A simple canopy landing simulator

[hr0nix 0]

As a newbie skydiver, I struggle a lot with getting my accuracy landings right. I tend to make same mistakes over and over again, especially on an unfamiliar dropzone or in high winds: my final legs are often too long or too short, I sometimes fly with the wind for too long, making it impossible to get where I intended to land. I believe that the reason for that is the lack of intuition of how my canopy behaves in the air in strong winds. Given my low jump numbers, I haven't really had a chance to develop the intuition yet. That's why I decided to create a simple tool to emulate the behaviour of ram-air canopy in the air, hoping that playing with the tool will help with that to some extent. Given how hard this stuff can be for me, there are probably other inexperienced skydivers out there who will find this tool at least somewhat useful.

The tool can be found here: http://hr0nix.github.io/BlueSkies/

Here is what I think it can be used for:

* Practicing different landing patterns in strong winds.
* Getting an idea of where can you make it back from under your main or reserve.
* Entering the current wind conditions before the jump and getting a rough idea of what to expect under canopy.

The simulation is quite simple and aimed to reflect the experience of skydivers with low jump numbers. The canopy is assumed to be loaded quite moderately: it has 10 m/s (22.4 mph) horizontal and 5 m/s (11.2 mph) vertical speed with no breaks applied, zero horizontal and 10 m/s (22.4 mph) vertical speed with breaks fully depressed, 7.5 m/s (16.8 mph) horizontal and 3.0 m/s (6.7 mph) vertical speed in quarter breaks. I took this numbers from a Russian book on skydiving, and, hopefully, they somewhat resemble the real experience. At least, the fact that you can go further by applying some breaks when you are upwind seems to be simulated correctly. All turns are assumed to be flat, that is, slow and with no altitude loss. The landing pattern is computed assuming a full speed approach.

If you have any suggestions on improving the tool, want me to add a new dropzone or to buy me a beer, feel free to reply or PM me. Also, the source code is available on https://github.com/hr0nix/BlueSkies, and I'm more than willing to accept pull requests.

[Absolut 0]

Haha, that's good fun, don't know if that will help you in real life though, get to know your canopy and how it behaves and you won't even have to think about how to fly regarding the wind and you'll end up in the right spot

[uberchris 0]

you are NEVERtoo new to take a canopy course. it helps a TON, less computers, more canopy courses.
though i appreciate your effort

gravity brings me down.........

[hokierower 0]

uberchris

you are NEVERtoo new to take a canopy course. it helps a TON, less computers, more canopy courses.
though i appreciate your effort

This, this, this, 1000x this! I did my first course at 110 jumps and I wish I'd done one sooner. It's what made me want to focus on canopy piloting and you will learn a heap!

[peek 20]

hr0nix

...That's why I decided to create a simple tool to emulate the behaviour of ram-air canopy in the air...

Good work! I hope you continue to work on this program using the feedback you get from the forum.

One problem that I had was that the up and down buttons scrolled the entire browser window instead of having effect on your program. Firefox 26.0

[topdocker 0]

hokierower

***you are NEVERtoo new to take a canopy course. it helps a TON, less computers, more canopy courses.
though i appreciate your effort

This, this, this, 1000x this! I did my first course at 110 jumps and I wish I'd done one sooner. It's what made me want to focus on canopy piloting and you will learn a heap!

I teach canopy courses and I want jumpers earlier in their careers, before the assemble too many bad habits! We take people with as few as 40 jumps!

Why wait to learn what can save your life on every jump?
top

Jump more, post less!

[dthames 0]

First jump, i was taught some landmarks to set up my pattern for winds from the south. I was also taught to rotate the pattern based on the direction of the ground wind. Not hard to understand, right?

I noticed this weekend that some students might have some difficulty mentally picturing the rotated pattern where to hold, where to enter the pattern, etc.

A simulator might help some visualize what the new pattern footprint might look like if it were rotated for winds at 240 degrees. Picture is worth a thousand words, I hear.

Instructor quote, “What's weird is that you're older than my dad!”

[Quagmirian 40]

For what it's worth, I think this simulator is fantastic.

[hr0nix 0]

I'd like to emphasize that by no means I wanted to diminish the importance of experience and proper instruction. I agree completely that no computer program can replace a good canopy course. I don't, however, see why cannot one use computer programs to assist the learning.

For instance, when I was reading the canopy handling manual for the first time, I was mostly picturing patterns in different wind conditions in my head, which was not very productive. How much more effective would it have been to try to figure out the pattern for particular conditions on a real map, and then compare what you've come up with to a pattern that would actually work. So, I think the tool is useful at least for visualization purposes.

[hr0nix 0]

Quote

One problem that I had was that the up and down buttons scrolled the entire browser window instead of having effect on your program. Firefox 26.0

Thanks for the feedback. This is a known problem, which, hopefully, I'll figure out how to fix soon.

[Deimian 43]

One thing that should be relatively easy to fix (if you know the data) is the rate of descent on a turn. The descent rate in your simulator seems to be constant, regardless of any turn. Kudos for the work though.

[pchapman 261]

I've seen just a few simple canopy flight simulators for use on one's home computer. For reference, this is the collection I know of, prior to hr0nix's one:

A U of Waterloo student (now at Microsoft I think) had one in 2007 but the original online Flash simulator page is gone now; not sure if it is still out there somewhere.
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2752602;

A BASE jumping sim was once mentioned on dz.com. It includes the canopy flight:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/BASE-Jumping-Game-formally-D3/447557740163

There's commercial software at http://staticlineinteractive.com/index.php but theres a free demo version. It got mentioned on dz at:
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3581184;

Perhaps this can help for further development ideas, or for others trying to better understand the basics of flying the pattern.

[hr0nix 0]

A new version of the simulator is now available, thanks to tons of contributions from unkulunkulu. New features include:

• Visualization of the area that is potentially reachable from the current location of the canopy. You can see how it's affected by your decisions in real time.


• Visualization of the area where you can get to the target from.


• Ability to adjust the position of the landing target.


• Ability to choose an arbitrary landing target from the Google Places database. You can land near The Greate Sphinx if you want.


• Tons of small improvements and bugfixes.

[inline visualization.jpg]

[EnricoPalazzo 1]

Thanks, using any drop zone from the search was a great a feature to add.
Although I just used it for fun, it was interesting to see how the reference points on my drop zone translated to your sim.
On my wish list: increased sink rate in turns

Thanks again, this is really good!