

I'm glad to read you guys are with me on this.

Brian, yes, ball mice were what we all used, not even sure how much later it was that optical came in.
I currently own a Logitech G502 I think it is. You can set dpi, all kinds of stuff and it's all extremely precise.
I used this mouse the last time I tried truswing and played with every feature the mouse has to try and get consistent results. Nothing worked. I thought truswing was complete and total BS.

I'd say it's simply a case of modern mice, optical mice, being too accurate.
Truswing would've been built for the precision, or lack of, of the old time ball mouse. As precision increased with mice, the worse it became or you could say the more incompatible the hardware became with the software behind truswing.

Sooo...I can say if anyone is in the market to buy a mouse, I'm using the Logitech MK120 keyboard/mouse combo. I'm in Australia, RRP is $24.95AU but googling you will always get it way cheaper. I paid $10AU. In US dollars that's likely under $7. I can also tell you this, I have the Logitech G910 keyboard but much prefer the feel of the MK120 keyboard!

The mouse that comes in the MK120 package for me is working brilliantly, I had real control and consistency over my swing. Totally enjoyed it!

To this point, the only mouse swing I thought was any good with a modern mouse was Tiger Woods 2003. I think this game is suited to a modern mouse but PGA 2000 you have to go the old mouse route.

Anyhow, in an age where golf games are few and far between, to discover PGA 2000 and truswing is very exciting. It's like getting a brand new golf game and I can see I will be spending tonnes of time with it.

I always thought PGA 2000 had so much potential but the swing types let it down despite what I read from users on the internet. Totally changed my mind. 20 years from now (hopefully I'm still on the right side of the planet) I'll still be playing it.

It's not expensive to keep a Windows XP system going either. In Australia you can usually pick up a complete rig good enough to play PGA 2000 for around $50AU. You could go crazy and spend another $30 to 50 on a quality graphics card and you are really set with a high end rig. It's probably around the same price people paid for the game back then. Now you can get a complete PC to run it for the same price.

Can't believe I missed 20 years of this game. The plus point is the courses are already out there. lol

Now let's just get the people back. I wanna talk lots of PGA 2000!

BrianZ111 wrote:I would guess the problem with today's mice is software acceleration messing up the timing of the swing.

I can turn this off so there is no acceleration. I can adjust dpi so I can determine how much physical mouse movement is required to get the pointer from one side of the screen to the other. You can also set polling rate that controls how many times it's position is reported back to the PC. There is literally nothing you cannot control other than the accuracy of the mouse.

A ball mouse as you suggest is likely the ideal option. Next best option is the cheapest optical mouse you can find. Never thought I would say this, but might be worth even hitting eBay to find the cheapest Chinese import you can find and buy it! lol

I have no idea why more precision would be a problem. Sounds like you tried this already but you could try setting your DPI and polling rate low to mimic an old or cheap mouse's specs. I'm glad you got something that works though. Like I said though, I haven't played the game enough lately to know. When the WON servers shut down in 2007 that was a pretty big blow. Only the hard core players made the switch to playing online with Kali. I made the switch for awhile but the numbers weren't there for just getting a match anytime. You pretty much had to schedule the time you wanted to play with someone. I've really only played it off and on since 2010, shortly after CPG/WGC's swing finally got good. Kind of the same story as yours with PGA 2000, the game's swing was terrible for the first 4 years and then they fixed it but nobody would try it again anymore. I have a dedicated group of friends I made from that game and we used to play it every Friday night before they shut online play down there. Now we're stuck with Perfect Golf and The Golf Club both of which have tempo based swings that I hate. Anyway that's a little off topic. I'd love to see people get back into this game but I'm not expecting it at this point, it's too inconvenient. If you could develop it a little to work with today's OS's and mince and get it on something like Steam where people can find it and play it online then you'd really have something though.

Brian,

Regarding precision, we don't know how PGA works unfortunately. I tried masses of settings on my current mouse and still could not get any consistency. The only thing we can't control with a modern mouse is making the movement less precise. I'm thinking truswing needs to see a certain amount of variation coming from the mouse. When it doesn't see enough of it, at some point in the mouse movement it confuses the software and the result it gives is not correct.

I don't hold any hope of people coming back either but it is a nice thought. Back in 2000 we had so many golf games. Communities arguing over which is best and the user simply didn't have enough time to play them all. I'm with you on the current sims, they suck, and Perfect Golf is just as dead as all the old sims. It's apparently been sold off and looks like no one is intending to do anything with it. It'll be interesting to see how long it continues to work. That's the problem with Steam games, I'm not sure exactly how it would work if a developer totally pulls the plug on a game. At least with the old sims like PGA, Links, Tiger Woods and GBC you get to play them till you have no hardware left. With the abundance of PC parts out there, maybe if you are in your 20's you may panic a little but the rest of us should have hardware available long enough to keep playing these games as long as we wish or can.

I still work but when I retire, heck, might even design a PGA 2000 course so don't close this site just yet, I'll have nowhere to upload my course! lol

I don't know all the people who have kept places like this site going for so long but thanks, it is great to have it here.

The problem is I like playing with other people so when the people are gone it's hard for me to sustain interest. Playing against AI just doesn't do it for me. I don't think there's ever been a golf game with believable AI. I can play against myself for personal best scores on courses but it gets a little old for me after a few months.

Regardless of that I agree with you that I hate this cloud model for gaming though. It takes the control away from the user and turns it into more like console gaming. I was lucky enough to grow up just at the right time in the second half of the 90's. It was really the golden age of computer games, game modding, and customization. Well I suppose everybody thinks they grew up in a golden age but it feels like we are going back the other way and taking control away from the users. I've been a golfer my whole life but I've gotten more into real golf and playing amateur tournaments in the last decade in part because of how computer golf has been lacking. It's weird to think about but if I was growing up today I might not even be all that interested in computer games. They did just do a (final?) update to Perfect Golf a couple months ago that allows you to play it offline now so I'll give them props for that. I wish I could mod it to create a swing method without their forced tempo though.

I just paid the hosting bill for another 3 years so we're good for at least that long here. It's cheaper in the long run to pay for that much at a time. It is hosting more than just this site so it's not like I'm paying just to keep this place open. I have no plans on shutting it down.

BrianZ111 wrote:The problem is I like playing with other people so when the people are gone it's hard for me to sustain interest. Playing against AI just doesn't do it for me. I don't think there's ever been a golf game with believable AI. I can play against myself for personal best scores on courses but it gets a little old for me after a few months.

I've always played nothing but season/tournament play. Never get tired of it.

BrianZ111 wrote: I was lucky enough to grow up just at the right time in the second half of the 90's. It was really the golden age of computer games, game modding, and customization. Well I suppose everybody thinks they grew up in a golden age

Agree. I enjoy games up until around 2005/06. I miss going into stores, browsing game boxes, coming home with a nice new box and disc to put in the PC. After this period games started going backwards imo. Steam and similar, hate it.

BrianZ111 wrote: I just paid the hosting bill for another 3 years so we're good for at least that long here. It's cheaper in the long run to pay for that much at a time. It is hosting more than just this site so it's not like I'm paying just to keep this place open. I have no plans on shutting it down.

That's great news.