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JohanW

Judging a WRW formation

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I'm not clear on the angular distortion? What kind of distortion is that?


What Kallend called deviatoric distortion.
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Let's say the design grid for a diamond has a 75 degree angle at the apex. Does it really matter if the skydivers fly it with a 78 degree angle? I suggest not. So I'd allow a "homogeneous deviatoric" distortion of the grid to find the best fit to what the skydivers did (in other words, allow a change in the overall angle of the diamond, but still keep every cell the same shape).


Johan.
I am. I think.

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spacing for big ways:
Well, the history of big formations shows that with the time more or less all big formations after 200-way have the same shape.
that will be the case with the big ws formations as well...
IMHO future will show formations which will look like the diamond and not as the 71 way ( because i think ''wings'' are to complicated to make it straight, lack of references between jumpers)
With that kind of shape (diamond) the positioning w the minimum free space of , let say 10-30 cm away from legs of the ''next ''jumper flying will be ok. This will automaticly fix the geometric problems by itself as well.

It will be alwasy the problem to make any rule with no grips which would be easy and fast to understand and see.

Will it be more complicated to get proper 30 way even?! Yes, but that is the only way in the future I guess...

Check the CREW jumpers... Can they fly 200 way no contact formation?! Yes, it will look like WS no contact formation.. it will not be really dangerous as well.
What is the record there?! 100-way!
Is it dangerous?! Hell yes ( guys in formation feels like being in free fall , ha, haa)

Same goes for WS stuff...
Make the rule simple, will make large numbers record now days impossible , but just for now...future will show that flying can be / will be much more precise, as always.
Rules which are not clean will leave space for fooling ourselves at the first place, than it is really easy to fool others also... were the progress is then?
Robert Pecnik
[email protected]
www.phoenix-fly.com

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Kristian Teufel of the Guinness records management team World Records verified in a letter dated April 25, 2008, that the 35-airplane formation flights by a group of Van's RVs set the Guinness World Record for "Largest civilian formation flight."


Scott C.

Here is a better couple of pics. Even they are showing a little movement and dynamic changes between them bt it is a hell uv'a nice formation. Looks like the base 35 way on the 71 that was commented on a number of times.. Scotty should have been there faster to make it a nice perfect 36 way..

35 Way RV 1

35 way RV 2



Scot,
Check any documentary of II WW and see the aircraft formations there in perfect slot positions!! hunderd of them!! They were able to show you shape or style of the formation before take off as well for sure!!!
Bummer, at that time Gunness wasn't there... also they didn't really care about that as well although , I think they were enjoying flying in such a big groups :)
Robert Pecnik
[email protected]
www.phoenix-fly.com

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It is worth thinking about "what is in slot?" and also what shape characteristics the viewer focuses on in an "obvious" (e.g. lodi 16) complete formation.

For my eye the key features are:

- a clear central axis
- straight rows and columns/ obvious gaps between lines
- symmetry

I will have to clean up my photoshop file to post it but I had a few different ideas:

- can straight lines be drawn along each row and column of the formation, the line passing over the "belly button" of each jumper. The thickness of the line can be varied for tolerance.

or

- can straight lines be drawn in between each row and column of the formation. The thickness of the line can be varied for tolerance.

or

- ensuring point to point lines along each column and row do not intersect. The thickness of the line can be varied for tolerance.

I know there are obvious problems with these ideas but maybe they can spark something else off. The 1st one seems more promising, the 2nd allows for large position variance on the perimeter flyers and the 3rd suffers heavily with Yuri scatter.

The rules we put in place will of course directly affect the future formation designs.
BASEstore.it

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.. prevent having to have a supercomputer for realtiming ..


The calculations aren't that hard, and besides your average laptop computer has a ridiculous amount of computing power anyways. I do not think this will be a problem. Image pattern matching for automated picking out of heads might be computationally intensive, I don't really know about that actually.


I was referring to the task of fitting the grid over the formation for Kallend's method. I'd think that's quite an intensive task.



I used to do crystallographic calculations on a 80386 machine running MS DOS in 640k of memory, with 8000 points to analyze, in less than a minute.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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I think its just a matter of time and practice...we've been getting better and better the last few years...and will keep improving things the coming years...

Happy new year everybody...Im off to Costyn with a bottle of Vodka!

May 2009 be another ass-kicking year!
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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I think that anything requiring a computer and or algorithm to determine whether or not it is a complete formation is going to be laughed at ... after all, all the other disciplines require docking. We need more time for more individuals to develop their skills.
"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

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There is mention of a 485 plane formation in WWII but I didn't find any more details yet.



The trick on the big "Combat Box" Formations is that they were not level. They were also designed to provide maximun protection from attacking fighters for the gunners..


