In-Depth: How Developer ‘Perfect Parallel’ is Changing the Game of Golf

It All Started in Scotland

The discovery of Perfect Parallel is something of a twist. While we cover news involving game development and engines regularly at Architosh, particularly Unity, this story about Perfect Parallel would have never truly happened if I had not traveled to northern Scotland for a celebratory/pilgrimage of sorts for my half-century birthday.

The location was Royal Dornoch, the highlands birthplace of legendary golf course architect Donald Ross, and my ambition for this trip wasn’t singularly focused on just the playing of golf as much as to relish one of the world’s most celebrated well-springs of golf architectural creativity. It was in Dornoch, a small town far to the north in Scotland, that my mind began to rekindle an obsession with the design of courses that commenced in my early teens. I wondered, as I was playing those fabled links…what is state-of-the-art in golf course architecture today and what software tools are involved?

That question was it.

And it brought something back from my past to my present. Once back in Boston, I immediately started researching software used in the process of golf course design. I wasn’t searching for the software that I correctly assumed was utilized, things like AutoCAD and Microstation, but the novel and more task-specific variety of digital tools. Did they even exist? They had to, I pondered…

This led me to Perfect Parallel.

Perfect Parallel: The Who, the Why and the Now

Perfect Parallel is a software company specializing in virtual sports gaming, broadcast television, visualization and simulation. Andrew Jones is president and chief operating officer. I asked him how this all got started.

“Some of us, including myself, come from a background associated with the old Links LS golf game,” he stated. Jones went on to explain that he was involved in a group and website focused on golf courses for Links that were developed by that company’s gaming community, using the Links 2001 Course Designer and Course Converter, parts of an expansion pack for the Codie Award-winning golf game, Links LS, originally developed by Access and later acquired by Microsoft.

While much of gaming’s recent past has swung over to the consoles, Perfect Parallel stayed connected to the technology that led the world of digital golf gaming on the PC. Over time Jones built a team and software group focused on bringing the best of golf gaming back to the personal computer. “We are focused on the most realistic golf gaming experience possible,” Jones said, “and this isn’t just about how good the game looks.”

At the present, Perfect Parallel has its maiden golf game set for launch this coming fall, but the game is in early release on Steam for Windows and Mac now.

Yet the game is just one small but important aspect that makes up Perfect Parallel. There also is a suite of professional tools being used by broadcast golf channels and, of course, the design tools—the part that is really exciting and interesting to those who are involved in their strategic vision and with the evolution of their technology.

Perfect Parallel: The Partnership with Nicklaus Design

Back in late 2014 Perfect Parallel and Nicklaus Design, the world leader in golf course design and the global firm founded by golf icon Jack Nicklaus, announced a joint strategic initiative. For Nicklaus Design the goal was to adapt three-dimensional (3D) modeling techniques developed in gaming and entertainment and bring them to professional golf course design, using Perfect Parallel’s technology stack. (see image 01)

In a nutshell, the partnership was about merging gaming technology with professional computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D visualization workflows.

The parts of the puzzle consist of Perfect Parallel’s software arsenal:

• TerrainForge™ — a set of software tools that can import terrain data, mapping and survey data, and photographic imagery to create fully geo-referenced 3D digital models.
• CourseForge™ — a professional suite of 3D golf course design tools and outdoor terrain and vegetation modeling software that dramatically shortens the time to produce a realistic 3D model of a complete course (see image 02).
• Broadcast Suite — a fully networked broadcast television application that allows a user to select and record still and animated views of a 3D golf course model created in the CourseForge tool, and then distribute that content to a variety of platforms purposeful to broadcast TV, gaming and visualization services.
• Perfect Golf — the PC golf game and simulator software, which when used by professional clients, allows those clients to play digital prototypes of new and renovated courses.

Technically, all of these software tools have some common component, perhaps the most important being PerfectEngine™, which is Perfect Parallel’s proprietary software core.

I asked Andrew Jones what makes PerfectEngine™ stand out from other physics engines—like Bullet—used in gaming and many pro 3D applications. “At first we looked at common physics engines like Bullet,” Jones noted, “but in the end, we knew we had to write our own engine from scratch.”

