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# Pro Putt by Top Golf feat. Jason Clevering

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## Description

Pro Putt by Top Golf

https://www.proputt.com/


Norbert Kozsir - @norbertkozsir

https://twitter.com/norbertkozsir

https://github.com/norbert515


Rody Davis - @rodydavis

https://twitter.com/rodydavis

https://github.com/rodydavis

https://youtube.com/rodydavis

https://rodydavis.com

Our podcast player: 

https://rodydavis.github.io/creative_engineering/

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## Transcript

**0:00** · welcome to creative engineering we have a special episode today with Jason clevering how you doing Jason doing great thanks for having me on the show and we also have my co-host Norbert how you doing Norbert hey I'm doing pretty well too so today we're going to be talking about prop put for uh by top golf for Oculus Quest that is coming out soon and uh Jason you are um what part of the team are you on so I'm I'm the president of the company and and essentially what I um work with the team is how however I can help dreams happen

**0:34** · and bring them to reality through uh through different aspects of the business um and then just general Partnerships um such as the one with top golf uh and other you know kind of General um business to-do lists in terms

**0:52** · of development so whether that comes from financing to you know something strategic um or looking down the road at at what we can do um in current climates as well

**1:08** · that uh that might be viable not only for us as a company but also for VR in general as it grows oh wow um so what what is your background with uh VR or just development in general um in terms of development well VR is is so new there's not a lot of of people out there that have been around long long time even though there's there's been different things that have dabbled in it you know from Nintendo on in in VR to

**1:39** · where we are today with something like the quest um my background is primarily in entertainment um in traditional specifically film and music um when it comes to development of games uh I did

**1:56** · study from a production standpoint uh at USC in California did uh worked on some beta teams through uh through my University years and stuff like that but at heart I am an Enthusiast um I'm somebody that started off with pong on a

**2:17** · black and white TV and I couldn't find any of my friends that were good enough so I actually it's the only thing I can do ambidextrously is play Pong so I'd play against myself for many many hours and then my dad would be like here take this tennis rack and play a real sport kid kick me outside so uh but no I I I went

**2:39** · through through the entire evolution of of video games that kind of says a lot about my age and I'm I'm definitely the the senior one at uh at prop put at Golf Scope or the parent company so uh so yeah I've seen it all and and just always always have approached Tech technology and gaming from some you know this these very childlike um amazement eyes and then this very keen Sense on how can you

**3:12** · involve the masses and then at the end of the day turn it into a business so uh Golf Scope like I said our our our parent company has really been that platform since late 2019 for for me to really work closely

**3:30** · with our founder Ryan Engle and uh and and develop into what we'll release here in a couple of days on the Oculus Quest wow that's amazing pretty cool where are you guys located so we're in Austin Texas um and it's you know an interesting mix of us that go from all level of golfer um all level of ability

**3:57** · in the tech world um in the design world in the business world all of that that we are this this Band of Brothers that somehow or another showed up you know in the same location at the same time to do some rather spectacular things and lend all of our talents to uh to a vision that uh our

**4:22** · our founder Ryan has really committed to since the first app that he created for the company called gol scope did a lot of your team like how much of your team do you think um was like their first experience with VR or was it other people had just game experience or was this all um professionals so it's other

**4:42** · than Ryan it's all our first um experience developing something for VR and uh definitely some interesting challenges I think the biggest rule of developing for VR is get it in the headset you know it's with with VR it's such an emerging um realm and I say that in in a

**5:05** · number of different senses it's it's emerging and reemerging at the same time in the sense that there are a lot of people in this world that have never experienced VR and it's not something you can describe you know I can't I can't put it into pros and you understand what it is like to stand on the beach course and watch birds fly overhead and I can't put it in a a video

**5:30** · and have you have your senses kind of start playing in VR meaning that it fills in the blanks where it almost feels like the sun is shining on you or the wind is blowing and things like that so VR truly requires somebody to be in the headset and then it's reemerging at the same time because you have technology like the quest that is getting rid of those firsttime ill

**5:55** · experiences that people have had in VR in terms of I give you a perfect example I'm I'm the best example of reemerging into VR my first experience in VR was with the psvr and Grand Turismo I'm a huge racing fan so I was like oh the first thing I'm goingon to do is strap myself into a car and like race through

**6:17** · these European streets at like you know 260 kilometers an hour okay well that worked for about four minutes and then I tore the headset off I ran in the bathroom I vomited for 15 minutes and then laid on my back for 3 hours and

**6:32** · swore I would never do VR again it's like your first tequila experience it's like no I'm never drinking that like you smell it and you start to get sick and I'd like see a VR headset in somebody's room and I'd be like oh God where's your bathroom so I think there's that reemergence so when it comes to development a lot of us are in that same

**6:54** · realm where we're trying to cast off anything that was bad in terms terms of VR at the same time we're trying to put our headset headsets on as often as possible so that we understand what we

**7:10** · we all have experience in 2D and 3D doing now when you put it in VR now you understand what what you truly have the power of doing I think more so than any other entertainment platform and that's truly surrounding somebody being able to commit to their emotional space as much as their physical space and so we're all

**7:37** · just you know kids trying to figure out how to make the cool stuff one thing the Oculus Quest got right is the six off tracking you know having the ability to move around a room versus just like the Oculus go where you're just doing like basically what cardboard did um like that was my first experience was the just the head tracking and it was great but I got so sick there's just something about like when you want to turn your head left and right that spatial awareness in VR that takes it to the next level and I remember getting so sick or just like you know for me the

**8:08** · Oculus Quest was one of the first devices that I almost did notice the pixels like you can if you start to pay attention but they really disappear when you're not paying attention versus like the cardboard where they're just it so obvious when you had a lower resolution phone or you know things that weren't made for it as well as just you know experiences like like you said like the psvr where it's just like you know this is it's cool but it's like Oculus Oculus

**8:33** · shows that can be so much better yeah and I think being able to cut the cord is so important it it doesn't matter how immersed you are the second you turn and you feel something kind of yank you back it Yanks you out it's not just like oh you know like okay I'm I'm at the my limit or you know or you feel it on your shoulder or something like that there's always going to be something that's breaking the VR wall and pulling you out of the experience so with the quest not having that you truly feel immersed at

