Trackman 4 Impact Location Detection and Display in Indoors Setting – is it accurate?

[BobTheGoose]

TrackMan 4 added Impact Location feature in 2018. With impact location, the ball flight calculation can factor in “gear effect”, i.e., the impact of toe and heel hits on ball curvatures.  This is especially important in indoors setting when the ball flight is from calculating a few measured data points, not from direct radar measurements. 

However, is the impact location detection and display in TrackMan 4 accurate? To answer this question, I performed a simple test:

-       I hit 15 driver shots in an indoor hitting bay.

-       For each shot, I use a new impact tape to get the actual impact location. There is some variation on where I apply the tape on the club face, but I tried my best to place it in the center of the club face (See picture 1). 

-       I take a picture before, during, and immediately after the club/ball impact from 2.5 feet behind the ball. It is not 100% accurate but you can roughly tell if it is a toe, heel, or center hit from these three pictures.

-       I make sure there is enough light in the hitting area. At about 2 feet above the tee, the light reading is at around 3500 lux. 

 

The following are the results from my testing:

-       For the 15 shots I took, TrackMan captured impact location of 11 shots. It missed the impact location in shot 3, 4, 6, and 13.

-       For the 11 shots that TrackMan detected Impact Locations, the display is very close to the actual impact location as reflected in the impact tapes. I cannot put the comparison in numbers, but TrackMan has no obvious misinterpretations. 

 

I capture all the results in pictures. See the pictures and draw you own conclusion on if TrackMan impact location display is a worthwhile feature. Picture 1:

11 Shots that TrackMan detected and displayed impact locations:

The following 4 shots are missed by TrackMan in impact location displays. Other than Shot 4, the other three shot are pretty bad mis-shots.

[jvincent]

Cool, thanks for posting.

[BobTheGoose]

Thanks for commenting. There is by no means scientific research, and I did not measure the actual offsets and heel/toe misses on the impact tapes, but I took effort to make the testing as objective as I can on this important topic in the launch monitor community. I used 240 frames per seconds (FPS) with 1000 shutter speed in the camera to make sure the impact pictures are easily view-able without blurs. I tried to have a good sample of all types of shots - toe shits, heel shits, as well as center hits - in the 15 shots....well, I know there is no dead center shots despite the best effort of mine. But you get the idea. Hope this is helpful.