SuperGirl

there are no numbers. this is research!! ongoing research!! come on John you know better than most what that's all about also, there is no "they", it's "us" We as a community will have to do the thorough testing and figure out numbers, for this system or whatever other system we choose to use. what are your numbers?? ehh?? cmon, how could you possibly keep us in the dark, it's been days already and we don't know the magic tolerance number that your maximum deviation should be less than or equal to... what number works best? same kinda thing. it's an interesting method with great potential but it's not all figured out yet. which is why we shouldn't be rushing things, and nor should the USPA.

sheesh, get on with the times, Simon, half the crap we babble about on this forum is childish. wait. scratch that. 80% of it. maybe more.

yea, turns out I shoulda played with the numbers a lot more. those are not good enough numbers for describing good formations, just default values... with tighter tolerances it's actually pretty damn hard to induce that side dent of yours. this thing is pretty damn self-correcting from the inside out. and I'm realizing that I haven't played with it nearly as much as I need to. I'll work on it more and I'll post a full report of my findings at some point.

okay let's see just tried a few lines and already no worky. I have the tolerances set at whatever the default value was... is this the same as the proposal? i can't be arsed to dig that up right now. lemme know if i gotta redo it with different values. (and as far as tolerance goes, this being work in progress, these values have been tested about as much as the grid... i.e. a bunch of formations seem to work fine with this. not thorough enough) but I see the idea you're trying to illustrate. I'm gonna play with it some more and see if I can tweak your diagram into something still ugly but accepted... there might be one somewhere in between... feel free to send updated versions.

you mean a protractor? By the way, I now see clearly what Kallend wants to do. He might be the only one left with enough patience to use a ruler to measure formation distances and compute record measurements by hand. If so, he will then be the key in judging any formation ever made... and he will charge an insurmountable amount of cash to be hired to judge every single record in the future. Guess someone is secretly planning to get rich, huh?

hmm. that's a very interesting proposal. woohoo! very happy to see the ideas flowing. keep em coming, folks! I am trying to think of various cases in which your system allows a formation that the judging software doesn't, and evaluate whether the formation is actually worth considering , i.e. would it make sense to try to fly like that or would it be even harder to get results than a different shape with the same number of people. first we've got the case of the random mess... people may say oh but with your system you could fly ugly shit, if planned... but in reality flying a bunch of shit would make it harder to actually be able to match the shit on the ground with the shit in the sky, without sightlines and proximity helping you stay in your slot. Then there is the case of orderly flocks that are separated into connected components (and my definition of "connected" here is that you can put lines on it in the software without breaking it) like we see in some of the airplane pictures, or like Scott Campos had planned for that bigway event in '08 if I'm not mistaken (correct me if i'm wrong, wasn't there) Basically a formation of several rather orderly big chunks... This might be a good case to consider. Though again harder to fly such that the distance separating the chunks is exactly as planned on the ground... but who the fuck knows, if we lie on the painted dots long enough maybe we can really dial in those bigger distances :) So finally we come back to one big orderly chunk which is right now covered pretty well by the software. (slightly different measure but I suspect pretty similar in ultimate results achieved) It appears that for this method the smaller distance you use between flyers, the easier it will be to minimize the error so that the formation is achieved. right? not that records should be easy or anything... but once you get to really big numbers you try to plan for the design that is most likely to achieve success, no? Now aside from all that, the real beauty of this method here might lie in its extensibility to 3d formations. That would require a minimum of 3 photographs if I'm not mistaken. Hmmmm. Now THAT would be interesting.

oh, but wait... Wah Wah Wah... (edited to fix a silly tag)

I *think* what he means is this: Flying for the grid requires you to not focus so much on where the adjacent flyers are in the formation, but to look all the way through the entire sightline, all the way to the base, and anticipate where your slot should be based on that, and not so much based on where the flyers in front of you are. While this is cool that we were able to actually fly like that, to the point that you could take someone out of the formation and the rest of it would still be just fine, I am not sure that it scales so well to bigger and bigger designs. You can only look so far ahead of you... hence all the issues with cumulative error. Since the software method focuses on the local analysis, flying a good slot under these rules means you are looking at the buddies on the row right in front of you (which you can actually see really well!) and ensuring that the distances and angles are as close as possible to what was done on the dirt dive. It seems like a more natural description of how we normally fly in a flock. The rule more accurately describes how we would normally fly, rather than us adjusting our flying specifically to make the rule fit better.

+1 couldn't agree more

Oh no ... I was just dreaming you measuring me... well, first you have to come up with an interesting wingsuit judging measure, write a proposal, test it, prove that it's really good... all that good stuff (apologies for the brief thread hijack. boys, you may now resume the wingsuit judging shitfest)

of course!! did you wanna judge, too? you're welcome to join in...

also, if any two methods are tied for winner, I propose a cock measuring contest to settle any doubts.

Hell yeah!! I also propose after-hours activities to include mud fights between the various groups proposing different judging methods.

cool cool. crystal part makes sense. have you tried doing the spectrum on some wingsuit formations? I'd be curious to see the actual spectrum picture of the 25way from summerfest, which was ridiculously good looking, compared to some crappier flock... maybe the 28way that wasn't submitted that you guys said was not as nice I'd also love to see it for the 71way from '08, vs the 68way in '09

care to explain this stuff in the language of the average skydiver and elaborate on how this works and why it's a good measure? also, could you give an example on some existing pictures of wingsuit formations? or at least start with some pictures of crystals or and explain how this power spectrum differentiates a crappy crystal from a neat crystal. some visualizations would really help... for those of us who don't do power spectrums on a daily basis...

For fuck's sake, before we start throwing shit at each other and yelling "mine's better [bigger] than yours", perhaps we need to think about a few things: - There are currently not one, but two wingsuit presentations happening at the FAI meeting. As far as wingsuiting as a discipline is concerned, we are getting plenty of attention. And that's a good thing! - Until now we've been saying that the grid is the best thing out there because nobody has come up with any other alternative. Well, finally we see that a whole bunch of people put a lot of work into coming up with what sounds like a very interesting alternative. That is also a good thing, regardless of which approach you think is better... Hell, we haven't even heard all the details yet. Could we give these people a chance to show off their stuff first? Having two approaches instead of one is GOOD. It's progress. I can only hope that someone brings forward a third approach, and maybe a fourth, and so on. Who knows, we might even end up finding some combination of ideas that works better than any one approach on its own.

(I was gonna add my name to the list again too, but figured one of me per event is enough.) I think Simon is trying to develop split personality by mid March. :)

just called the guy and made a reservation. thanks man

thanks for the update, Viv Given the new location, have you guys had a chance to arrange any skydiver-special discounts with any hotels closer to Vega Baja?

I bet you're a closet Ill Vision wannabe... cmon admit it

nice n shiney!! lookin good, man

you've done quite a remarkable job, man! excellent video!! really enjoyed watching it (again, and again, and again...)

sweet video, good memories... happy holidays and caw caw!!

Wooohoo!! Nice flying! Welcome to the flock, Jay! Ordered a wingsuit yet?

good point. Phil, you'd make a good moderator...