**9:02** · that point in time it's like there's the the you've lost the world around you because there's nothing literally tethering you to the world around you so yeah now I'm literally breaking physical walls exactly with the quest you gain so much flexibility because I mean in golf you don't have to play in your room you could go outside in your garden and actually stand in the the grass and play golf there just open so many doors you

**9:31** · do which you couldn't just bring your computer to like you wouldn't want your to bring your big beefing machine and find some sort of a power just to just to play some VR yeah no I think that's in in prop put one of the days during development that I really kind of like got me is I was you know the great thing about prop put is and how we've developed it is that you Orient yourself

**9:59** · in your guardian basically in the center of it and once you Orient yourself you never have to move really I mean if you need to turn you can use the joystick to turn but it's not like you need to walk anywhere or like do anything so you can really just stay fixed and you can putt

**10:17** · anywhere um so I kind of went through a bunch of things like oh you know what I'm going to putt in the bedroom and then I'm going to put on the bed and then I'm going to put in the shower without the water running but one day I was putting in the kitchen and I had a window open there was a pretty significant Breeze and I was standing on the course I was putting and the breeze hit me and it was one of those things that it was just it just added something

**10:42** · to it that made it even more real and even though you knew it was the real Breeze there was this great moment where VR owned the physical space it's like I'm now going to use this to my advantage you know to this person even

**11:00** · deeper so yeah having things like feeling this actual heat of the sun on you while you're putting or feeling the wind and things like that it's just it's kind of fun to experiment the and the quest lets you do that the quest truly lets you put yourself into environments that'll that'll expand it even further without having to buy additional Hardware like you can use nature to add to the experience so that's that's been fun so When developing this game um I

**11:27** · know you guys um some of you guys have golf experience were you inspired by any other golf games when you started building this or was this mostly just like you know we have this Vision with top goof and just want to you know carry it out I mean again you know not to you know show my AARP card or anything like that but I mean I go back to golf on Atari 2600 you know and it's it's always been one of those games in a digital sense that you feel a little bit like my

**12:02** · knowledge of the real sport is going to translate fairly well here even though I'm hitting a button you know whether it's just decisions on okay I should go for this shot or I should lay up or things like that that that that do that um but I mean the the Pinnacle for for me and I think you know few guys on the team here would definitely be any of the Tiger Woods games that happen on on Xbox

**12:27** · or Playstation they just they had one feature in there that was just it like it hooked you I mean that's you watch a movie like Tin Cup you know and he talks about he's trying to explain what golf is you know and he's like you know that you know that tuning fork in your loins goes off just one time you know that one perfectly struck shot no matter how many horrible ones you've hit before you're coming back the next day because you you're like oh I want to feel that again so in Tiger Woods games it was like that

**12:59** · heartbeat like you'd hit a shot and all of a sudden it'd like go into like this weird like graphics and then like the controller started pulsating and you were like oh yeah and then if you were playing against somebody and they'd hear it they're like oh come on not again you know it was just like it it was immersive as golf so that was the first time that you really felt the emotions

**13:23** · of golf start to trickle into the digital realm you know with that that that heartbeat p in that controller it's just like oh I just want to feel this over and over again yes it's addicting yeah so um

**13:38** · building a golf game itself is pretty hard I can imagine but building a golf game in VR is even harder what were some major challenges you faced and how did you solve them well again it's it's all about getting in the headset so a lot of it was you know on paper that that seems

**14:00** · like that would translate into golf emotions but until we did it in the headset sometimes it works sometimes it didn't I think one of the the biggest was to get you immersive in an environment take you somewhere take you on a journey that uh that I think is very important in golf if you think about golf as a sport in you know in an

**14:26** · urban setting I lived in m Angeles for many years in La first off everybody drives everywhere like literally I knew people that would drive a block away and to go to a friend's house you're like really you can't walk a block so you know there's a there's an old song in the 80s called Walking in LA and it was basically nobody walks in La um and so

**14:50** · the only time that you your feet ever really touched grass in La was when you go to play golf so it's truly like one of the only times you get to like play a sport where your feet are on Turf so it was really important that we

**15:08** · were able to replicate that Sensation that okay I feel like I'm on a golf course when you're on one of our putting courses but I think the the biggest challenge that we've gotten right where most games have not gotten this right is the sense that when you hit a putt and the ball rolls it looks like a

**15:32** · that's what I intended to do and B the ball really is rolling the physics are so precise and so real that it was that was the biggest thing that we we decided we needed to do is like if this ball doesn't feel like a real golf ball and a real golf ball rolling and if it hits the hole on the Edge at a speed if it doesn't start to go down and kind of come back out out like a real golf ball would then all we've created is a video

**16:03** · game and I think uh that's exactly what we haven't done we've created a golf experience and it just happens to be that you're only using your putter but that doesn't mean that those emotions and those frustrations and the Elations

**16:20** · and all of that all the shuns don't come into to play and I think that was that was our our biggest challenge and our biggest achievement through it all what was the thing that you were probably most proud of like was it because I know we talked about you know porting that uh pretty complex engine was uh like cuz for me when I first played prop put

**16:40** · that's the thing that got me was it did feel like a golf ball because you know it's something like you like when you play like a pool game online if the ball doesn't roll like a pole ball it's like it just feels so silly like it doesn't it just feels like a toy doesn't feel real yeah it feels like a cat toy sliding across the ground you know like it's like it's just not going to work you're like uh no I don't want to hit that thing again cuz I don't know if it really is doing what I intended it to do so yeah no I know it coming from how

**17:11** · did you you know combat like the differences between because I know the the pro version you know has way higher physics and then the regular mode is a little bit easier how do you make those trade-offs between you know the you know the really hard simulation kind of style and then the kind of relaxed having fun yeah I you a lot of it is you just

**17:32** · thinking about it from a golf perspective you know if you took a guy that never or you know 30 handicapper that you know has played golf three times you'd never take him out to the black horse at Beth Page you know it's like one of the hardest golf courses in North America and you're like that person's just GNA have a miserable miserable time and probably never play golf again like that's the worst sport ever so I think with amateur mode where

**18:00** · the physics are all the same we give you the the putt line so that you can see where you're supposed to putt so we give you you know a few things to to help you out through this but um in no way are we

