New golf entertainment venue drives up the ante

Photography by altf.com

If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas — or have seen it in a movie — you know that everything comes with a side of razzle dazzle. The city is a massive playground for adults and the newest venue on the strip ups the ante for world-class entertainment.

Since opening March 2024, Atomic Golf has attracted considerable attention — with one newscaster describing it as “a driving range on steroids”. It’s a massive 99,000-square-foot (9,200-square-meter) venue that includes golf, entertainment, technology, and an array of food and beverages. And if you think that sounds like a recipe for success, you’d be right.  

According to the National Golf Foundation, 13% of Americans aged six and up played golf in 2023, whether on a course, at a driving range, simulator, or golf entertainment venue. And the number of Americans who play simulated golf has grown 73% since 2019.  

Increased ROI for Atomic Golf 

Beaudry Interactive (b/i), an award-winning experiential design and production studio based in Los Angeles, created and designed the putting areas, and Coherent Design selected 32 Christie DWU1100-GS laser projectors as part of their consulting work for the venue. 

“Our goal was to make the putting bays operational for as long as possible every day. By increasing the playable time, we’re potentially increasing the ROI for Atomic Golf,” explains Kevin Potts, managing principal, Coherent Design. Four projectors illuminate each putting area, which uses grey instead of green turf to improve the projected image. The combined light output of 47,400 lumens is bright enough that the putting areas are usable day and night, and playable time reaches up to 20 hours per day. 

Beaudry Interactive briefly considered LED technology for the putting areas, but the idea was quickly squashed. “For maybe two seconds we were talking about embedded LED displays on the ground. Because the ball will roll forever, you have to put something on top of it to slow it down. But in that case, you're not going to see the display! In the end, projection was the clear way to go,” says David Beaudry, principal, Beaudry Interactive.  

Creating interactive, real-time gameplay 

In addition to designing the virtual putting areas, Beaudry Interactive also created the content, developing an initial offering of three games for guests of all levels to play. Guests compete against each other to hit their ball to stop on virtual targets to score points. This concept is easy to explain, but execute? That’s a whole different ball game. 

“Atomic Golf wanted to create an arcade game. Basically, it's a giant 10-foot by 20-foot (3-meter by 6-meter) arcade cabinet that just happens to use putting as your means of interacting with the gameplay,” says David. And so, b/i started off the project with an R&D effort to enable real-time markerless ball tracking within a few millimeters.  

“We've done a lot of work in the computer vision world which is how Atomic Golf found us,” says David. “We were really curious to see if we could accurately track any ball, with markers, without markers, different colors, within a fraction of an inch, and then do a game play overlay.” 

Beaudry Interactive paired the projectors with infrared cameras to track each player’s ball, and the system can differentiate between balls to track each player’s score. “We're really proud of the ball tracking capabilities and the fact that we’re doing it without markers. We can track any ball, even soccer [football] balls and croquet balls,” says David. “There’s a ridiculous amount of math behind this.”  

A successful project 

“With years of experience, we have a very small go-to when it comes to projector manufacturers. Las Vegas is a harsh environment, so we needed a projector manufacturer that was backed by engineers and project managers who could help us deliver a successful project,” says Kevin.  

We’re thrilled that Coherent Design, b/i, and Atomic Golf trusted Christie projection for this stunning new attraction. Atomic Golf opened in March, and the online reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. The golf, atmosphere, food, and technology are drawing locals and tourists alike.