How to make a snow angel / Visiting Brokeback Mountain

[unclecharlie95 3]

I would like to thank Macca and Jarno for their support after the accident.

Thanks also to everyone who sent get well soon messages - it helped a great deal.

All being well I should start physiotherapy next week.

"Don't forget your 'chute"

J

Ps. Excuse the bad taste subject, these were some of the nicer comments from my dear friends
Pps. When the 111 tells you something via PM, take notice

BASEstore.it

[ScottGray 0]

Speedy recovery James !!!

Be a good boy and do all your physical therapy !! -- says a voice of experience.

WSI-5 / PFI-51 / EGI-112 / S-Fly
The Brothers Gray Wing Suit Academy
Contact us for first flight and basic flocking courses at your DZ or boogie.
www.thebrothersgray.com

[virgin-burner 1]

good to hear back from you!

“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
"No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

[dqpacker 7]

Is there any chance of seeing your POV of that jump?
Have a speedy recovery.

[Zeemax 0]

I couldn't believe it when I heard the news.

I was all ready to split and sell on your gear when someone told me you'd survived...



Heal fast Mr B and you know if you need anything, anytime, just give me a shout

Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

[The111 0]

Quote

Pps. When the 111 tells you something via PM, take notice

Yeh, NOW you listen...

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[unclecharlie95 3]

Quote

Is there any chance of seeing your POV of that jump?

http://air2air.it/kam.html

BASEstore.it

[dqpacker 7]

Damn!
Those cropped shots really so the impact.
Glad you're ok. Have a speedy recovery.

[DSE 3]

Really glad you're alive, James. Better still is that you're walking and talking. can't wait to see your next project bust out.

[bdrake529 0]

Thanks for posting the complete video James.

From your POV, I can't quite figure out what the flight plan was. Valery had his knees pretty far bent (relatively), then suddenly took off like a rocket, just seconds before pull time/crash time. Was he hoping to surf the terrain for the entire crater and expected there to be enough altitude left in the center for pull time?

Because, while you did your job as camera flyer (he's kept in frame), your POV camera doesn't really convey this as an impressive stunt. Again, not criticizing your camera work as that's not the problem. I just don't understand what Valery was going for (visually). If you could explain, that'd be appreciated.

Glad you're ok (compared to what could have been). When I saw you a few weeks ago in Dro, it was hard to tell you'd been in such a severe collision (ignoring your stylish exoskeleton) since you moved around just fine.

Peace,

Brian Drake

[mccordia 73]

Most asuming is that Valery seems to have misjudged the altitude due to poor depth perception (caused by the fully white background).

Even viewing these videos, its hard to tell if he is flying at 10 meter or 200 meters. I think by the time Valery realised, it was already to late to do anything about it (besides pull & pray).

Shame most reports seemed to focus more on James 'forgetting his chute' due to Valery not pointing at him and yelling "hey! open your chute".
Made the whole thing look more like a dumb idea, instead of planning gone wrong...

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[dmkellett 0]

Our visual system is the product of many millions of years of evolution. Our ability to judge depth arises from many different aspects of this system and critically for this incident many different aspects of our world....

We are even able to judge depth to some extent with only 1 eye. This is known as "Monocular cues" Many people accurately judge depth in their everyday lives with one amblyopic ( lazy) eye and one normal eye. They rely on cues from the environment rather than true "Stereopsis" for depth perception.

When attempting to judge deployment on a high risk jump like this even if one was to be looking at the snow, accurate altitude estimation would be nearly impossible. This was not a screw up, I would imagine that what occurred was that Valery suddenly noticed how low he was and put the power on to minimise altitude loss whilst immediately deploying. This would be the expected and correct action if ones visual system had been tricked by the lack of any cues for depth perception caused by the uniform brightly lit background. I worry about flying over Fjords, snow, or any suface that is uniform as our visual system has evolved to use methods of judging depth that require change......

I hope you heal well James. A close call for real, and a great video . Next time maybe walk the route and lay some black bin bags at 10 m intervals in the snow? this type of thing would have most likely prevented a low pull...

A description of the nature and methods of depth perception can be found on the Wikipedia, the page is quoted below :


From wikipedia :

Depth perception is the visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions. Although any animal capable of moving around its environment must be able to sense the distance of objects in that environment, the term perception is reserved for humans, who are, as far as is known, the only beings that can tell each other about their experiences of distances.[1]

Depth sensation is the ability to move accurately, or to respond consistently, based on the distances of objects in an environment. With this definition, every moving animal has some sensation of depth.

Depth perception arises from a variety of depth cues. These are typically classified into binocular cues that require input from both eyes and monocular cues that require the input from just one eye.[2] Binocular cues include stereopsis, yielding depth from binocular vision through exploitation of parallax. Monocular cues include size: distant objects subtend smaller visual angles than near objects.[3] A third class of cues requires synthetic integration of binocular and monocular cues.

Monocular cues

Monocular cues provide depth information when viewing a scene with one eye.