**18:17** · making putts for you type of thing we haven't gamified it to that so we wanted people to be able to get in there and and feel what it's like to make a 30 foot putt you know whether there's there's a satisfaction whether you make a two-footer or you make a 100f footer there's a satisfaction there but seeing

**18:36** · that ball drop that goes from Satisfaction to I use this word often Elation because that's just like the ultimate satisfaction and seeing a ball like dive over the edge of the hole into the bottom of the cup that's just Elation what we then wanted to do is we didn't want anybody to sit there and go well that's just a video game and especially golfers and so in PR mode I mean there's there's no assistance in any way shape or form I mean it it's a

**19:04** · game of millimeters like it is on a real golf course if you don't hit that putt exactly right if you haven't chosen your line and hit the right speed and all of those things it's not going in you know just like real golf so we wanted you

**19:20** · know to give that experience as well where you know okay I can take this to the the Pinnacle of you know where goes into true simulation of of of what the ball's going to do when you when you strike it with a putter so the trade-offs were were were pretty easy um you know that

**19:41** · you know we wanted people to come back and enjoy it and feel all those great things and then we also wanted to treat it like putting you know most people in this world have struck a putt in real life with a Putter and a golf ball you know and it's whether it's on a miniature golf course or on a PGA t tour course you you probably have have struck a putt even with a plastic putter as a 2-year-old so people know what that movement is um the learning curve for

**20:09** · how to hit a putt successfully is pretty shallow just about anybody can do it you can take a two-year-old you can take an 80-year-old and they can strike putts and not have to have some crazy physical prowess to do so but to master it is impossible and so it was important in PR mode that it was that same level of impossibility to master it you can get really good but

**20:34** · you're never going to master it I mean any golfer out there is this I mean you look at somebody like Jordan spe number one putter in the world like I mean the guy couldn't miss from six zip codes away in any tournament and a year later he's like out of the top 100 I he couldn't he couldn't Kick It In from an inch away you know and that's what putting is and it's going to reward you

**20:57** · many days and then it is going to haunt you many nights so that was what was important in in Pro mode in Pro put for sure that you got that that that same kind of spectrum of um reward and hatred

**21:13** · out of it I guess in the first part of the development did you kind of face like when you're like gaslighting it to people like um oh well is this going to be like a putt putt game like stuff like that yeah I think a lot of people immediately when you just say putting game that's our thought is windmills and colored lights you know and to you know to their defense that's all that's been out there ever really you know nobody's really approached it like we have from trying to mix that that golf with game

**21:44** · um aspect with putting but leaning hard into the golfy motions and the challenges and the you know the social aspect where you feel like you're playing golf and you're not playing putt putt those are big big differences but you're still using the same Club all the time um but no it was it was always or

**22:12** · we get the request of you know are you guys going to do miniature golf courses and you know never say never you know but I think we've found something very unique in prop put that speaks to everybody that also feels like a new experience like I'm doing something I haven't done before with a putter when you get on the putting courses and you go okay now I need to if I am a golfer I have to really approach it as a golfer and if I'm a gamer I can really try some

**22:41** · outlandish things to to dial this in like I like it or just to be able to brag to my buddies that you know I hit a 130 foot putt off a rock you know so yes it's uh yeah I mean like for me it's kind of nice though in a way that people do have that experience with put but that it's so accessible that you can have that conversation to be like you know it's an easy sell to be like yeah well if you like putt putt you're going to really love this because there's you know like when you're playing the game you get to like you know putt under a

**23:11** · waterfall and in the desert and there's it's so much more immersive than a a pup course could ever be yeah absolutely so what was your um experience working with Top Golf on the game so far I mean it's been it's been really great we uh we began talking to them um a little over a year ago and uh

**23:35** · you know we were the easy thing about it is we have the same mission in this all and that's to grow the game of golf um to do that through entertaining ways to do it with technology and all of that so we shared the same vision at the end of the day so that that always makes it easier for for um two Pary to come

**23:58** · together and and and work on something for for a common goal so that was great um you know it's it's been challenging um the last couple of months as most businesses have you know is just trying to understand where we can go you know

**24:16** · we had a lot of hopes and dreams that are going to you know either be put on hold or have to be reinvented and I know that everything that we've done together so far that we'll be able to overcome that um so it's it's a new

**24:35** · relationship um everybody is excited there everybody is excited on our side and you know when you share the same same vision and mission statement it it it allows you to do a lot of things um together very successfully so we're looking forward to that that opportunity over time did the virus kind of accelerate the growth or the development of this game um in terms of accelerate the

**25:04** · development no we you know it's working in the digital realm and uh with a smaller team it was one of those things that we we had the vision it was pretty much just execution and in development certain things no matter if you work 24 hours a day just take time you know and then uh then you break things and then you got to build them back up and you know things like that so typical development timeline so the the pandemic

**25:33** · didn't affect us in that way I think if it affected Us in any way it's it's how are we going to get this message out to the masses about VR um again like I've said you you in order to get somebody excited about VR that's never been in VR they have to experience having a headset on them and it's the the one thing I think that Oculus has has found in the in the positive you know is that the quest is

**26:06** · incredibly popular so it's still very difficult to buy one of these I I've always got a like retail tracker going like I get like hit by Walmart at 2:30 in the morning it's like oh it's available and I'm like you know if if you're not online and in 10 seconds it's gone basically so so even trying to

**26:27** · communicate out for somebody to get a headset even if they were going to just take this blind leap of faith is is difficult so the best way is to is to do it through events and and and things like that that's just going to be challenging now you know um somebody putting on a public headset they're going to be scared you know and uh and

**26:49** · we all have to be cautious there so I think uh I think that's probably the biggest way that this has affected us but uh again it's uh we've got a lot of things that we're going to do in the coming months that I think will really get people inspired to kind of like I said take that blind leap of faith and go okay maybe I need to buy one of these

**27:11** · quests it's I think it's a the closest thing that you can compare it to in recent times would be the Wii you know it was like the Wii came out and it was like every was like what is this Nintendo thing like what I don't know what it is you know and then you saw like Grandma B and like jumping around and going like that you're like okay maybe I should try this thing

