With Golf Launchpad Tour, owners play using their own clubs, in their own home. In front of the TV. The Tour model is available for use with PC, Mac and PlayStation 2 systems (as was the original Launchpad), as well as PlayStation 3 and television set-top boxes.
The technology behind the Golf Launchpad Tour includes "XTVReady," which the company describes in a news release:
XTVReady is a software module embedded within the world’s leading DVR set-top boxes to enable access to third party peripheral devices, such as the Golf Launchpad Tour, via the USB port on set-top boxes. Until now, golf on a set-top box has been a limited 2-D experience, but with the Golf Launchpad/XTV Experience it becomes an immersive, video enhanced realistic golf experience.
This "exergaming" simulator measures the user's clubhead speed, path and angle, feeds that info into EA Sports Tiger Woods PGA Tour software, which translates the info on-screen. (Golfers are swinging at a ball tethered to the Launchpad Tour frame.)
A demo is available at www.electricspin.com. The Golf Launchpad Tour is available at electronics and golf retailers, as well as on the ElectricSpin Web site (where, depending on model, it is offered for around $200 at the time of this writing.)
