Why not closer?

[mnskydiver688 0]

I was contemplating issues surrounding WS flocks. I applied theories surrounding traffic jams to flocks. What my idea and this might seem obvious, but the tighter the initial tolerances are between people the less likely large changes will occur.

What I mean by this is instead of telling people to fly a slot a certain distance away, why not just tell them to fly as close as they are comfortable doing? Say you are in a car and you come up on a traffic jam. You are traveling 60 mph and you brake as you come to the jam. You brake to 40 mph. When you reach the jam you realize it is moving at 50 mph. Knee jerk reaction caused you to over brake. The person behind you over brakes and the reaction creates a chain.

Apply this to flocking. You are flying towards a formation. you reach your slot but you think you are going to be too close to the other flier and hit the brakes, and over brake. This ripples through, etc. etc. So the smaller the distance between people the less likely over braking will occur or at least minimize it. As wingsuiters we do not have the luxury of grips all the time which can absorb a certain amount of this.

So why not closer?

Instead of slots defined a square area why not slots defined by angles and vectors, with distance merely being a function of time.

Just throwing it out there... But considering how intelligent us wingsuiters are I'm sure this has been discussed and analyzed. Probably in a book I haven't read.

Sky Canyon Wingsuiters

[LouDiamond 1]

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Instead of slots defined a square area why not slots defined by angles and vectors, with distance merely being a function of time.

Read THIS,specifically the section titled The Approach and it should answer your questions.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[mnskydiver688 0]

I understand issues surrounding approach as this was something pounded into my head with RW jumps, but I was trying to apply that to when the formation is in completion or you are in your "slot". Promote the idea that a distance capable of a grip is THE distance. The smaller the space between jumpers the smaller the variances.

Sky Canyon Wingsuiters

[Costyn 1]

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So why not closer?

Have you ever been in a traffic jam on the road? Especially one where all of a sudden, the traffic in a lane suddenly slows down very quickly and everybody has to brake full-on? This is because people drive too close to the person in front of them. Something then happens in the row of cars causing one to slow down a little. The person behind them thinks "whoa!" and has a kneejerk reaction and slows down just a little more, to create some more space between him and the car in front of him, just in case he has to brake more. The same happens to the car behind him and behind that one etc. Everyone is braking and the further back you go, the harder you have to brake.

The same happens in wingsuit formations. Somebody up front makes a little 10cm/3inch correction. The person behind thinks "whoa!" and corrects too, only he corrects a little too much, maybe only 20cm, because he wants to create some margin, as he doesn't want to get caught in the burble in case the guy in front of him moves some more. This ripple effect passes through the formation. At the back of the formation, the movement is huge... people are surging back and forward, left and right, up and down.

I was in the back of one of the wings in the formation in Elsinore, and the amount of movement back there was absolutely nuts at times, no way in hell to fly your slot, because it was moving around all the time.

Thats why the mindset of WS flock organizers has been changing the past year: space the flock out a bit more, leave people some margin so they don't straight away correct if the person in front of them does a little wobble. The wobble won't matter because there's no danger of getting in the burble or colliding with someone's foot.

Getting a flock with little movement is hard. Everybody in the flock has to conciously try to remember to fly like they're the base, "don't move, don't move, don't move...". This is what the organizers in Elsinore were drilling us on as well... fly stable; if the person in front of you moves a foot, don't move with him... look ahead 2 or 3 people, see whats going on there, see if you can fly relative to them if they're not moving around.

Tight flocks can be fun, but as you add more people, it becomes exponentially more difficult to keep the movement out of the formation..

Edit: additionally, we have way more control in our cars over our relative position to the road and other cars than we have in wingsuits, especially because it is easy to judge distances and speeds, as you have the road to judge objects by. It is a lot harder in the sky with only your fellow wingsuiters to use as a reference.

Cheers

Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

[mccordia 74]

I think a LARGE factor is time and patience..

There was a long, LONG period in skydiving where even just being able to steer, manouvre, and at some point spend an entire jump to get to another person and pass a batton/stick was concidered the most amazing thing ever in terms of skills.

And look where the RW people are now. Probably planning the next 500 way.

We only just started flying big formations (anything over 4/5 people in an actual defined slot) more recently....the last 8 to 10 years or so?

Give it a few years...everybody jumping balls to the walls..
Some stuff can be thought out here..on the couch at home...at the DZ..but I think the most will come from just doing this over and over again. Seeing skills improve more and more..

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[kallend 2,027]

If you fly (or drive) closer to the one in front than your reaction time warrants, you set up "shock waves".

Example www.ece.osu.edu/~coifman/shock/

Google "shock waves in traffic" for more examples.

...

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

[The111 1]

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If you fly (or drive) closer to the one in front than your reaction time warrants, you set up "shock waves".