**27:34** · you know and then you tried it and you're like okay now I'm breaking a sweat four times a day trying to like play bowling or whatever you know and it's like it's it's going to be that type of thing I think with just a number of different experiences and hopefully prop put is one of those where somebody goes that looks like it's a lot of fun that looks like something I can do so

**27:57** · maybe I should make the investment and go down that road so I know you know you've got Facebook behind Oculus which is the greatest marketing engine in the world so if there was ever a chance for it to be uh hugely successful I think it's definitely there and I think prop put is definitely in the position to uh

**28:18** · to be that first experience for people as well you know we'll all look back 20 years from now and go what was your first experience in in VR and hopefully a lot of people can say prop but talking about Oculus um as I know the game's going to be released pretty soon how has been and how is the uh cooperation with oculus like um yeah tell us about I mean

**28:41** · it's awesome like it really is I think one of the biggest things that I've been impressed with with oculus is their attention to detail um I think it would have been very easy for a company like them with an engine like Facebook behind them to just go let's just put everything out

**29:07** · there I think it's it's kind of the Netflix effect right now you know Netflix has got you know like who knows how many shows on there and how many movies and it's like it it basically is like well we don't want Amazon to get it so we'll buy it we'll put it on there we're just going to like you know put a thousand shows on there because then can say we have a thousand shows well guess what 994 of them are horrible you know

**29:33** · and you're like you're sitting there I like go through Netflix and I'm like okay I'll give that a shot and five minutes and you're like that's horrible and you know next one 10 minutes I can't watch that you know and by that time it's like okay I don't even want to watch Netflix anymore because my my rolling the dice luck is horrible and I

**29:53** · think with oculus they could have done that they could have taken every game in the world world out there just put it on there we've got this G you know and G well we've got a library of you know a thousand games and and they didn't they got selective and they made the process rigorous and they made it so that you had to prove along the way that you deserve the right to develop for Oculus and especially the quest um but at the

**30:21** · same time they could it could have been one of those things where it's like well you know the Oculus is speaking and this is it and it's not they're always like pumping you up and like patting you on the back and helping you through and all of those things you know and when you have an an an engineer like our founder Ryan you know that is is so spectacular

**30:45** · at what he does to be able to merge into an environment like Oculus and and provide them with with things that they weren't expecting that were going to be as good as they were when they showed up on their desk um I think really helped the process with us as well so it was

**31:04** · you know very seamless very very enthusiastic on all sides and uh I hope that everybody recognizes that in the final product I think um Oculus has kind of taken a similar thing that the iPhone did which honestly I think is one of the biggest reasons why I had such a big success is with the App Store like the App Store is just the same as um you know like the Oculus store where you have to have a review process not everybody can make apps for it and I

**31:33** · think the trade-off is that you get a bunch of curated apps on there that make it you know so much of a better experience when you lower the chances of you getting a bad egg a bad app of course that means there's still going to be ones that slip through but when you lower those chances you make the overall experience for especially firsttime people it's going to be a good one uh versus like the contrast on Android when

**31:55** · almost anybody can submit even duplicates of apps and you know it's just you then start to associate the App Store with the product itself which is so sad cuz like the product and the software are two different things yeah absolutely yeah and there's there's a

**32:10** · lot of bad apples that can that can ruin the tree really quick you know and it's uh that's definitely not the case at Oculus for sure and I I really have to applaud them they they took that stance and and decided that everything that comes out of there really is as a level of quality that's surpasses everything else so I can imagine when um working

**32:33** · with OAS and billing app is pretty important to have an MVP uh which resembles the game and shows off what it's going to be at the end pretty quickly how long did it take you to build something which is actually the MVP of proot that's a really good question because there were a few of those moments along develop M that were just

**32:59** · aha moments where we were really thinking and you know getting the whiteboards out and you know Monday meetings that were supposed to be an hour turned into five hours and it's like you know okay and then you know something came along an idea or something that just kind of you went wow that is where we want to go um I

**33:26** · think the idea of the putting course you know and really trying to translate um a golf hole into putting was really that moment that we knew okay this is going to be something special I mean beyond the physics aspect of it you know getting the physics right was was so key but it's then like you know you've got

**33:52** · you've got this Ferrari and the last thing you want to do is drive it all day long on a gravel Road you know it's like we've got to find the Great Road that this goes on I think once that first first even hole was created in uh in a

**34:09** · putting course and it was kind of cool because you know we were like okay here's a putting course and then Ryan would go in and and create a hole and we'd play it and we play it and we play it so many times and then all of a sudden it was like okay there's a new You Know download the new version and like there's three holes and you're like wow I get to go from the first hole to the second hole and then when you got to like a full course and it was time to put up a score it was like okay now all

**34:43** · I want to do is beat everybody else and I think then the next one was kind of like the leaderboard and it was multiple leaderboards like we have a leaderboard for um like feet of putts so so I'll never forget the leaderboard came up the first time on the first hole on the beach course and the putt is I don't know probably 40 some odd feet something like that fairly straight and so I hit

**35:08** · it and it goes in the hole and I'm like oh yeah top of the leaderboard and I turn around look at the leaderboard and it's like 79 feet and I'm like how is that possible I'm like on slack there's a problem there's a bug somebody got a 70 foot Putt and then I was like wait a second I don't need to go the most direct route to the hole now I got to get creative and go how can I send it down the left side up the bank around let it come around and go in the right side of the hole and I was like Wow 82

**35:39** · feet like top of the leaderboard and that sense was like okay now that creativity engulf that comes into play that you hear so many Pros talk about that they're so good they just get creative with their shots that came into play and that that kind of like poking

**35:56** · the the bear like you know okay I'm at the top of the leaderboard and then you're like oh man I was in there for like three hours the other night trying to get the top of the leaderboard and Jason just took it from me like oh I'm back in now you know so I think the leaderboards was that kind of next moment where it was like oh yeah I just

**36:15** · I need to own that thing you know so you're going back and back and back and back so there's there's been a number of those those moments that have been really really great throughout this that uh I I I think we'll we people will definitely pick up on those um and see how much how much fun we had developing them and how much fun they'll have actually being able to play them yeah for me I currently hold the high score for the waterfall on nonpr version but that was the one I was telling you about that I got it in in two so I was I'm

