Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

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JBlyth
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Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by JBlyth » Mon Nov 07, 2022 10:04 am

I have read through a number of previous threads in the use of Autopilot during Multi-player competitions over years past.

After speaking to quite a number of VERY GOOD Condor 2 pilots, there seems to be a consensus that the glider actually FLYS BETTER on autopilot as the "trim setting is different", and/or the glider is not wondering all over the sky from our own personal micro-control creating additional drag.

My question relates directly to whether the glider really does perform "better" when using autopilot, or if it is a myth. Any questions about competitive advantage are separate from my query.

It is quite apparent that some pilots are on Autopilot every possible second, as seen in numerous YouTube streams of races, as well as general conversion. I find it is not unusual for other pilots flying final glides in exactly the same glider appearing to fly faster and maintain height better when they are using Autopilot for very extended periods.

My question is why?

For myself, I do use Autopilot for a minute or two before the start of a race while "pinning" LK8000 and CoTASA into my Virtual Reality Cockpit, and for very brief periods while racing to make adjustments outside of Condor to LK8000/XCSoar or to extraneous utilities like Discord.

I am looking forward to some very interesting replies.....

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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by wickid » Mon Nov 07, 2022 11:47 am

Yes, I use autopilot from time to time for glides, especially between thermals. I often have to fly with my mouse as I can't take my joystick with me on the road, which I am most of the time. As the mouse isn't self centering it is very difficult to find the exact center for trimmed straight and level flight. So I use autopilot to fly straight without getting carpal tunnel syndrome constantly trying to keep the glider straight, which, with a joystick happens by itself.

As for the performance gain, I guess there could be a small advantage. Small changes in AoA cause increases in drag. So if you are constantly slightly moving the joystick there may be some more drag. How big this effect is? I really don't know. The disadvantage is that you need some time to switch the AP off when you encounter unexpected lift. So you may loose some valuable seconds there trying to switch it off quickly and pulling up in to the thermal. I have this sometimes when flying with the mouse. Having to fly back to find the core again as I wasn't fast enough switching it off. And if turbulence is high, direction keeping is not the best.

Another advantage is planning your track. With the AP on and not having to worry about crashing, you can zoom out, plan your route, mess with the PDA, look on google maps to see how high a pass is up ahead ect.

So my guess is: Performance advantage, if it is really there, it is very small. It is mostly, for me at least, convenient when flying with the mouse. And the biggest advantage is having your hands free to do other tasks like planning the routing and figuring out where the best lift is.
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by 6266 » Mon Nov 07, 2022 12:21 pm

What wickid describes is a good use of the autopilot. I think there are more good reasons to use it, especially for older people or people with a handicap.

What I have seen on youtube of so-called "top-pilots", is to switch the autopilot on and off very often. So they have the finger on P and use it on every possible second. If they wouldn't get an advantage out of that they wouldn't do it. In my opinion that are not "top-pilots", maybe "top-gamers".

After I have looked some minutes such a video I decided never to see such videos again. I would be embarrassed to upload such a behavior.

I wish that something will build in Condor (3?) to avoid from this behavior. Maybe a waiting time to shut on and off, 2 seconds maybe. Than you have the disadvantage like wickid described but not the advantage the "top-gamers" get. And for all people who need the autopilot that delay is not really a disadvantage
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by Andy1248 » Mon Nov 07, 2022 2:47 pm

I have found that if on autopilot with a crosswind component that the glider will weathercock into wind over time.

So OK for short periods. I have gone and made cuppa and come back and found myself well off track. :(
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by cbrunschen » Mon Nov 07, 2022 6:21 pm

I'd love to be able to
  • Use the autopilot when flying locally, without a server; and have the 'pause' functionality available as a separate thing, when flying locally only
  • Disable use of the autopilot for a task, whether flown locally or online

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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by Paul_UK » Mon Nov 07, 2022 6:28 pm

The options just need adding to the NOTAM tab and a separate key assignment for 'Pause' and 'Autopilot'. Job done!