“Our engine brings the true physics of golf to our products and game, such that the golf ball reacts to turf conditions in a way that no other golf game or simulator has achieved before.” Jones said. “Also, all of our physics are calculated in real time and deal with randomized weather conditions.”

To test out Jones’ claims, I did something I’ve never done before—review a game as part of a core technology for a professional workflow.

next page: PerfectEngine™ and Perfect Golf: Their Many Uses

PerfectEngine™ and Perfect Golf: Their Many Uses

While Perfect Golf is the product coming out of Perfect Parallels’ game studio, the core technology is also fueling the company’s strategic partnership with Nicklaus Design. The gaming technology is enabling the Nicklaus Design team to experience a highly detailed 3D model of the entire course in real time—whether in flyby mode or native 3D navigation mode. More importantly, it also enables Nicklaus Design to virtually play their proposed layouts before a single shovel or bulldozer touches the ground.

I’ll discuss in more detail how Nicklaus Design utilizes Perfect Parallel’s technology, but while on the subject of game play, I’ll cover the aspects of the gaming product.

Game Play

Perfect Golf is currently in an early release or tech preview running phase on Steam. Jones said the game should officially be released in the fall.

The first thing one might notice about Perfect Golf is its stunning graphics. (see image 03 – 04) What makes the graphics special is they’re procedural textures-based, unlike say, the popular WGT (World Golf Tour).

“WGT is a 2D/3D environment based on photographic images,” Jones noted, “So they have a unique advantage in photo-realism. But you can’t actually walk around in that environment; you can’t hit your golf ball and then take a golf cart down the cart path to your ball. Perfect Golf  has the technology that can enable such a capability.”

As a true 3D modeled environment with PerfectEngine™ technology behind it, Perfect Golf is a virtually habitual environment with simulated weather based on geo-referenced locations, coupled with industry leading golf ball and turf physics.

And this shows in the game play. Having played Links and Links LS in the late 1990’s and, more recently, the popular Tiger Woods Golf (TWG), Perfect Golf has some immediate charms and advantages.

Advantage number one is the procedural texture graphics. I was particularly impressed with the edge conditions along the bunkers and the overall variety of textures for foliage and turf. (see image 02 for turf edge, image 06 and the flyby)

The second advantage, and likely the most important one, is the physics behind the ball flight and ball-to-turf interaction. Unlike say the Tiger Woods game franchise, you can’t just jump into Perfect Golf and immediately start shooting par and sub-par rounds. Jones explained why:

“We have real-time, randomized physics, including the weather. If you have the wind settings turned up high, you may get a random wind gust half-way through your ball’s flight.” Jones also  explained that they have random lie conditions when you end up in the rough and bunkers. This means, depending on your ball flight conditions, you might face deeply embedded lies in bunkers and awful lies in the rough.

What’s neat about Perfect Golf is that the game provides the player data on the condition of their lie in these shots, estimating percentage of loss in power and spin. And you have to time your shot in the game perfectly to match those estimated percentages.

Speaking of spin, Perfect Golf is the first golf game I’ve ever played that captures truly realistic spin physics with the golf ball. You can take a look at the QuickTime movie below for an example. If you strike a short iron from a good lie and land on the green, your ball will react very realistically. It will hit, bounce forward and then spin back. And depending on the green’s “stimp” or speed settings, and the actual slope and contours of the green, the ball could spin back all the way off the green—just like at the Masters!

What Perfect Golf does so well is simulate playing a real course under actual conditions. As such, the game is a fantastic self-teaching and practice tool for golfers of all abilities, because it helps you hone your course management skills.

While this is not a full game review (we’ve never really done a game review), -I’ll summarize Perfect Golf this way: It sheds the gimmicky features of simulated galleries, virtual tours and prize money (at least for now) in favor of great simulated golf play and beautiful, immersive 3D-modeled golf environments.

Simulation

A great simulated golf playing experience on top of the best 3D-modeled golf environment turns out to be a really valuable asset to Nicklaus Design. As Bobby Root, the Manager of Technical Applications for Nicklaus Design, said, “Nicklaus Design has always been a leader in the use of computerized technology, and when we saw what Perfect Parallel had to offer, we knew this held value to both our clients and the design process.”