**36:48** · still number one so yeah great thanks so now I got to spend three hours tonight knocking you off that leader board I appreciate that yeah so fun though because it's like like you said it's uh it's not just like you know you could play the the same hole multiple times it doesn't get boring because you can find new creative ways to get there and I think that's that was the killer feature for me which was the dynamic way of playing the game yeah yeah and it it really comes into play too when you you start getting into multiplayer because

**37:17** · you can be sitting there going okay just like real golf it's like okay I'm two holes down that impossible shot I need to pull that off right now and when you do the reward is so big you're like oh my gosh I'm back in it now you know I did I I that that little tiny thread of

**37:38** · a needle that I needed to just get it onto that certain section and I did it and now I'm like only one down or I'm one up now it's just it's the best feeling but knowing that there's so many options and when to play those options you know especially when you're playing multiplayer player it's like when to hit the gas when not to hit the gas and that's golf essentially you know that's that's that's what's going to give one

**38:04** · person you know making early plane flights out of the tournament and the other one raising the trophy at the end you know is making those risk reward decisions and there's tons of them in prop put that's for sure so are you working with like the built-in physics from the game engine or are you kind of rolling your own or maybe a little bit of hybrid um no this is this is ours you know we really kind of developed this over the course of our first two iOS apps um uh Golf Scope and simply putting

**38:33** · you know and it really was we looked at everything that had kind of preceded Us in terms of digital golf balls and kind of came up to that conclusion that nobody had gotten it right nobody had gotten it where you feel like you're hitting a ball and it's rolling like a real ball and all of that and you with

**38:54** · that kind of you know hurdled to climb because nobody else had really done it right we kind of just set off and said no we're going to do it ourselves and it was really important that we used everything we learned through our iOS apps and translated that into VR because especially in VR when it comes to putting it's so important you

**39:16** · know when if you think of it this way when you get up and I think this is why golf simulators work for everything except putting I mean when you get up on a t box on a golf course and you're on a hole that's 450 yard long you don't sit there and have to understand every five feet between you and where you hit your driver at 280 yards okay you know okay

**39:42** · there's the Fairway I need to hit it straight and it needs to go 280 yards but I don't need to understand you know how it you know how much wind resistance it's going to have because it goes past those four trees on the left I mean Bryson D Sho might want to know that but most people aren't that way and so a TWD

**40:05** · representation of that works perfectly so that's why a simulator works for playing from T up to the green but in order to truly understand what you need to do to put a ball 20 ft

**40:22** · into a hole you need to get something that is close to feeling all of the elements between you and the hole meaning what that what speed that surface rolls at the undulation for

**40:37** · every inch along the way and the only way you can do that is truly in VR you know we do a couple of different things in a prop put one of them being teleport to be able to move you around so literally you can go to the other side of the hole and look at a putt from the other side of the hole before you hit it like you would on a real Golf Course or go halfway down the putt line and go okay this is where it's going to break this is the feeling I get at this point in time you can't do that in a 2d realm truly where you get a sensation of what

**41:08** · the ball's going to do when it rolls past that point so that was uh that was very keen in the physics that that it became that reality and and and in VR we think that we really you know were able to nail that or it you can treat it as

**41:24** · you need to treat a putt with that feel um Incorporated in putting and giant mode too of course oh of course giant mode yeah so I can imagine building such a physics engine and just getting the feeling right is already a huge challenge but besides just a physics um VR in general is a relatively new field hasn't been around for that long um have there been any pain points or things you'd say um um were major

**41:57** · pain points When developing for we are specifically the shorter answer of that is no um other than just having to kind of unleash your mind in a different way um especially when you're you're in in ux and UI you're sitting there and so used to dealing with 2D space um that

**42:22** · you now have that great opportunity to do things that aren't possible um you can't reach into the screen of your computer you know but in VR literally you can reach forward and touch something so I think one of the biggest challenges was just sitting there and and reiterating on that

**42:44** · ability and always learning that we have all this space that you can put things you know it's you're not like think of an iPhone you know you've only got so much screen space that you can you know put UI on there so in VR you have to

**43:03** · kind of like relearn yourself and go hold on a second I don't have what's just in my field of vision it can be off to the side and back here or up high or on a mountain side or anything like that like you can put something you know 150 yards away that's up there that will come into people's view at interesting times or they can turn to it you know so

**43:31** · I think that's one of the the things that that we learned very quickly that you know hey we don't have to operate in a in a rectangular or square space we can just kind of operate anywhere I think you also get the um benefit of using sound and also haptics which you

**43:49** · don't get on mobile phones or anything like that just like where you can like trigger a noise and just subtle enough to where like the user does doesn't even have to see it they can just understand what's going on just by feel like you know I can be putting and just you know hit the trigger the ball can come in I know when my club touches the ground like there's so many like non visual things that just make the experience that you just you just can't do with even a controller yeah and I I think especially with the quest with the spatial audio as well you just you even

**44:20** · though you're looking One Direction there's so many things happening that just fill in the the the blind spots that just immerses you in it all you know I mean VR is is so immersive onto itself and so 3D but that audio as well

**44:38** · that just kind of fills in the blanks behind you that you know that two seconds ago I turned around and there was a bird flying overhead and I the waves were lapping against the beach there I saw that but when you hear the audio behind you it fills in the blank that it's still there even though visually it's not and I think that that's really really key for for VR and another thing that we we dealt with as well is really you know developing the audio in it that that that made it so

**45:10** · engaging even even sounds that you never would have used usually in a in a in a video game on a on a console or something like that that needed to be done so that they really affected you emotionally like the the sound of when the ball goes in the cup is is quite a jolting sound and it it emanates out and

**45:35** · it just adds to the satisfaction that that ball went in the hole because it's such a grand big like just final like you did it sound um so that was really key that things like that had to get right so are you guys developing for multiple headsets too or just targeting a quest at the moment um you know what it's it's it's been all about the quest

**45:56** · right now but uh you know who knows what what happens in the future you know it's uh we want to reach the biggest audience you know to grow the game of golf like we want to grow the game of golf um you need to reach as many people as possible you know and so if there's other platforms that uh that make sense for us

**46:17** · yeah absolutely if that gets us to a bigger audience 100% so cuz I guess it wouldn't be too hard to add devices cuz once you have game in VR I don't think it would be that hard to add other ones but that's was kind of more curious if like if you would run into challenges of like okay now we're doing psvr and you have different types of controllers if everything changes or if a lot of it stays the same yeah I I I mean the physics engine obviously will will stay the same I think the the biggest thing developing for another platform um you

