You may recall that the singular blemish on SkyPro’s otherwise perfect Most Wanted feature chart was the conspicuous absence of an angle of attack measurement (we’ve updated the chart).
That big fat X stung a bit, so the SkyPro team increased its efforts to add the feature. Angle of Attack, it turns out, is something that the developers have been working on since day 1, but it turns out, it’s not a particularly easy value to capture, and the SkyPro team wasn’t willing to release it until it were confident in the accuracy of the measurement.
With a bit of extra motivation, they got it done.
Why Is AoA Difficult to Capture
Before you can accurately calculate angle of attack, you must first be able to accurately capture the moment of impact. If any of the parameters leading up to impact are off, then the time of impact will be off, and as a result, the Angle of Attack will be off too.
Basically, if nearly any measurement leading up to impact is wrong, Angle of Attack becomes a meaningless (and likely incorrect) number.
Sufficed to say, SkyPro focused a lot of energy on identifying impact, and while it’s never listed on the list of improvements, with nearly every revision of the SkyPro app, impact detection gets even better.
Those advancements are what made the inclusion of Angle of Attack possible.
How It Works
While SkyPro is a sensor-based technology, one can draw reasonable comparisons to how camera-based motion capture systems work.
Cameras capture pictures throughout a swing, SkyPro’s sensors capture data. As your club moves closer to impact, SkyPro captures even more data to ensure that the moment of impact can be correctly identified.
SkyPro Vs…
It’s inevitable that SkyPro users will want to know how the data from the device compares to Trackman, Foresight and other launch monitors that capture angle of attack. We haven’t tested for ourselves (yet), but the expectation is that while numbers will likely be similar, variations in how and where impact is measured or calculated, will lead to slight differences from one type of device to the next.
It doesn’t mean that any of the devices are wrong, it’s that the data used as the basis for the Angle of Attack measurement is captured at a slightly different point in the swing.
Availability
SkyPro’s Angle of Attack feature shipped with the latest release of the iOS app, so be sure to update your app now. We’re told that due to complexities in the Andriod system, it will be a number of weeks before the feature is rolled out to Android users.
Joe Bloggs
9 years ago
Hello,
my biggest frustration with the device is that you can’t get at the raw swing data. I don’t need all of the positions captured during the swing, but why can’t they implement export of the values in the ProData Table (the key metrics)? The stuff that goes back to the online interface at the SkyGolf website is insufficient. The offline synchronization is patchy and rarely works properly after you return home from the range (no connectivity there).
I’ve had SkyPro for about a month and use it with and iPad which I put on a tripod in front of me. The Focus screen works fantastically well, and I’ve got to a point where I can now guess my angles from the feel with 1-2 degree accuracy _before_ they come up on the screen. As an awareness tool it’s been brilliant.