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Post by metatropic on Mar 28, 2024 5:07:35 GMT -5
Golf de Morfontaine GP is my take on the number one ranked course in continental Europe. This course is very very special and I hope I have done it justice. As we did with Prairie Dunes, I have decided to make some careful lengthening of this course, not for the sake of it but to ensure the original intended shot values are maintained. I believe the changes I have made have improved the playability. The new back tees are black. If you want the purist experience, the white tees are unaltered from the real thing. I've elected for quite fast greens (168s) to make the most of their brilliant slopes. I've tested at very fast too and there is nothing illegal. I've gone for a burnt summer look, based on the great Gary Lisbon photoshoot (thanks gamesdecent and b101 for showing me those): www.golfphotos.com.au/France/Morfontaine/i-cQt6dGR/A. Play this course and play it again and again; it's one of those that just gets better each time you play it, there is so much subtlety in the greensites. Thanks to mmallahan for playtesting betas and spotting little sculpting disasters, and thanks chatgptgolfklubber2.0 for encouraging me to take this on! Now for some photos and my course guide Obligatory routing shot. The short 9-hole Valliere course is top right, which I've also published. Vibes from above the 4th green. The 8th, 9th and 11th greens are beautifully clustered. It has been such a joy to work on this course. I feel somewhat bereft to have finished, like after a really good book. Still, got to start focusing on all things Strantz now for NT, a somewhat different vibe.
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Post by oneputtguru on Mar 28, 2024 18:11:03 GMT -5
Instant classic.
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Post by fargo on Mar 28, 2024 22:57:19 GMT -5
This has to be your best RCR, atmosphere work here is awesome.
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Post by metatropic on Mar 29, 2024 1:19:05 GMT -5
This has to be your best RCR, atmosphere work here is awesome. Thanks. Yeah pleased with how this turned out, and I think it’s at least as good as Valhalla and Prairie Dunes; put more effort in for this for sure. So a little puzzled that this was not deemed Tour Worthy like those others were. Is it just the wrong style of course? Or what more can I do? Are there surfacing or sculpting issues? I tried so hard to get those right. Maybe I just need to get good…
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Post by fargo on Mar 29, 2024 2:03:06 GMT -5
This has to be your best RCR, atmosphere work here is awesome. not deemed Tour Worthy That's bizarre. Maybe it's the tree in front of the green...
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Post by metatropic on Mar 29, 2024 2:45:54 GMT -5
That's bizarre. Maybe it's the tree in front of the green... That's not on me!
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Post by b101 on Mar 29, 2024 3:04:42 GMT -5
This has to be your best RCR, atmosphere work here is awesome. Thanks. Yeah pleased with how this turned out, and I think it’s at least as good as Valhalla and Prairie Dunes; put more effort in for this for sure. So a little puzzled that this was not deemed Tour Worthy like those others were. Is it just the wrong style of course? Or what more can I do? Are there surfacing or sculpting issues? I tried so hard to get those right. Maybe I just need to get good… It was my review and ran it by two other reviewers as well - we all agreed. Happy to address in here as you're raising it and it's nothing to do with the style of course: 1) The environment isn't consistent. Look at the depth of planting you have on Prairie Dunes - there are no barren or empty areas. There's some on basically every hole here. 2) The green sculpting and fairway areas aren't where they should be. If you look at where the red slopes are on some greens or going into bunkers, they haven't been lined up correctly (bear in mind that there's never a perfect match with OSM and Lidar data, so you have to move bunkers to fit. 3) The bunkering itself isn't really the Morfontaine style (ragged) - see video below. With a lidar/RCR, there's a level of accuracy that isn't there with fictional courses. Compare the bunkers at 1.23 in the video below vs the course itself. It's still really the same thing with all your Approved courses (see: Hollinwell, for example) - you need to take more time. If just pumping them out and hitting this level is what you're after, by all means keep going. If you want Tour Worthy, it needs much more of a critical eye. Look around - see the empty areas and fill them. I loved Prairie Dunes so it isn't a 'you' thing, but if you compare the two with a critical eye, you'll see it. Hope that helps.