Wiki Info


Another site


Picture

Scott

What is this about Ed Claiming jumpers already... Dammit, I better get on that for next year ASAP.. :P

Scott C.
"He who Hesitates Shall Inherit the Earth!"

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What is this about Ed Claiming jumpers already... Dammit, I better get on that for next year ASAP..



That's right, Buddy. I'm going to have a full plane of Team Ill Vision members practiced and ready to fly next Nov. We are taking apps and recruiting soon. ;)

Happy New Year!
www.WestCoastWingsuits.com
www.PrecisionSkydiving.com

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I think that anything requiring a computer and or algorithm to determine whether or not it is a complete formation is going to be laughed at ... after all, all the other disciplines require docking. We need more time for more individuals to develop their skills.



Disagree - airplanes don't have to touch wingtips in order to be considered "in formation".
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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I think that anything requiring a computer and or algorithm to determine whether or not it is a complete formation is going to be laughed at ... after all, all the other disciplines require docking. We need more time for more individuals to develop their skills.



Disagree - airplanes don't have to touch wingtips in order to be considered "in formation".



We're not airplanes, we're skydivers ...
"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

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If we wanted to get all technical with it theres an industrial machine vision software suite we use for everything around here called Visionscape, comes with an editor called Appfactory with which you can edit and run it in realtime. Getting it to pick out heads and decide if they're all where they ought to be is easy. Will run on almost anything from a 700 mhz early pentium on up. We use it for reading the datamatrix codes off a rack of 96 or 384 tiny test tubes, also in a vision-guided engraving laser. In that laser its already "picking out heads"... the current app, we have it looking at a photo it takes of the test tubes, analyzing it to detect the tubes and isolate the centers, then engrave matrix codes on them. If the stamped mark on the bottom of the tube is either not-round or damaged or absent it leaves it blank. Wingsuiter not in slot! It'd actually be easier to tune for judging a formation than for industrial use because it judges based on numeric color values in the image it sees, and we'd have blank blue sky between heads, so long as its an underneath shot.
On the other hand, a lot of the shots from the WWR formation were from above, and the visual noise from ground clutter was so bad that watching the videos half the time half the formation was invisible-gritty moving dots against a gritty moving background. That vision system would be utterly helpless against that, almost impossible to come up with a discrimination criteria for it. It couldn't tell us all from the background.
You don't have to run it in an industrial machine, either. Doesn't even have to have its own camera, you can just as easily run it on a laptop, tell it to do its thing on any photo you provide and it will give you an answer before the wingsuiters have even deployed- but the software is so insanely expensive I seriously doubt anyone is willing to pay that much for it. Contact Siemens/RVSI or the Rofin-Baasel laser people for details and they might even throw in a free hat.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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I was referring to the task of fitting the grid over the formation for Kallend's method. I'd think that's quite an intensive task.


I used to do crystallographic calculations on a 80386 machine running MS DOS in 640k of memory, with 8000 points to analyze, in less than a minute.
Sometimes I'm glad to be proven wrong. Indeed, 640k should be enough for anyone. :)
Is that software still available?
Johan.
I am. I think.

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.. a few different ideas:

  • can straight lines be drawn along each row and column of the formation, the line passing over the "belly button" of each jumper. The thickness of the line can be varied for tolerance.

  • can straight lines be drawn in between each row and column of the formation. The thickness of the line can be varied for tolerance.

  • ensuring point to point lines along each column and row do not intersect. The thickness of the line can be varied for tolerance.

I know there are obvious problems with these ideas but maybe they can spark something else off. The 1st one seems more promising, the 2nd allows for large position variance on the perimeter flyers and the 3rd suffers heavily with Yuri scatter.

The rules we put in place will of course directly affect the future formation designs.

When flying, we aim for straight lines. This nicely reflects that.

Why not require *all* of these at the same time? Additionally, require lines to be parallel, I think. And then something for even spacing .. (eventually arriving at a grid. :S)
Johan.
I am. I think.

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How about fitting a diamond grid over the formation and then requiring all flyers touching a diamond cell half the size of a grid cell?

Does not require computation, disallows crooking, does not suffer Yuri scatter (or you might need less than half the size, Hell, have them touch the centre point). If you want the perfectness of the formation as a number, calculate the relative size of the smallest diamond everyone is touching, or require touching one half the size and then calculate RMS distance from the center.
Johan.
I am. I think.

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When I look at the skewed formation example and rotate it a little, it's a perfectly acceptable formation. In real life, skew is probably not much of a problem because people tend to line up directly behind the flyer in front of them. We may have to disregard skew altogether. Fitting a grid over a formation does not take it into account anyway, because you can rotate the grid at will; the grid does not care which way the formation is flying.
Johan.
I am. I think.

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