The global trend in computer-aided industries, such as architecture, engineering, aerospace, manufacturing and medicine, is that we have entered the era of simulation and performance evaluation. In the late 20th century, computer-aided design (CAD) focused on digitizing the drawn and visual workflows of countless industries, transitioning from 2D to 3D modes.

Then, with the arrival of computer graphics, we went from wireframe and simple-shaded models to models with image-based and procedural textures baked onto the polygonal surfaces in 3D models. Computer gaming, Hollywood special effects, and government defense industries all contributed to rapidly propelling the technologies that led to simulation of real physics and physical properties and actual imagined environments. This is the stage we are at in the golf course design/architecture industry and it is still nascent.

next page: Nicklaus Design and Perfect Parallel Technologies

Nicklaus Design and Perfect Parallel Technologies

The relationship between Nicklaus Design and Perfect Parallel includes proprietary access and use of certain Perfect Parallel applications. The core application that Nicklaus Design is utilizing in particular is CourseForge™—the tool used to develop a design into a fully simulated 3D model-based environment. The company also does a lot of flyby animations for professional events as part of its broadcast services. (see this vimeo film).

This particular tool is a set of custom-developed plugins for the Unity game engine, and they run across Windows, Mac and Linux. Outside of its application with Nicklaus Design, Perfect Parallel plans to release a version of CourseForge for its gaming community, so that those playing Perfect Golf, the game, can create their own courses.

Jones explained how Nicklaus Design benefits from for CourseForge: “With our technologies, Nicklaus Design can propose renovations to their existing golf courses and then have the members digitally play the changes before they are made.”

Yet CourseForge, for all this novelty being introduced into the course design process, is also fundamentally speeding up existing workflows.

“We have a full-time 3D animator who can create stunning visual flybys,” Root said. “Perfect Parallel’s technology means we can do this work faster. Their real-time rendering engine means no more waiting to render out a flyby animation after a design feature change. We can make a tweak to a bunker or green configuration, and then immediately experience and fly around that change.”

Extending the Nicklaus Workflow

Like most golf course design firms, Nicklaus Design has long embraced CAD. “We were on Microstation in the early 90’s,” Root said. The firm would eventually develop a set of proprietary plugins for Microstation called T2 Green, leading to Nicklaus Design’s proprietary CAD system.

Root explained that their T2 Green system enables the famed golf course design firm to organize the critical data about a course as they develop its design, such as cut-and-fill volumes, volume and areas of bunkers, greens, etc. It also helps them with the all important routing and contouring, and other tasks specific to course design.

“We have had the 3D visualization capacities for many years,” Root said. “We actually had our own render farm where a complex rendering could take an entire weekend.”

Today, the workflow consists of their T2 Green CAD system (built on the Microstation CAD platform) and the Perfect Parallel software tools and gaming engine core. I asked Root how his team has reacted to working within a gaming engine.

“Jumping into Unity required us to look at the design process from a completely different angle,” Root said. “But Unity is a major standard in animation. What we have learned is that the use of these tools, to visualize a golf course in three dimensions as we create it, speeds up the design process and allows us to engage our clients more directly in the creation of their courses. These tools have become invaluable with the routing work, as well, by allowing us to anticipate and resolve challenges at the outset that might not be apparent from the two dimensional views provided by traditional CAD tools.”

The Future of Golf

“Having done so much work in Asia, where the game of golf is growing tremendously, there isn’t always the available land to build a traditional course,” noted Root, who added that a typical course might occupy 150-180 acres. “So as a design firm, we are challenged to offer clients a golf experience, no matter how large the site or available property”.

Jack Niklaus realizes this and he wants Nicklaus Design to be adaptable and responsive, and a leader in these new areas of golf and golf entertainment.

Root explained that in South Korea, 80 percent of golf is played on sophisticated simulators. Because technology continues to become more refined and realistic, golf playing and learning technology continues to advance with virtual reality, motion sensors and body hardware.

Perfect Parallel’s relationship with Nicklaus Design has both companies well poised to address emerging changes and opportunities in the market. Their association gives the world’s leading golf course design firm a direct and influential role in perhaps the world’s best golf software technology. While this will no doubt aid the design side, Andrew Jones is banking this affiliation with the Nicklaus’ name will enable Perfect Golf to compete and thrive—as an indie developer—against other technology giants.