**46:49** · know say even PS5 looking down the road you know type of thing is that expectation by a user that you're using all of the Power of that you know platform so obviously with the quest um

**47:07** · the processing power isn't you know as significant as some of the other devices just because you don't have supercomputers connected to it or you know yeah consoles or things like that so there there are limitations when it comes comes to developing on the quest in terms of you know processing power and Graphics so I think going to another platform you know the expectation would be that okay you know there might need to be start being some thought about hyper realism um again what we've we've

**47:40** · developed and I think this was good for us developing on the quest first is if you're given all the bells and whistles and all the toys that there are out there to develop something I think you a lot of developers tend to lean on on the eye candy rather than thinking about the emotional aspect of it um and that's not

**48:03** · what we wanted to do we definitely wanted to provide something that had an emotion so the graphics while we're very proud of them um aren't the the the main um Gathering point of why we feel somebody will really adopt and hold true

**48:23** · to Heart prop put it's because the social the emotions the the feelings that you get that that replicate something that you've done in the real world in VR yeah and you know I think people may not really realize that when you're developing VR you have to like

**48:42** · think about how you design the environments because you're not going to just like use like photo realism grab images of golf courses and grass because then all of a sudden it like feels weird and it's like but somehow low poly feels right and it's just it's it's funny how like it doesn't seem obvious you're like well obviously the best thing would be to look at an actual golf course but actually no like in VR it kind of feels weird yeah it's yeah I think a lot of people have tried um in VR platforms or or devices that

**49:14** · aren't connected to a supercomputer to try to go really realistic in the graphics and it just comes off as incredibly unrealistic and then it just in evades that VR experience because you're like I'm trying to get something that I think your your brain in VR a lot of times tricks you you know it fills in the blanks and things will happen that your mind will kind of unlock Sensations that aren't there I'll never forget one of my

**49:46** · after I had my horrible Gran Turismo experience the next thing I did was in psvr again called London Heist and there's this pointed in London heist where you're in this Lorry and you're going down like you know whatever one of those highways are M6 or whatever it is in London and uh like I are coming by on

**50:06** · motorcycles and shooting at you and the guy's like grab the gun out of the console and like start shooting and one of the things you could do was you could open the door and stick your head out of this moving truck and look back and start shooting at guys I'll never forget

**50:23** · opening that door say my head out and I swore I felt the rush of wind coming across my face and I had to catch myself I was like what and I was talking to some other people and they were like oh yeah I felt the same thing so it's like you don't need ultra realistic Graphics

**50:42** · to fill in those blanks of Sensations and I think that's the mistake a lot of people tend to make in vrs they're trying to make it so real and it just doesn't get there yet I think eventually it will but uh no for us it was it was

**50:59** · more about filling in the the sensation blanks And the emotions you know and the you know owning a style too you know yeah I also think The Uncanny valy plays a big role in this because um if you try to go too realistic but it's not completely There Yet the brain will just spot the mistakes and just going to feel weird but with low poly it obviously

**51:23** · doesn't look like the real world but the brain is able to understand it and therefore translate it and attach all the feelings you would have with a real object to it yeah yeah almost like the feeling like you know your avatar in VR becomes your avatar in virtual reality and it's just there's that feeling that like I still catch myself like months

**51:43** · and months and months like almost a year after I've had my headset like every time I'm on a cliff like I still catch myself like feeling like I'm about to fall even though like I know for a fact like the ground is right there like happened in you prop put and a couple other games like it just your brain just can just slip out of reality so easily um but like you said if the game is not built correctly like it'll break you out of that immersion pretty quickly you folks obviously have a built up quite a

**52:11** · bit of expertise and experience building VR games comes to sound physics graphics and just the overall development what advice would you give to somebody who's totally new to VR and like to start to build something is there something you could say that's the one advice I'd give to somebody new I think to to pick one of two paths and that would be a to try to replicate

**52:42** · it's this is this is going to be a a funny thing funny exercise to do but to build into VR is whatever you're wanting to build okay and let's say that's a sale saing app okay so I want to build the best sailing app out there and I would to do that in VR my first thing that I would suggest you do is close your eyes and start recognizing everything that you

**53:13** · feel in sailing rather than what you see in sailing like that's where you start so if you're trying to replicate something real close your eyes and then start developing from that sense of taking away the visual aspect so the sounds the smells you know even though you're not going to smell something there your your nose your old factory will fill itself in in VR so develop for all the senses minus visual first and

**53:46** · then start adding the visual on top of that so that would be from from my advice in a real sense the second one would be do not limit your mind as to where you could take somebody truly so I mean you can take anybody anywhere take them

**54:09** · inside your mind and develop from there you know we all can have dreams and we all see things when we close our eyes or we Vision things that that aren't reality you can make them reality and you can let people's as as much as you

**54:27** · think about them and your skin tingles or the hairs on the back of your neck rise when you think of them you can do that to other people you know you can make them see what's inside your mind so never limit it and bring people in so I think there's two paths that you could take in VR that that definitely are going to bring a lot of enjoyment and entertainment to people that's for sure seems counterintuitive to not develop for vision but yeah that totally makes sense um so how is it developing for

**54:57** · people that haven't used VR before like you know I know you talked about maybe having like a a go top golf Lounge where they can try it out but you know some of these people are going to be the first time ever touching a VR headset but then you have other people that you're targeting Gamers who do know how to use VR so what's the experience with that where you're trying to create controls and experiences that are unique like that I think that's one of the the the

**55:23** · difficult things when you know it's it's like the let me take you back to the Wii okay is the beauty of the Wii is if you were bowling you looked at somebody you said that never that doesn't play video games they go well what button do I push and you went you don't swing it like you would a bowling ball and then somebody would go oh okay and then they could play like

**55:49** · you you put something like a fortnite or something into somebody's hands and it's just a bunch of of buttons and somebody goes I have no idea what to do and it becomes so daunting and it becomes such a learning curve and such an effort to

