Day 49

tinchote · Post by **tinchote** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 9:29 am

Tima (TSD) wrote:Imho to prevent developing of wrong habits (or even dangerous ones in terms of safety) it would be good to give zero points to those who descented to the less then, say, 50m AGL and didn't perform outlanding. What's the opinion of the gaggle on this subject?

That would be impossible to police and to implement. Who doesn't fly at less than 50 m from the ridges along a ridge task? Even in real life they do that.

GregNuspel · Post by **GregNuspel** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 9:51 am

I should have known every time I'm with in the top 20 the day is de-rated. Next year maybe we should drop any crashes from the results because in real life if that was the true results of a race there would be a ban on soaring because of the risk or thousands of people would be lining up to fly because of the risk factor

Maybe if you crash the next two races are off for repairs.

Post by **OXO** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:34 am

Tima (TSD) wrote:And one remark. There were a lot of crashes in this task. From time to time messages appeared - "xxx collided with trees. xxx crashed", "yyy wripped his wings off. yyy crashed". I just imagined that this is RL flight and was horrified... Imho this is not normal when people instead of outlanding try to jump over the ridges, fly between trees (like i also did some number of times) to get additional points.

Imho to prevent developing of wrong habits (or even dangerous ones in terms of safety) it would be good to give zero points to those who descented to the less then, say, 50m AGL and didn't perform outlanding. What's the opinion of the gaggle on this subject?

Maybe we could ask Vertigo to disable pilots from competing in LLC for, say 4 weeks while they are in the Lesce-Bled virtual hospital?

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 11:14 am

I agree this dangerous flying should be penalized somehow, but its a result of our choice to count only ~50% of the races. If all races counted, one would be more inclined to make a safe outlanding, rather than taking a huge risk.

We'll work out a solution for this problem for the next cub

Ghost Rider · Post by **Ghost Rider** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 12:08 pm

Great Task though i did not finish. The weather was realistic and some times hard to fly in. Landed safely between a lot of very, very high hills. Actually i would proberbly have pulled the ejecthandle in a reallife situation

However - It could be nice with a shorter task in these conditions: 130 - 180 km would be great. Otherwise i'm in bed to late...

Panther · Post by **Panther** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 2:03 pm

@Vertigo: very good idea to reward successful outlandings!

In Condor, e.g. when you are at tree-top level with no options left other than a tree landing or trapped in a steep valley or something like that, you are maybe just a bit angry because the task is over for you. In real-life, you would sweat blood and water, being aware that you are most likely experiencing the last seconds of your life. Therefore you will IRL fly more 'tactical' before it comes to such a situation, not just looking for the extreme peak in km/h or m/s, but always carefully ensuring that you have enough options left to be on the safe side. This is an absolutely essential part of real-life soaring.

Condor can only become a more realistic simulator in means of risk management for the individual pilot and for the whole multiplayer experience if there is a perceptible difference between outlanding and crashing.

I hope you will be able to find a way which ensures that 'cheating' is not possible (e.g. by disconnecting shortly before crash).

Tima (TSD) · Post by **Tima (TSD)** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 2:53 pm

Another issue of outlanding IRL vs. Condor is that in Condor you can perform outlanding everywhere where there are no obstacles (trees, buildings, etc.). At the same time IRL there are rather few places where outlanding is possible without damaging the glider. One of the possible solutions to make risk management in Condor closer to RL is to specify explicitly outlanding places (good example is SFSPC). This means that if outlanding is performed outside such place then glider is damaged in any case. This will prevent landings to the rocks, very steep slopes, etc. This will also eliminate possible cheating - no need to disconnect immediately before the crash if you try to land where it is not allowed and where if landed you'll crash anyway. Side impact of such invention is that average speeds in Condor will also be close to RL (imho) because pilot will need like IRL to take care about availability of the reachable outlanding places at any time and will not just fly till the last meters of altitude seeking the lift and getting points for the distance.

P.S. From my past software development experience i'm quite sure that it is possible to spread outlanding places over the scenery automatically.

P.P.S. One of the possible ways to encourage outlanding instead of taking big risk is to assign -1000 points for the task if pilot has crashed.

ddunwoody · Post by **ddunwoody** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 3:05 pm

Caution has its place - I was one of the slowest to finish, but finish I did.

cruiser · Post by **cruiser** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:55 pm

1st leg awful, lots of others getting infront. 2nd leg I took the lead just before the tp2 but then instead of taking the flatland thermal MY was thermalling in with 1.7m I decided to try to slopes more inclined to sun hoping for better lift which wasnt there. Landed right at tp2. Lesson learned.

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 9:50 pm

GregNuspel wrote:I should have known every time I'm with in the top 20 the day is de-rated.

With the IGCs processed, de-rated is a strong word for a dayfactor of 0.999

BTW, sorry to hear about the "sportscar" you need to buy for that the dentist

I thought Canada had pretty good medical care/insurances... apparently not good enough for your situation :/

On the bright side, there is always "condor" and "next year"...

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:27 am

Tima, what you propose is exactly what I proposed to the condor devs some time ago: approved outlanding fields/area's.

markjt · Post by **markjt** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:13 pm

And I second (third?) the "outlanding area" concept.

For LLC etc. I think it would radically change the strategic thinking and could be the single most important boost to realism in competitive races.

But how would these areas be displayed and delimited on the PDA or the ground?

As long as it is an optional switch for "serious" races. It should not dampen the youthfull exuberance of some of the "fun" races.

Mark

Tima (TSD) · Post by **Tima (TSD)** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:29 pm

markjt wrote: ...
But how would these areas be displayed and delimited on the PDA or the ground?
...

Imho they can be shown on the PDA even with distances to them. In the former times where there were no PDAs we marked known outlanding places on the paper map in the "problematic" areas. So such marks on the PDA will not drastically decrease the realism.
On the ground there could be "outlanding place helpers". Again i make the reference to the SFSPC where such places are contoured by red line on the ground when you press a key (do not remember which).

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 1:03 pm

as Tima said. It would be nice to put the closest outlanding fields as 'waypoint' in your PDA, so you can do FG calculations on it (most RL mountain pilots will do this with their GPS/PDA as well). But IRL you can usually also "see" if a field could be suitable for an outlanding or not, so it would only be fair to provide a way to show this in condor as well, like penalty zones and such, with a keypress.

markjt · Post by **markjt** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 1:16 pm

Vertigo wrote:.. like penalty zones and such, with a keypress.

Yes, sounds like the only practical way to do it. It could use the same visible distance settings as the TP helpers for simplicity.

Condor "zones" are rectilinear and cannot follow the terrain contours AFAIK, so maybe landing zones could be displayed just like a PZ, but only up to about 100m AGL, and with bright green or blue edges to stand out from PZ's.

So, like a PZ that goes from ground level up to 100m, but with green (blue) edges. The PDA would show the location on the map but the pilot would not see them if they were hidden behind a hill or mountain, or out of visible range. Planning ahead would still be the key, as in RL.

Mark

Day 49

Great task