* Motion parallax - When an observer moves, the apparent relative motion of several stationary objects against a background gives hints about their relative distance. If information about the direction and velocity of movement is known, motion parallax can provide absolute depth information[4]. This effect can be seen clearly when driving in a car nearby things pass quickly, while far off objects appear stationary. Some animals that lack binocular vision due to wide placement of the eyes employ parallax more explicitly than humans for depth cueing (e.g. some types of birds, which bob their heads to achieve motion parallax, and squirrels, which move in lines orthogonal to an object of interest to do the same).1
* Depth from motion - One form of depth from motion, kinetic depth perception, is determined by dynamically changing object size. As objects in motion become smaller, they appear to recede into the distance or move farther away; objects in motion that appear to be getting larger seem to be coming closer. Using kinetic depth perception enables the brain to calculate time to crash distance (aka time to collision or time to contact - TTC) at a particular velocity. When driving, we are constantly judging the dynamically changing headway (TTC) by kinetic depth perception.
* Perspective - The property of parallel lines converging at infinity allows us to reconstruct the relative distance of two parts of an object, or of landscape features.
* Relative size - If two objects are known to be the same size (e.g., two trees) but their absolute size is unknown, relative size cues can provide information about the relative depth of the two objects. If one subtends a larger visual angle on the retina than the other, the object which subtends the larger visual angle appears closer.
* Familiar size - Since the visual angle of an object projected onto the retina decreases with distance, this information can be combined with previous knowledge of the objects size to determine the absolute depth of the object. For example, people are generally familiar with the size of an average automobile. This prior knowledge can be combined with information about the angle it subtends on the retina to determine the absolute depth of an automobile in a scene.
* Aerial perspective - Due to light scattering by the atmosphere, objects that are a great distance away have lower luminance contrast and lower color saturation. In computer graphics, this is called "distance fog". The foreground has high contrast; the background has low contrast. Objects differing only in their contrast with a background appear to be at different depths.[5] The color of distant objects are also shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum (e.g., distance mountains). Some painters, notably Cezanne, employ "warm" pigments (red, yellow and orange) to bring features forward towards the viewer, and "cool" ones (blue, violet, and blue-green) to indicate the part of a form that curves away from the picture plane.
* Accommodation - This is an oculomotor cue for depth perception. When we try to focus on far away objects, the ciliary muscles stretches the eye lens, making it thinner. The kinesthetic sensations of the contracting and relaxing ciliary muscles (intraocular muscles) is sent to the visual cortex where it is used for interpreting distance/depth.
* Occlusion (also referred to as interposition) - Occlusion (blocking the sight) of objects by others is also a clue which provides information about relative distance. However, this information only allows the observer to create a "ranking" of relative nearness.
* Peripheral vision - At the outer extremes of the visual field, parallel lines become curved, as in a photo taken through a fish-eye lens. This effect, although it's usually eliminated from both art and photos by the cropping or framing of a picture, greatly enhances the viewer's sense of being positioned within a real, three dimensional space. (Classical perspective has no use for this so-called "distortion", although in fact the "distortions" strictly obey optical laws and provide perfectly valid visual information, just as classical perspective does for the part of the field of vision that falls within its frame.)
* Texture gradient - Suppose you are standing on a gravel road. The gravel near you can be clearly seen in terms of shape, size and colour. As your vision shifts towards the distant road the texture cannot be clearly differentiated.

[edit] Binocular cues

Binocular cues provide depth information when viewing a scene with both eyes.

* Stereopsis or retinal(binocular) disparity - Animals that have their eyes placed frontally can also use information derived from the different projection of objects onto each retina to judge depth. By using two images of the same scene obtained from slightly different angles, it is possible to triangulate the distance to an object with a high degree of accuracy. If an object is far away, the disparity of that image falling on both retinas will be small. If the object is close or near, the disparity will be large. It is stereopsis that tricks people into thinking they perceive depth when viewing Magic Eyes, Autostereograms, 3D movies and stereoscopic photos.
* Convergence - This is a binocular oculomotor cue for distance/depth perception. By virtue of stereopsis the two eye balls focus on the same object. In doing so they converge. The convergence will stretch the extraocular muscles. Kinesthetic sensations from these extraocular muscles also help in depth/distance perception. The angle of convergence is smaller when the eye is fixating on far away objects.

Of these various cues, only convergence, focus and familiar size provide absolute distance information. All other cues are relative (ie, they can only be used to tell which objects are closer relative to others). Stereopsis is merely relative because a greater or lesser disparity for nearby objects could either mean that those objects differ more or less substantially in relative depth or that the foveated object is nearer or further away (the further away a scene is, the smaller is the retinal disparity indicating the same depth difference).


Darren

[The111 0]

Dr. Kellett, ladies and gentlemen!

I haven't watched the video yet since the site seems blocked on this PC... will check it out later tonight.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[Hagen 0]

looks like Val deployed very low, too. how was his landing?

it's a bit strange - snow was what made judging the altitude difficult. but on the other hand, snow was what maybe helped you to survive.

heal fast and I personally hope to see many more cool vids with your great flights and much better landings

[LetsGoOutside 0]

Dude, you should totally pull higher next time.

[unclecharlie95 3]

A special thank you to those who sent gifts - this one especially..

BASEstore.it

[Zeemax 0]

THAT, is awesome!

Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

[SuperGirl 0]

haaaahahahahaha, priceless!

[DSE 3]

[jtholmes 0]

after reviewing the footage, it appears that you did not have a fully open parachute when you hit the snow. That is probably what caused the injury.

[phoenixlpr 0]

Do you mean that he was the first landing a wingsuit?[/;)]