XRHQ
United States
Colorado
Entertainment & Media

Old Town Putt pilots mixed reality game worlds on its Fort Collins mini golf course

Pirate and space game worlds overlay the bar's nine indoor holes and react to real putts, demoed to guests since 2023 and now moving to headsets.

Constantine Peros

Added on
Pirate-island augmented reality scene overlaid on a hole at Old Town Putt, with a virtual ship, rock arch, pirate characters, barrels and the venue's in-game scoreboard
Alternate level scenes can be overlaid on the same golf course

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Old Town Putt is a nine-hole indoor mini golf bar in downtown Fort Collins, Colorado, opened in 2019 by Dana Snell. Snell co-founded Puttscape Inc. with augmented reality developer Michael Dykier, CEO of DAS Labs, to add virtual game modes and themes to the venue's existing course without physical renovation, and Old Town Putt has served as the platform's working proving ground since development began in 2019.

The Puttscape system maps the physical geometry of each hole and overlays interactive themed worlds onto the real greens. Two storylines are documented: a pirate island in which putts knock over barrels, scatter seagulls and eventually sink a ship to rescue the governor's daughter, and a space-station escape with sci-fi hazards. The real ball is tracked in real time by computer vision combined with Puttscape's own beacon-based sensor system, so AR characters and objects react to each shot; an in-game scoreboard for up to four players and AR-unlocked coupons and freebies are also described. In its 2023-2024 form the experience ran on handheld iPads and smartphones using Niantic's Lightship ARDK with VPS geospatial anchors. The company has since demonstrated a headset version on Meta Quest and Pico 4 Ultra Enterprise with hand tracking, in which guests putt a virtual ball through the same themed worlds, and describes AR-glasses support as in development.

Niantic invited the founders to present Puttscape on stage at AWE USA 2023 in Santa Clara, California, where the booth showed physical ball shots on iPads interacting live with AR content; a course recording dated 29 May 2023 shows the pirate scene at Old Town Putt. Qualcomm subsequently accepted Puttscape into the Snapdragon Spaces Pathfinder Program (announced March 2024), the US Patent and Trademark Office granted patent US 11,964,208 B2 for the location-based AR gaming system in April 2024, and the company reports acceptance into the Google Android XR Developer Catalyst program.

As of 2026 Puttscape describes Old Town Putt as its operating venue and proving ground, publishes first-reaction footage from live guest demos on the course, and says it is in talks with other venue operators. Old Town Putt's own website does not yet advertise the experience, and no public commercial launch, pricing or second venue has been confirmed, so the deployment is recorded as a pilot. The 2023 start reflects the earliest evidenced guest-facing demos on the course; development on the course dates to 2019.

Quotes

Puttscape is pushing the envelope for location based entertainment by leveraging our (Niantic's) VPS technology and combining it with their own ball tracking IoT system to augment mini-golf experiences at physical courses

The potential for this technology is so exciting. We are starting with mini golf, but plan on expanding to other activities/games where we can add virtual content to interact with physical equipment.

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Constantine Peros
This write-up is free to reuse with credit — CC BY 4.0.

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