Augusta Again?

[Polslad]

Hi All,
Is there anybody out there?
Since starting playing again earlier this year, I have played Augusta National, both mine from 2005 and the latest release, (which is very similar) and every time I play I am reminded on how the greens are not really accurate and disappointing.
I'm wondering if our new more powerful PC's would allow me another attempt at creating a more accurate rendition of the layout, if only for my own use.
In all my years of playing, I have never managed to win a tournament there.

Is there any interest anymore in this game, or are we all walking around in those virtual reality headsets?

[Viper]

Yes there is! I'm quiet for a couple more years due to work taking up all my time but after this intend to go wild with PGA 2000!
Any update of Augusta would be great. I know I've read elsewhere people still playing and checking this site despite not posting.

I really want to pump up interest in PGA 2000 and other old golf games in a couple of years when the time will allow. This site is the ideal hub for it all.

[SteveHorn]

Hello David and Everyone else out there.
I'm all for a 4th version of Augusta National , but I also have never won a Masters I rank the 3 current versions about the same as A- course's and played all 3 in the last Masters tournament. Some greens are not accurate but if you combine the best of all three course's some are pretty close.
I'm in the stretch run of my current marathon (48 tournaments) season #15. I've also updated some of my course's but have 2 more I want to touch up or make a few change's to. Haven't released any updated one's yet. Everyone swing away and go low.

[Viper]

Hello David and Everyone else out there.
I'm all for a 4th version of Augusta National , but I also have never won a Masters I rank the 3 current versions about the same as A- course's and played all 3 in the last Masters tournament. Some greens are not accurate but if you combine the best of all three course's some are pretty close.
I'm in the stretch run of my current marathon (48 tournaments) season #15. I've also updated some of my course's but have 2 more I want to touch up or make a few change's to. Haven't released any updated one's yet. Everyone swing away and go low.

Great to see you guys are still here! I fire up PGA 2000 every now and again just to have a quick look, hit a couple of practice shots. Really looking forward to when I can play again. Work is a killer atm.

[BrianZ111]

I think it would be worth pursuing to try to use high resolution LiDAR to create the next version. I made some progress on this recently but it's not all the way there were we could do a full course with it yet. The spacing of the points of the triangles in an initial plot mesh is 20 yards and the largest possible initial plot is 5000 x 5000 yards. I figured out with a little hex editing of a 5000 x 5000 yard starting file that I could condense those points down to 1 yard spacing and get a high resolution terrain, but the problem is it shrinks the plot size to 250 x 250 yards. I haven't really looked that much into trying to get around this hurdle yet so I'm hopeful that there will be a solution when I get a chance to look into it again. Polslad, if your interested in doing the planting I'll do the Augusta plot if/when I figure how to make it work that way. Can't make any promises on when that might be though because I've got a lot of other things going on right now and I don't know how long it will take to figure out or if it's even possible.

The reason I stopped there on working on that problem for now is the purpose I was doing it for at the time only required me to do one hole at a time. We've been using Peter Flory's model of the Lido to recreate the Lido at Sand Valley using GPS bulldozer equipment. Some of that model we ended up wanting to reshape and I got the opportunity to do that. Since there was no way I was going to attempt to do it in PGA 2k21 like Peter did, I figured out how to pull the data from Peter's model into PGA 2000 as if it was LiDAR and then reshape it from there. It's pretty cool that the techniques I learned from DanO and Stefan Højgaard on creating natural looking fairway contours way back when are now put to use in real land on holes 1 and 6 at the recreated Lido in Wisconsin. Wish they were still around here to share that moment with. I think none of us could have even imagined that possibility 15 years ago.

[DC#1]

I'm still here Pols. I would like to see a new version too. I agree about the greens and that is augusta's best defense so that would be great to get them closer to real life. Still playing and designing. I will be looking foward to those updates Steve. Been a busy summer for work and just getting over covid. I should get time this winter to finish my first real course creation. Brian, wow what can you say about that. What an amazing thing to happen to you, I am really happy for you. Thanks again for all you do to keep this site open.

[BrianZ111]

Thanks! Glad you're still here. Hope you're feeling better and look forward to playing you're new course when you finish.

[Polslad]

Project moved right to the back burner.
Decided to return to work after 20 months off.
Started a new job this week, need to settle into my new routine before I can enjoy my free time.