Welcome to Omnibits for Sunday, 26 August (Day 1)

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Good morning from not-yet-sunny Prostejov! The planes may not be flying but the omnigears are turning full speed.

I arrived here Friday afternoon (8/24) after a sporty journey from Colderado and spent Saturday setting up equipment (a little) and updating the WS Performance software (a lot). Today is arrival of delegations and judge training, with opening ceremonies tonight at 7pm.

As is always the case ... if you're a farmer and you need rain, schedule a skydiving competition!!! It hasn't rained here in two months, until last night. It is supposed to clear up in the next day or two, and the wx 'cast looks good into the week.

We have 63 competitors registered for the Performance event. Not bad I guess, but other WS competitions have been north of 100. Alas only 5 teams registered in Acro ... say what?! How do we fix that? I'm worried for any competition event that sees such low participation level at a World Championships. Fingers crossed that this is the lowest we'll ever see.

Ah yes, lots of time on the OSHD Wingsuit Performance Module this summer. The FAI had some interesting rules updates this year, so the Perf Module got some nice updates like calculation and plotting of flight lanes (which you'll see on the "stick maps" once results are being posted). More recently -- as in the last week, and the last two days -- some rules clarifications as to how penalties are applied and calculated have keep me very busy. It will be interesting to see how some of those rules get applied during the competition, especially the 30 degree "designated flight path" rule which requires the competitor to stay within 30 degrees on the line to their designated target starting 5 seconds after exit.

That 5 seconds is kinda tight ... expect to see a few competitors dinged on that.

I'm not yet sure how much time I'll have for "real coverage" of the competition but I'll do what I can to keep up with things and keep you updated here, especially if I don't detect anyone else providing coverage.

Stay tuned!

ted / t1

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Some sunshine is peaking through the window here. Yeah!

Here's a topic that's always been very close on the radar since the OSHD Wingsuit Performance module's development began last spring: public presentation!!! From Day 1 I always anticipated (hoped?) that competition results would get mirrored on a "community" web site, much like the model provided by the soaring community, where scores and results are produced locally but flight logs can be browsed globally at the same time on the OLC ("On-Line Contest") web site. The Wingsuit Performance community features two terrific such web sites -- Paralog and Skyderby -- however neither of them could really be described as "community" operations, since both are operated by individuals.

Anyway, early attempts to get something coordinated with Paralog were not fruitful. I'm now in the process of trying to work something out with Skyderby so that flight logs get uploaded automatically to their web site as they are judged on site. This would give competitors on site a better experience.

That said, the OSHD WS software does still produce some reasonable products at omniskore.com. Each pilot's score is associated with two detailed images: the bird's-eye view of the entire "stick" (all four on the jump run), and the side-view "performance graph" of the flight. Here are a couple of samples:

Above: A Stick (one jump run of four competitors). Note this is a somewhat fictional example since the lane rules being used in this example were not in place at the actual competition site.

Above: Performance Graph. The shaded portion is the "task window" (2000 to 3000 meters AGL).

I think these are useful products, but the Skyderby and Paralog web sites provide some interactivity that is nicer.