I envy the pictures of all these great setups! I researched for months different products and configurations to set up a cage/lane at our house. End of the day, the utility of what we'd end up with just wasn't worth the expense or the intrusiveness, as we have a weird lot that couldn't easily accommodate a the size of a cage or lane that would provide decent practice conditions.
What we ended up doing was trying out the Win Reality product on my DD's Oculus. It's been better than I thought it would be. The initial set up is kind of a pain, but once you do it a few times, it's pretty easy. She's able to see 50-60 live pitches in a 20 minute session. Factoring in set up time, the sessions are maybe 25 minutes, start to finish, so she can get one in every day she's not practicing. Velo for the program she's using maxes out at about 56, which is fine for her as a first year 12U. It's good for pitch recognition, as you see balls and strikes and a variety of spin pitches in addition to the FB. She's been using it for about a month now, and her timing, pitch recognition, hard contact and OBP all have improved. In terms of expense, we had the Oculus already and the WR program is, I think, around $200/year. Just another option to consider.
What we ended up doing was trying out the Win Reality product on my DD's Oculus. It's been better than I thought it would be. The initial set up is kind of a pain, but once you do it a few times, it's pretty easy. She's able to see 50-60 live pitches in a 20 minute session. Factoring in set up time, the sessions are maybe 25 minutes, start to finish, so she can get one in every day she's not practicing. Velo for the program she's using maxes out at about 56, which is fine for her as a first year 12U. It's good for pitch recognition, as you see balls and strikes and a variety of spin pitches in addition to the FB. She's been using it for about a month now, and her timing, pitch recognition, hard contact and OBP all have improved. In terms of expense, we had the Oculus already and the WR program is, I think, around $200/year. Just another option to consider.