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Post by metatropic on Mar 29, 2024 3:34:05 GMT -5
Thank you Ben.
My process here and on PD was the same. PD being less lumpy gave me a lot more meter to work with. I put more time overall on this I’d say. Obviously PD wasn’t just my work!
looking at photos of Morfontaine the planting is quite patchy, with well defined areas of heather and other areas of shorter grass. I tried to capture that. I could have gone for less dense planting to manage meter and get it more even but I don’t think that would have looked as good. I can’t abide spaces between individual bits of grass, completely ruins the realism in my view.
I also did try to get surfaces right. I spent hours adjusting bunker and green splines. Annoyed I haven’t hit the mark there. The OSM offset here was pretty minimal compared to other courses I’ve worked on, maybe that lulled me into false security.
The bunker sculpting is really the best I could do. The IRL sculpting looks amazing, but I’m not sure it’s achievable with the tools we have. I tried to get a compromise look to the edging.
So I don’t think this was about time, but about stylistic choices I made to deal with the limitations of LiDAR work. I take your point about surface splining, but it’s not that I didn’t look at those things or do my best! I also need to refine my critical eye as I still can’t see some of the things that you can…
Dammit this is hard!
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Post by mattyfromcanada on Mar 29, 2024 4:06:58 GMT -5
Another thing I'll mention is you do extremely dense patches of planting with grasses/underbrush. If you break those up and spread that out you'll get waaaaay more coverage to cover those baren areas. Has the same issue with Caprock which I felt the planting was off as well.
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Post by metatropic on Mar 29, 2024 5:01:51 GMT -5
Another thing I'll mention is you do extremely dense patches of planting with grasses/underbrush. If you break those up and spread that out you'll get waaaaay more coverage to cover those baren areas. Has the same issue with Caprock which I felt the planting was off as well. Thanks Matty, that’s helped to crystallise some nagging doubts. As I said above, I don’t like seeing gaps between individual bits of grass; completely destroys the realism for me. So I think I overcompensate with grass density. But with care I am sure I could reduce density by 30-40% without losing too much apparent density, and thereby gain an equivalent amount of coverage. Good use of the “extra time” I need to put in! On CapRock I took a big meter hit on the LiDAR data (inevitably given the landscape) and so had to make big compromises with the large prairie grass areas. I was happier with the grasses than the trees for which I spent ages shuffling around the meagre few I was allowed… No such excuses on Monteagle I guess! Could definitely have thinned some of that out. Realise now a schoolboy error I made at the beginning of Morfontaine; I imported the whole plot, both courses, into the file, and did both courses on that. I should have done two files, one for each course, and masked the other course. Would probable have recovered 20% meter.
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Post by metatropic on Mar 29, 2024 5:17:11 GMT -5
One more thing I would say is that evenness of planting can be overdone. I do see a lot of courses that are excessively evenly planted and it looks unrealistic as a result. This is flip-side to the cognitive bias known as the clustering illusion; we expect nature to be more even than it is, so we see patterns that aren’t there. The patchy planting I do is a choice mostly rather than laziness (honest). But again I probably overcompensate. Seems like overcompensating is the story of my life
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Post by fransslabak on Mar 29, 2024 15:00:25 GMT -5
Just played this one and, really, this is just brilliant; one of the best courses available in 2k23!
It looks lovely... It plays even better... It's a golf course, a proper golf course...
Could not wish for anything more!
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Post by metatropic on Mar 29, 2024 15:08:02 GMT -5
Just played this one and, really, this is just brilliant; one of the best courses available in 2k23! It looks lovely... It plays even better... It's a golf course, a proper golf course... Could not wish for anything more! Thanks Frans. I love it too! It plays so well, and the more I play it the more I find to love. I’d kill to play their IRL and I don’t play IRL golf any more!
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