**56:05** · even play let alone compete online you know and I mean that's I'm not a big multiplayer online person when it comes to things like fortnite or Call of Duty or stuff like that because I'm just tired of getting like head shot by some like 8-year-old like the second I respawn it's like okay I'm laying on the ground the whole time this isn't Fun you know and I recognize that I need to put so much in so that I can last even 4

**56:32** · seconds longer than I did for the last month you know and then that's going to take me a month to get to the next eight seconds and you just go it's too daunting um so I think one of the the difficult things with with the quest A lot of times can be and you know just

**56:50** · seeing people for the first time holding it because first off you're in are so your face is covered so when you say to somebody pull the grip trigger you know which is this trigger on the side of the controller you almost have to grab their hand and go this finger this button and push it in for them and they go oh and it starts taking a bit of muscle memory to understand it now the majority of the

**57:15** · the demographic of a quest user right now is a gamer so they know what a controller is and they know how to learn button positions and things like that quite quickly but if you're going to get to a mass audience you need to limit the amount of buttons now the quest has done it quite well and it becomes quite intuitive and their onboarding when you first put on the quest is is quite good but Translating that from different game to different game is tough the beauty of prop put is

**57:45** · once you kind of activate yourself it's basically the trigger is going to activate the ball or you Orient yourself is the trigger is going to activate the ball you putt you pull the trigger to follow it or go to your next putt or anything so there's not a lot of buttons that are there it becomes very much like the Wii in the sense of like do you know how to hit a putt yeah do that motion

**58:11** · and they hit it and the ball goes like oh I hit it and you're like yeah and that's it so I think that's that's one very special thing about prop put that'll allow um new people into VR to Gras grasp a game that they can you know pick up very quickly and go okay I don't need to learn you know all these button Combos and stuff like that in order to play this thing you know so taking this even one step further have you um to uh

**58:42** · have you looked at hand tracking Oculus is now starting to support like not having any buttons in the game so uh yeah it's it's something we've kind of played with I think um um more from a side of like

**59:03** · novelty um type of thing rather than than anything else um it's it's new for them as well so I think if it came down to us doing anything with it I think one important thing even though the quest controller doesn't weigh a lot The Sensation that there's some bit of weight in your hand when you putt is important so I don't ever see us like getting rid of the controller completely and like just putting with your hands together um I I think for super golf

**59:36** · enthusiasts you'll see them doing that in the middle of an aisle at Home Depot but it probably doesn't translate too well into into a VR game so the any bit of weight is good I think where would come into is being able to do any sort of um you know menu you um you know

**59:56** · access or option selections or things like that um that we would you know possibly look at it there but who knows you know our our minds are Unleashed so it could be something that we we discover that that people enjoy doing that you know I mean eventually maybe it's one of those things to get ultra realistic you know most Pros when they go to hit a putt they read the Putt and

**1:00:22** · the last thing they do is they have a whether it's a line or it's the Titleist logo or something like that on the ball they take that and they line that logo up exactly on the line that they're going to put so when they get over the ball and they look down they don't have to rethink it it's like okay I'm lined up I need to like align my feet my shoulders and I need to stroke it exactly on that line so I could see us where you know maybe in the future you actually took the golf ball in your hand

**1:00:52** · with the hand tracking and kind of like put it down and like manipulated so the line the logo was exactly where it needed to be and then you could get over the ball and hit it so things like that I think could be interesting in the future where hand tracking would come into play yeah I actually do that one quite a lot when I'm playing physical Putt and you know like you also kind of like sit on your Club so you kind of look down the line and yeah there's a lot of things that you don't realize you do the great things about releasing um your your game Into the Wild is uh is

**1:01:25** · people are going to start finding out what they like they're going to start telling others about what they like they're going to start doing it a lot more and we can we can look at look at all those things and listen to all those comments and start developing it even further um I think a perfect example of that need is what's happened um currently in Sim racing um you know before before

**1:01:52** · everything that that hit us as a Society hit us I mean you very few people in this world that are di hard NASCAR fans or especially Formula 1 fans would ever sit there and go yeah I'm going to spend a Saturday afternoon watching Sim racing and you know what now hundreds of millions of people do that each week and

**1:02:18** · religiously and what they' they've seen is that the reason why they're watching it and believing in the realism is because you get a a driver like Charles ler Orlando Norris or George Russell or these guys that are on their simulators and that wheel is about as realistic as

**1:02:41** · it gets and it's physical and if you hit a a burm the wrong way it's going to twist your wrists off and then you realize that that takes all of that talent to to manipulate that wheel and go through the gears and all of that rather than just using a joystick and the realism comes into play for everybody so I think there are going to be that opportunities going forward in any sports game in the digital sense that that link into something in reality

**1:03:15** · that even UPS the Precision that you need to have to compete at a level then I think that'll be important you know and uh we'll definitely be in position for making that move at the right

**1:03:31** · time how has the beta program been so far when you know I think you guys have Discord and some other ones like how's that been working with people that like you said maybe golfers maybe Gamers maybe yeah I mean I have to give a major shout out to to our beter testers they were just truly an incredible impressive bunch of people people from everywhere all over the world I mean they they really gave us

**1:04:02** · insight into um things that we weren't looking at um they really praised us on ideas that we maybe jumped a little far ahead and were wondering how those would come out um I mean they they played it senseless I we've got this this one guy down in Naples for I it is truly amazing

**1:04:26** · the amount of prop put he played through beta it was and the feedback that he gave us and just stuff that we really like took to heart and and you know Incorporated in the final product but it was a they they were really really special to to give us that amount of time to to shape this and and they are

**1:04:49** · they are definitely the the 12th man on the team um for sure when it comes to what you'll see in the in the Oculus store in a couple days so um prop also supports a multiplayer mode where you can get paired up with our players uh which are a similar skill level um how are you dealing with the well-known chicken and act problem where nobody can get paired up with somebody if there's no players but nobody is trying if there's uh nobody who can get pair up with yeah it's well right now when

**1:05:22** · you've got a small beta group it's a it definitely is challenging so it's it's kind of you know a range of time which has been awesome because we're like okay we're going to try this at this hour and you know people show up and they're ready to go and they're ready to go like past what my stamina is so it's like wow

**1:05:40** · like they played for that long like that's awesome um you know when it's when it's live in the store you know it's G to it's going to come down to how fast people are downloading and getting to that point of of wanting to play multi player I mean one thing I want to stress is it's it's a social experience unlike anything out there for sure I mean it's just it is really it's so