Could even add a Penalty for using Autopilot option to the NOTAM tab. You can use it but you'd be penalised.

I foresee that only really being used for competition racing tasks though, or by us task creators who want to keep things a little closer to RL :mrgreen:
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by cbrunschen » Tue Nov 08, 2022 10:25 am

As a software developer myself, I am wary of suggesting that any software change is "just" something-or-other ... I know from experience that things often seem easier from the outside than they are on the inside. Plus of course the Condor team are already heavily loaded with lots of requests – in addition to the changes they themselves want to make.

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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by Paul_UK » Tue Nov 08, 2022 2:32 pm

cbrunschen wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 10:25 am
As a software developer myself, I am wary of suggesting that any software change is "just" something-or-other ... I know from experience that things often seem easier from the outside than they are on the inside. Plus of course the Condor team are already heavily loaded with lots of requests – in addition to the changes they themselves want to make.
I don't think anyone is saying the change would be easy. It's just a discussion about what options would be preferred. I think this topic has been discussed before and it's probably mentioned in the Condor 3 feature request thread already too.

If Condor is going to be used for FAI E-sport tasks Id' like to think one rule would be disallowing the use of autopilot. Logically it would therefore make sense to add a switchable option within Condor itself to ensure that it could not be used during a multiplayer task. Venturing into the E-sport world will mean a few things will require changing to ensure fairness across the board. The penalty thought only came to me as I typed. The logic for that would already exist as it'd be the same as for having thermal helpers on only instead of thermal helpers it'd be when autopilot is activated.

The option is already there to turn off external view etc, which can be used to gain an advantage to see what the weather is like ahead on task. So there are other options that can be activated to help make Condor more close to RL for the tasks where the setter wishes it to be more like RL.

I think it's very much worth discussing people's thoughts on autopilot / pause, though I suspect the Condor 3 devs already know the route they're going initially regarding this it does no harm talking about it.
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by wickid » Tue Nov 08, 2022 2:39 pm

The autopilot is important as nobody is going to sit in front of the PC with a baggy or a catheter. You have to be able to go to the toilet real quick. Without autopilot and flying with the mouse this would be impossible. So I would be against a penalty or disabling it.
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by 6266 » Tue Nov 08, 2022 4:32 pm

wickid wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 2:39 pm
The autopilot is important as nobody is going to sit in front of the PC with a baggy or a catheter. You have to be able to go to the toilet real quick. Without autopilot and flying with the mouse this would be impossible. So I would be against a penalty or disabling it.
Agree, and think about people with the need of the autopilot (I wrote about it on my first post in this thread). But it should be done in a way that there is no advantage in using it, the glide ratio shouldn't be better with autopilot than with using the joystick. It was written about drag, autopilot should have drag like an average pilot
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by cbrunschen » Tue Nov 08, 2022 6:35 pm

wickid wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 2:39 pm
The autopilot is important as nobody is going to sit in front of the PC with a baggy or a catheter. You have to be able to go to the toilet real quick. Without autopilot and flying with the mouse this would be impossible. So I would be against a penalty or disabling it.
The idea here is to give task setters the option of disabling the autopilot, or giving penalties for autopilot use.

In a real glider, you can't generally turn on an autopilot and step away for a bit. So if you want to arrange a serious e-sports competition, having the option of enforcing a similar constraint seems like a worthwhile thing.

To allow brief stepping away, it might be useful to be able to set a 'grace period' where each pilot is allowed a certain amount of autopilot time before penalties start to kick in; that would likely allow people to briefly nip to the loo, but prevent people from using the autopilot for long stretches.

(Edited to add:) Such a grace period would of course be more complex to implement, as well as requiring more UI in the NOTAMs, and probably while using the autopilot in flight, perhaps counting down the remaining grace period before the prohibition or penalties start to kick in.

