Tangent, anyone using it?

[Dewdman42]

I have recently started using Tangent, which appears to be the most modern and up to date version of v1game.  

 

https://www.tangent.golf

 

This appears to be the original developer of v1game who has this new app now...which is doing pretty much everything V1game/Roundabout ever did, plus some new things.  I'm not sure how or why v1game is still being marketed in its older form from different ownership.  Some kind of story there.  But I am kind of liking Tangent and wondering if anyone else has been trying it out?

 

Maybe later after I get more rounds with it I will post a more detailed review.

[seraphicD]

I used golfshot currently. Tangent looks to offer a lot of things.  It seems kind of buys, for a user interface...but I would love to hear your thoughts so far. what is the cost?

[Dewdman42]

I have been testing it out.  Currently have been interacting with the dev about some bugs, I will post a more thorough review with images and stuff, after we work through some of those things.  He is very motivated and active developer.

 

As a prelude to that, what I will say is that first in answer to your question, the subscription is normally I think $120/near or something like that, but there is a 30% discount code floating around from Adam Young, I can't remember what it is now, but I can find out if you can't find it.  Good for first year.   All the various GPS apps seem to be coming up to ~$100/year for their premium levels...that is just inflation for you.

 

Tangent is basically the evolution from v1game (now currently sold under the name "Roundabout").  It's the same original developer.  I'm not sure how or why the original app changed ownership and the dev is able to continue on with a competitive new product, but that appears to be the case.  It shares many many similarities with v1game, but has some new features and is heading in some new directions that I really like the direction it's going.  Adam Young is endorsing it a lot and I can tell from some of the new features that Adam may have had some influence over some of the new features.

 

It still uses the breadcrumb approach that was used in v1game to track everywhere you go on the course and leave little icons where it guesses you made a swing.  If you use the apple watch with it, its much better at detecting swings immediately.  Recent update made it actually capable of detecting putts and small chips too, though it doesn't seem to get the precise location of those always.

 

The stat tracking is honestly I think the best out there for phone/watch combo.  It is very detailed if you want it to be, and can provide numerous helpful reports including dispersion reports and many other aspects, not to mention strokes gained and areas of coaching focus.  In addition it has a bunch of built in drills you can do, either on a driving range or with a sim, where you quickly enter onto the watch the result of each shot, and basically not only get good practice, but also it gathers club statistics that way which can then be used on the golf course with the AI caddie feature.

 

I am finding it a bit buggier than Roundabout, which I had tried a few months ago and really liked.  Then I moved to GolfShot for a bit and at first liked it, but then I didn't.  Now I'm going with Tangent because I feel this is the next iteration of v1game and I'm happy to help fund the developer and see how it goes, but I do feel its a little rough around the edges compared to Roundabout (v1game) at the moment, but will be improving quickly over time, and has some compelling new features that I really like compared to Roundabout.  

 

One feature I really like is that when I'm planning a shot on the phone I can move my finger around on the map at various potential destinations and it will overlap dispersion arcs of my various clubs based on collected stats or manual overrides...and then this can help me determine quickly which club to use taking not only distance into consideration but also dispersion arcs.  This is an area that is currently being enhanced and developed.  Often times the Ai caddie chosen club is already at pretty much the best location and is in fact already a the right choice...even for layups.   I would like to see it develop more stuff in the area of targeting, knowing L/R tendencies of each club..and for example, looking at the green and knowing dispersion, L/R tendencies and distance range...come up with the most optimal club to use.  I think it might be moving towards that.

 

If you want to, you can track fat/thin/toe/heel strikes for each shot.  You can track trajectory of each shot.  You can track details about the lie.  you can even track if you were mentally distracted or not.  For putting you can track info about how you missed the hole, help identified if its green reading or chronic pull, etc.   All of that is optional and not needed for strokes gained, but the stats and reports available go way beyond strokes gained, so if you track that stuff with a few extra clicks, you can find some important tendencies.

