Low & Slow

[janjansen]

Low & Slow Day 7 briefing

After a few tough challenges, today we can have a little fun with a fast, quirky task that has some Red Bull Challenge DNA in it.

The Alpine glaciers are melting, so lets go have a close look before they are gone.

The first 2 legs allow you to gain altitude. Thermals are strong, the wind is fairly strong and there could be wave.

When you get to the Mt Blanc, there is a maze of turn points that will force you to fly low over two north facing Mt Blanc glaciers, then follow a third one down steeply on the lee side of the Mt Blanc.



Condor TP windows can be glitchy. I had to switch some TPs to sectors and it seems to work now, but if you encounter problems, use PDA screen 3 and aim the red dot on the center of that screen.

15m class
20 minute join time
1m warmup
5 minute start window

Given the high altitude and roller coaster descent, I enabled plane recovery this time.

[UrosM]

Why posting results with full data takes so long?

[janjansen]

Im not sure. I set the time to submit FTR to 2 hours (+ default of 3 hours for flying the task defined by CC).
I might have set the time/date for the end of the race day incorrectly, but I can neither see nor change this now.

Edit, I did set it wrong. Race day ends April 27th, 2019 02:30 UTC instead of March obviously
Oops . Ill ask Thierry if he can change that, because I cant.

[blacksun]

In flight 9, I had that thing where the active window switches away from condor and the joystick stops responding. I fly in vr so it take a bit of time to locate the alt+tab keys to switch back, it's pretty infrequent and normally not a problem, unfortunately tonight it happened whilst diving for the start. Result one wing fell off and I spiraled to the ground.

I restarted and flew the task offline, it was an interesting task, but hard with no one to follow or use to gauge speed off. Manage to complete it in 1hr 51s. http://www.condor-club.eu/analysis/0/?rank=630462

Does anyone know what causes it or has any suggestions to stop it? I also run XCsoar, a virtual Com port, chrome with the server list open and teamspeak (as well as all the other crap that windows/rift needs). Condor is running in window mode.

[janjansen]

You could run this tool to see what steals the focus:
http://www.adminscope.com/downloads/win ... us-logger/

However, I would recommend running condor in emulated full screen, so that windows 10 focus assist will block notification popups:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use- ... 018-update

As you probably know, Condor club wont let me score your flight if I wanted to

[blacksun]

Thanks for the suggestions, will look at changing the windows mode and see if that helps as that's the simplest to implement. Hopefully it will still display xcsoar on the headset ok. I was tempted to try upload the offline flightplan to the contest, loosing double points is a real pain in the backside, even outlanding near the finish line scored 1000+ points. I know it would have flagged up a not matching the server's copy but wasn't sure if it would score points, but rules is rules. Guess with the two task's I've had to miss and the last task counting as double, I've used up my 4 tasks that can be dropped, so need to fly and win all the remaining tasks.

Many thanks for running the 'low and slow' and the midnight oil series, been some really interesting, varied and challenging tasks. Thanks also for stepping in last night and sorting the server out. Glad to see you are continuing with the Low and Slow 2 series.

[janjansen]

Have to admit, on hindsight, scoring X out of Y tasks and setting double points on some of them, doesnt really make sense, and I shouldnt have done that. Or maybe I should double points on all remaining tasks to mitigate the damage. As for the last task, Ill send you a pm.

[eMBe]

I also had to miss this one, so double points pains me a lot too
It is a little useless to allow in competition rules to skip some number of races and make a race with double points which if missed drops you far behind other players.
As a mediocre player I was trying to at least fly frequent instead of fast So further competition seems quite pointless now.

[UrosM]

Double points tasks, if using them, should be announced at the beginning of the competition, at least. Otherwise, IMHO, double points tasks just brakes the fairness of the competition. Yes, it's fun to fly for double points, but not for those can not participate that race.

Using X out of Y tasks result for overall result make sense, as in reality, almost nobody will fly all the tasks. There is another World outside of the Condor, also.

[janjansen]

So further competition seems quite pointless now.

Only if you fly for the ranking on CC. Which I would argue, no one should in LnS ( I even deleted most of my own results, as it seemed a little awkward to win my own competition).

LnS was never about finding the best condor pilot and crowning a champion. It started just to provide flights in a different time slot and give those people some benchmarks to compare themselves to. There are too many ways to "cheat" and skew the results, some of them inherent to the concept so Im not even trying to prevent it. Also due to calendar overlaps most pilots flew only a fraction of the tasks, most joined long after the competition began, but others can fly all the tasks twice and could even study some live streams of other pilots if they wanted to. Given all that, having an overall ranking is perhaps fun and a motivator, but you really shouldnt pay too much attention to the outcome here. Condor World Cup, Condor GP and similar "serious" competitions are more about measuring one's skill compared to others. You should fly LnS primarily like most fly TchinTchin, for the experience and the satisfaction of completing quirky / difficult challenges and hopefully doing so faster than some /most others who fly that same day.

As for the double points; Im partially blaming CC for this. The correct way to use double points is by also counting the result as two races. The overall result is based on 8 out of 12 races. If one of them has double points, it should be treated as if they are two race days, and if that race day is among your best results, it should be counted as 8 out of "13". That way you create an incentive that helps you when you do well on that day, but you could still easily win even if you didnt fly that day. Unfortunately thats not how it appears to work, although Im not yet 100% sure..

[eMBe]

Yeap, I have never argued that LnS is mostly for fun. Still, I felt like it is better to give some feedback to make next races and competitions more enjoyable.

[UrosM]

The solution is simple: remove the overall results and let it be race by race flying, not the competition.

As always, everyone has ideas, wishes, complaints etc. Nothing will ever suit for everybody, so just keep it as simple as possible.

And, as said before, if you flying for hall of fame and medals, than better join some other, bigger and stronger competitions.

[janjansen]

CC doesnt really allow for recurring races without overall ranking.
More over, LnS2 overall ranking should be more relevant than LnS1, because there is only 1 task per week, so people will be more likely to participate in enough races to get full scores.

That said, one more clarification: Briefing of day 10 states "DuoDiscus task", but the flight plan allows all planes. This is not a bad april fools days joke, its just me messing up despite having double checked 3x. I was not able to change it anymore after I saw my mistake.
I clarified on the server all planes are allowed, so this is of course also true for the late session tomorrow.

[Viking]

Hi Jan

I dunno where to turn with this, but connecting to virtualsoaring.eu on TS3 awaiting a race, i suddenly got disconnected and in red text it said that i was BANNED PERMANENTLY from their server... ????

I have no clue what`s going on there, but this is going to make thing`s very difficult overall when flying, especially in VR.

Is it possible ...you that know all people could ask someone what the heck is going on, or advice me to a place where i can get some answers to this ?

TIA

Viking

[janjansen]

I see you where banned by "Jerry | Y77". I have no idea why, and I dont really know him or other admins, but I sent him an offline message.
Or you could try emailing info@virtualsoaring.eu