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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by Paul_UK » Tue Nov 08, 2022 8:27 pm

cbrunschen wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 6:35 pm
wickid wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 2:39 pm
The autopilot is important as nobody is going to sit in front of the PC with a baggy or a catheter. You have to be able to go to the toilet real quick. Without autopilot and flying with the mouse this would be impossible. So I would be against a penalty or disabling it.
The idea here is to give task setters the option of disabling the autopilot, or giving penalties for autopilot use.

In a real glider, you can't generally turn on an autopilot and step away for a bit. So if you want to arrange a serious e-sports competition, having the option of enforcing a similar constraint seems like a worthwhile thing.

To allow brief stepping away, it might be useful to be able to set a 'grace period' where each pilot is allowed a certain amount of autopilot time before penalties start to kick in; that would likely allow people to briefly nip to the loo, but prevent people from using the autopilot for long stretches.

(Edited to add:) Such a grace period would of course be more complex to implement, as well as requiring more UI in the NOTAMs, and probably while using the autopilot in flight, perhaps counting down the remaining grace period before the prohibition or penalties start to kick in.
Thanks cbrunschen. It isn't about permanently disabling autopilot, not at all. As said ideally it'd be an option the task setter can choose whether to enable or not. So it is all about adding 'options' not disabling what is currently present.

For every serious race I have entered in Condor I have made sure my bladder will hold out long enough for me to complete the task without the need to go to the toilet.

Instead of the grace period as long as the penalty scale was set appropriately you could set so you only get say 10 - 20points per minute or whatever you deem as reasonable.
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by wickid » Tue Nov 08, 2022 9:29 pm

Paul_UK wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 8:27 pm

For every serious race I have entered in Condor I have made sure my bladder will hold out long enough for me to complete the task without the need to go to the toilet.
Some of the older generation is not so lucky that they can go 3 hours without... :wink:

It is a lot more complex. How long does the grace period last? Is it dependant on the task lenght, time? A fixed amount? User settable? I think it is a minor problem and I'm not convinced there really is a performance advantage. The advantage of being able to zoom out to plan your route without crashing can be solved by disabling outside view. That option we already have.
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by 6266 » Tue Nov 08, 2022 11:20 pm

wickid wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 9:29 pm
... I'm not convinced there really is a performance advantage ...
On youtube you can see some pilots with very good results using autopilot very excessively. There are two possible reasons why they do it

1. there is an advantage
2. they are idiots

I can't believe on 2. ...
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Re: Use of Autopilot in Competitions - is there a performance benefit gained? (Again ;-)

Post by Paul_UK » Wed Nov 09, 2022 6:04 am

wickid wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 9:29 pm
Paul_UK wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 8:27 pm

For every serious race I have entered in Condor I have made sure my bladder will hold out long enough for me to complete the task without the need to go to the toilet.
Some of the older generation is not so lucky that they can go 3 hours without... :wink:

It is a lot more complex. How long does the grace period last? Is it dependant on the task lenght, time? A fixed amount? User settable? I think it is a minor problem and I'm not convinced there really is a performance advantage. The advantage of being able to zoom out to plan your route without crashing can be solved by disabling outside view. That option we already have.
Fully appreciate that there will be some who may have medical issues or be on the older side and need to visit the toilet more often than others. That is why in the discussion it is mentioned to add it as an option, not to totally disable the function. That is why I shared that in the NOTAM tab you can turn off external view as an example, instead of it being disabled you have the option as a task setter to disable the function.

I do not know whether there is an advantage when using autopilot or not. I'd assume there is a small one if there are no control inputs required to stay on track when autopilot is in use but without it the user may make more control inputs which would cause more drag. The other strange thing is that when disabling autopilot and not altering anything, i.e. not touching the trim, the glider goes on to change it's attitude. In some gliders this is very noticeable. I don't understand why that happens if the trim isn't touched?

As Condor looks as though it will be the chosen piece of software for gliding in the e-sport world I just find it odd there'd be autopilot capability to use in such an event. To me it's a little like if in an official E-sport car racing event were to allow the use of an automatic gears.

In the grand scheme of things you're right it is only a minor thing, I'm just throwing an opinion / idea out there :mrgreen:
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