 

The swing detection is quite good but not perfect.  Its better then GolfShot.  I feel that it has a lot of built in AI that is attempting to figure out what you were trying to do, trying to make it automatic, but sometimes gets that wrong and then when I try to manually correct on the fly as I go, it can sometimes get confused, working with the dev on some of those things now as we speak.  He is very engaged and motivated.

 

The watch app is a big improvement over v1game, with a lot more info.  You can see yards to hazards ( like golfshot), front, center, back of course, which club you're currently tracking and how far you hit as you walk towards the ball, you can see a map of the fairway or green if you want, you can can choose where the pin is located, which is quite sensible, you just click a button for the flag and it prompts you to place it front, center, back, left, right middle on a 9 position grid; which you can usually determine when standing 180 yards out looking at the green.   Then it will adjust some of the yards its showing you accordingly and perhaps help you plan your approach.  This is better then actually having to stand next to the flag and select its location or drag it around (which you can also do if you want on the phone).

 

The watch also shows wind speed and direction and how much it thinks you need to add or take off the distance.  The phone app shows elevation change as well..not sure if that's on the watch I haven't found it.  It will also show a "plays like" distance based on the wind and elevation...on the watch as well.

 

the Tangent watch app doesn't require you to confirm every shot like v1game/roundabout did.  It assumes you confirmed it and starts tracking it.  If you need to change it you can, even as you walk towards the ball.  This is much more automatic and less involved than before with v1game. 

 

The dev is also a great golfer himself and basically he must be the biggest user also.  He is very motivated to make it the best app on the market and resolve bugs as needed as well as enhance the app with the best new features.

 

 

 

[ATatman10]

Thanks so much for this write up. I have considered tangent and probably will try it now. I just made a post -  I’m searching for a way to get the phone out of my hand during a round, rip those annoying sensors out of my clubs but still maintain the data reporting that Arccos provides. Will give tangent a try..

[Ari]

Great app, I’m really enjoying it.

 

the low power mode taking gps from phone lets my Apple Watch sip battery life!

 

the watch interface is amazing too, literally everything I need on there including a map of the hole

[Will49489698]

I have been using Golfshot the last two years but had some minor frustrations with it and l decided to look around and found Tangent so been using it for about a month.   It has been excellent so far, a little better at shot tracking and the user interface with the watch has been excellent as I mainly use just the watch when playing golf.  I am using just the tracking for fairways, gur, and total putts for now will decide later if I want to do more with the other tracking features.  As another person stated the battery life on the Apple Watch has been great.  Still more testing to be done before I decide this is the one but so far I would choose Targent over Golfshot.  I also tried Golflogix on trial but quickly eliminated it from consideration.  

[sonvolt22]

I too have been using Golfshot Premium for the last year but I'll be giving Tangent some test-run this weekend. Hate the initial learning curve with a new app, but Tangent looks encouraging...  

[hrh313]

I’m using it. The free trial is only a week, which isn’t much time, but I went ahead and did the annual plan with the 30% off discount.

 

its pretty good, but I find I have to go back in and edit my round, to fix errors, after every round.  I particurly change shots that I hit poorly to reflect that they were chunked or whatever so that the really short yardages from those shots hopefully are factored into my averages.

 

would love to see green heatmaps added in, like 18 birdies has 

 

as someone else noted, putting it into low power mode, so it pulls gps from your phone and not your watch, is critical to saving your battery on your watch.

[Dewdman42]

I tried Tangent for a while.  I have moved back to Roundabout for now.  There is an interesting history between Roundabout and Tangent.   Tangent is a fork off from v1game (which is now called Roundabout).  Two separate owners, two separate  (Tangent and Roundabout), but they are each going to be developed separately and go on to become whatever they become with v1game as their common ancestor.  

