Joe Lagowski plays GSPro 4.0's four HD courses and says Unity 6 hasn't wowed him yet

Joe Lagowski wanted GSPro 4.0 to blow him away. After playing a few holes on each of the four new HD courses, he says it hasn't, at least not yet.

In a 36-minute video posted Nov. 8, the sim golf YouTuber walks through the update that moves GSPro from the Unity 2018 engine to Unity 6. We covered 2nd Flight Golf's Nov. 5 first look when 4.0 appeared. Lagowski's video goes further, with hands-on play and a side-by-side against an older course build.

What 4.0 brings

Lagowski lists the headline changes as the Unity 6 engine, GSPro's physics 2.0, a new course rendering pipeline, new on-course training drills and a refreshed interface. The play menu now has collections, including a High Definition filter, plus a panel for building course lists. He also spotted a change he says isn't in the changelog: balls hit into bunkers now leave an impact mark and a trail in the sand.

On physics he's cautiously positive. He calls the work "on the right track," credits the grass-type settings, and says chips and pitches still need work.

Installing didn't go smoothly. He says 4.0 gave him trouble until a GSPro staffer he calls ATP logged into his PC remotely and fixed it in about 20 seconds. By the end he describes the build he's running as version 4.1.2 and says he's still on the beta.

The four HD courses

The launch set includes Glade Springs, which he credits to GSPro and Kenny Austin; Glens Falls Country Club by T-Squared; San Miguel Island by John Mayer and GSPro; and Whispering Pines HD.

• Glade Springs: "If you showed me this course and didn't tell me it was an HD course, I wouldn't really know the difference," he says, though the sky looks different.
• Glens Falls: He turns every graphics setting up to ultra at 4K and still says "it just looks like GSPro." He also nearly makes the first albatross of his life.
• San Miguel Island: He calls it a fun layout but not the jump he expected. This is where he sees frame rates dip into the teens on an RTX 5080.
• Whispering Pines: This one wins him over. Loaded next to the original version, the HD course has much better clouds and rough and loads far faster. "The HD course of Whispering Pines looks significantly better," he says, while calling the gain "not as drastic as I thought it would be."

Load times are his clearest win across all four. The HD courses come up "insanely quick," while the original Whispering Pines takes noticeably longer from the same internal SSD. He couldn't change the lighting on the HD courses, and he expects that control to arrive later.

His verdict

Lagowski's main point is that the engine opens the door and the course designers decide how much better things look. He says the results will vary by designer, he'd like to see GSPro's Chris build a Unity 6 course to show what's possible, and he notes that talented designers have left for Trackman, PurePlay and Infinite Tees. He also gives GSPro credit for keeping every older course playable after the engine switch.

"Guys, I'm not a hater," he says. "I love GSPro."

For bay owners, the update is worth installing for the load times and the new menus. Lagowski suggests waiting for designers to grow into Unity 6 before expecting HD courses to match the Unreal Engine titles.