**1:06:06** · personal it's so social it's so emotional that it's like man i' I've played a lot of multiplayer experiences both in VR and in you know other digital Realms and it's I'm not you know patting us on the back that much or really trying to promote our product on beyond the truth and it really is something special when it comes to um playing you

**1:06:30** · know multiplayer and prop put but uh if there's not somebody else to play with there's always the bot um so you have multiple levels that you you know he'll difficulty that he'll play at or she'll play at um and uh I'll tell you what

**1:06:46** · there's some times where you're like and what's I think really good about our bot as well it never feels like there's programmed responses like if I choose easy it's not like okay on that hole he always plays that hole the same no it's

**1:07:03** · not I mean I've seen on easy on some holes where you're like oh there's no like I can't make this on easy he's not gonna make it and somehow another he makes it you're like whoa and it also doesn't feel you know FIFA went through I think FIFA and Madden both went through a phase before AI really was you know what we know AI is and they would affect some things that would change the

**1:07:31** · kind of flow of the game so if all of a sudden I was up by a ton in Madden or FIFA all of a sudden it was like like in FIFA I couldn't tackle somebody or they were running faster than me or they was like where do they get this superpower like 78 minutes into the match it's like come on this is so unrealistic it was just to keep it close and and interesting um with the bot and prop putt you never feel that you never feel like okay well now he's got superpowers

**1:07:59** · and he's coming back it's it feels you know many people will say this about a bot but it feels like it has personality and it feels like it can make decisions um and that anything is possible with it so uh you know I've seen it take some routes that you're like really like yeah that one you know and I've seen other things where it's like okay I've got this guy all of a sudden it's like and it's I think what it is is not so much the bot is playing

**1:08:30** · better at that point in time but you're starting to beat yourself just like in a real golf you know you're you get your confidence is high you're like a I can hit every shot and you know your buddy is like um you can't make that 220 yard green with a nine nineiron oh I could do

**1:08:48** · anything today you know what it's in the water every time you know so I think what happens more often is that your confidence gets high or your nerves get to you and you start making the mistakes it's not that the bot is actually getting better so uh so yeah it's uh We've solved that if you if you want to get out there and play with somebody that that that dude's always ready for for for a match and you put him on a hard or Pro and you could really be in

**1:09:17** · for some misery you got to be on your on your game every shot and so it's it's fun well I think like you said I think something you guys nailed was the multiplayer aspect and for me I I had such a good time playing the game because there's something about like you know a lot of these rooms like big screen and VR chat and ALT space where

**1:09:42** · you're just sitting around talking but there's something about like talking while you're doing an activity that I feel like really lowers the threshold for a lot of people that maybe are socially awkward or have a hard time um talking with people whereas when you're doing an activity you really start to open up because you're having to focus on other things and um I think that part

**1:10:02** · is super cool and then so with that you know it's a double-edged sword how do you guys deal with you know spam and abuse like so let's say you do have a a person that is a bad egg that is you know harassing other people yeah I think uh it's it's one of those things that I mean obviously we haven't had it yet um

**1:10:22** · so I think it'll be a little bit that we we'll have to deal with it as it comes I think I think those people exist in the community kind of ostracizes them pretty quickly and they realize they're not getting to anybody and then they'll go find another game that they can do it in um there's nothing really in prop put that that really promotes somebody being

**1:10:51** · that way you know where it's like you know it just you get in there and you feel like okay we're all here to have a good time and compete and stuff like that now if we start doing tournaments people are going to get serious you know um you can always mute somebody you know so you don't have to hear them if they're they're talking a certain way I mean we've all played with a golfer that just has a horrible temper you know and it's it's kind of funny how expressive the putter can be in uh in prop putt so

**1:11:21** · you can get a sense of that what a bad day somebody's Happ by the way that they're waving the putter or smashing it into the ground when they miss a two-footer um but as as far as the abuse side of it you know if if if somebody's obviously getting out of control then there's there are different ways that we can deal with that so um I think VR is a

**1:11:43** · pretty good place to uh place a few Easter eggs here and there uh does prop put have uh some hidden Easter eggs to explore and to find well Norbert I'm going to answer that question quite easily and quite complexly at the same time yes nice they are there um there's some yeah there's some great things always if I can give you this one word of advice is

**1:12:12** · giant mode is very keen not only for seeing where you need to go on a hole um something you know it comes in very early on a hole three on the beach course you know it's your third hole into your campaign where uh it's a par four and you need to get up in the air and really see where you want to leave your t- shot um but going into giant mode can also put you in places where there might be Easter eggs um and then you know just tap your

**1:12:45** · putter on a lot of things you know everything is is engaging you know and interactive in it so just go around just beating things with your Putter and uh ni that's good advice some some point in time something might you know pop out at you nice nice well Jason we' just like to thank you so much for being on our podcast today so where can people find

**1:13:09** · um information about prop put and follow you on social media yeah so we're on you know all the social media platforms on Discord um you can go to prop.com um that'll show you the trailer and a bunch of the features and you know take you all the special places at the same time and then uh you know it uh you've

**1:13:33** · got an A Quest head into the store uh today you can see some screenshots and read some descriptions and watch the trailer and things like that in a couple of days you know either jump into your Oculus app or jump in your headset and click on Prop put and download it and and meet us out on the course you know if you're looking for a real challenge you know go on YouTube um I'll kind of

**1:13:59** · reveal to everybody um there's this character on YouTube doing prop putt videos his name's smooth ketchup you'll see him at the top of the leaderboard a lot of times as well that's me so bring it on yeah I'm ready for a challenge just uh

**1:14:16** · smooth catch up in in in in in friends and invite me and uh we'll go head to head you know but uh nice but smooth smooth will R you when you're down I'm Gonna Knock You down even further so uh be prepared for the banter that's all I got to say so really you're saying that uh by building the game you're just finding a way to compete with everyone in the world so absolutely that's that's it you know

**1:14:48** · that's well uh make sure to you know look in the description and show notes for for all the links that we link well we've been talking about um thank you so much again Jason for being on and um we hope to see you in the next episode yeah thanks a lot guys really had good time \[Music\] today