 

I feel Tangent is making some bold attempts to add a lot of cool and interesting features, but I found it to be much more problematic in auto tracking the shots compared to Roundabout.  Buggier.  At this point both apps intend to further their development and Tangent has made much bigger strides in that regard, I have interacted with both developers, both are nice guys and enthusiastic to improve the products, but I guess it will be a race to see which one evolves the best.

 

I find Roundabout's shot planning features to be a little lacking but I find it superior to Tangent for reliable and nearly problem free auto shot tracking.  Tangent has improved a few areas related to shot planning, but I have run into problems tracking my rounds so severe that either it became a huge distraction while playing to keep it in line or else I ended up having to just throw away the round at the end.  So...  I feel Tangent is not ready for prime time in its current state and so I switched back to Roundabout and that is where my subscription is now, though I will continue to watch the progress on both apps.

 

Regarding apple watch battery, I use the smaller sized Apple Watch 9 and don't have any problem with the battery, I don't use low power mode or anything, and always end up with plenty of battery life at the end, FWIW.  But it should be noted that I end up carrying my phone in my pocket in any case primarily because the breadcrumb feature of both of these apps currently only keeps breadcrumbs from the phone, so if you want to use breadcrumbs after the round to remember what you did on each hole and potentially correct some auto swing detection errors, then you need the phone in your pocket.   Also the AI caddie recommendations apparently only happen on the phone, so for example if you try to use the PLAYS LIKE feature which is shown on Tangent's watch, but the yardage value is calculated only on the phone app (the dev told me), so basically you have to carry the phone in your pocket if you want to use that feature also.  If you are carrying the phone in your pocket, then you might as well use low power mode on the watch.  

 

I could write some very long posts about how to use these apps and avoid some of the automatic issues that might come up, but...I don't have time to do it.  But basically I found Roundabout more reliable in terms of auto tracking my shots, but I do wish it had some of the shot planning features that Tangent has added.  So there we are..

 

I had so man problems with Tangent that I had to throw away rounds at the end that were too difficult to figure out what needed to be corrected.  Roundabout usually results in a much more accurate round automatically.  With only a few holes needing correction, usually for me it's about removing club assignments from my pitch and chip shots, assigning some of them as recovery shots.  Sometimes I move penalty shots deeper into the pond or whatever, so that the distance calculated by the club that went into the pond will match what it actually did.  These are minor little edits.  The one thing it can get messed up on, and the dev knows about this and hopes to make it better some day, is that at the end of each hole when you enter the score and putts, it looks at how many swings it detected and if it doesn't match up, it may automatically add a placeholder shot into the map somewhere so that the map has the same number of strokes as the score.  That is fine in principle except that it usually adds that placeholder shot into the middle of the fairway and nothing to indicate that it's a "placeholder".  Usually that undetected shot is actually some kind of short chip shot though, which means you then have to go into the list, recorder it so that the placeholder is just before all the putts and hopefully you have a + symbol somewhere on the breadcrumbs that will show you where to drag it on the map, presuming you were carrying the phone in your pocket that is.  Its kind of an annoying little edit honestly, and I would say I usually have maybe 2 holes per round that i have to correct that way.

 

Otherwise I find its shot detect to be rather amazingly good and accurate, and much prefer it to using sensors.  

 

I just wish Roundabout would add more shot planning features: distance arcs, dispersion circles over the green, etc.  The dev says he wants to do all that, so it will come eventually.

 

I am going to watch both Roundabout and Tangent over time.  We'll see.  for now I'm with Roundabout because I find it more reliable.  I find Tangent is trying to be overly automatic to compete with Arccos and ShotScope and in so doing makes it easy to get a FUBAR round that pretty much has to be thrown out.  FWIW.  But he is actively developing on it, so I'm sure things will improve over time.

 

another new app I am starting to check out is "Shot Pattern" which looks EXCELLENT for shot planning, but I am addicted to swing detection now...

 

Oh regarding the green heat maps, I would like to see that also, however bear mind they would probably have to raise the subscription cost to add that.