Example www.ece.osu.edu/~coifman/shock/

Google "shock waves in traffic" for more examples.

Yup, I was just about to say the same thing. The OP's idea of using traffic as an analogy is a good one, but he's using it backwards. "Stop and go traffic" (or traffic waves, which have been observed by me and studied by MIT) only happens when people are too close together. Smooth moving traffic is spaced much better.

Off topic, but this is why I hate tailgating. It actually promotes traffic jams, which is ironic since the impatient people doing the tailgating think it will get them to their destination faster. And here is a really broad analogy: it's much like all the fools who thought getting deep in debt economically (poorly financed highly leveraged houses as "investments", or general credit card abuse, or using home as ATM) would get them "ahead" - on the contrary, their impatience has brought both them (and their entire economy) to a state of near ruin.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[The111 1]

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Apply this to flocking. You are flying towards a formation. you reach your slot but you think you are going to be too close to the other flier and hit the brakes, and over brake.

Whether or not you "over brake" has not to do with how close the people in front you are to each other. It has to do with how much faster you are going than the guy you are approaching (speed variance). If you don't want to have to hit your brakes so abruptly, then start hitting them earlier, so that when you reach him you don't have such a large speed variance. If you are trying to get even closer to him with a large speed variance, you'll just make the problem worse (more chance for collision or overcompensating on the brakes).

Also, please pass this advice on to American automobile drivers.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[mnskydiver688 0]

I guess I was looking at the issue from a psychological standpoint. Due to the fact MIT is working on it I am not trying to figure out algorithms or the quantum physics surrounding a traffic jam. My idea is hard to explain over the internet because it deals with perception and the change in perception.

Would spreading the formation help? Well yeah because to you a movement on their part would not immediately trigger a response on yours but it sure would look funny from outside the formation. Also the further a person is away from someone else in the formation the longer it would take them to realize if their flying is off. Consider what the earth looks like falling at terminal from 12,000' and falling at terminal at 2,000'. Holy shit the earth is really coming up fast! It didn't look like that at 12,000'!

I like what Jarno said because I understand this is what is happening with Wingsuiting. It will take time. I guess I just have a problem sitting idle minded during this time of development and discovery.

Sky Canyon Wingsuiters

[The111 1]

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I guess I was looking at the issue from a psychological standpoint. Due to the fact MIT is working on it I am not trying to figure out algorithms or the quantum physics surrounding a traffic jam.

No quantum physics needed, just simple motion.

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Would spreading the formation help? Well yeah because to you a movement on their part would not immediately trigger a response on yours but it sure would look funny from outside the formation.

It will look much funnier when 6 people in a row burble each other from flying too close. I've seen it happen enough. Watch my Z-Flock 2.0 video from a couple years ago.

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Also the further a person is away from someone else in the formation the longer it would take them to realize if their flying is off. Consider what the earth looks like falling at terminal from 12,000' and falling at terminal at 2,000'. Holy shit the earth is really coming up fast! It didn't look like that at 12,000'!

That's a difference of 10,000 feet, and a factor of 6. Whether you are 3 feet away from somebody or 9 feet away, your perception of motion is pretty much the same. Your point is well taken though, there IS a point of diminishing returns. Flying formations with 100 foot spacing would make no sense. There is a sweet spot which is neither too close nor too far.

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like what Jarno said because I understand this is what is happening with Wingsuiting. It will take time. I guess I just have a problem sitting idle minded during this time of development and discovery.

Your ideas make sense in a certain way, but the truth is a little counter-intuitive. The same way tailgating makes sense to the tailgater.

I can say from about attending probably a dozen different significant wingsuit events (medium and large formations) over the past few years that the spacing used at Jeff's recent event in Elsinore was the most successful in practice, yet. Yes, tighter spacings are possible, but they won't make it easier, they'll make it harder. As the skill evolves though, that will be totally doable, to a certain extent. But when engineering bigways you don't make them harder on purpose, you make them as easy as possible.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[JohanW 0]

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.. But when engineering bigways you don't make them harder on purpose, you make them as easy as possible.

Unless you're making them hard on purpose.

ISTR Difficult is worth doing.

But that's not the issue here. And it wasn't wingsuiting either.

Johan.
I am. I think.

[Costyn 1]

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Also, please pass this advice on to American automobile drivers.

Don't worry, European drivers are just as bad. Especially, as you mentioned in the "impatient lane", the left lane which is the overtaking lane here in Europe, where the impatient people drive and tailgate eachother. I like the US way of highway driving, in which you are allowed to overtake on the right. Here in Europe you can get fined for it, if they catch you doing it. I still don't know why, seeing as people in the US seem to get by fine overtaking on the right.

Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

[kallend 2,027]

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Also, please pass this advice on to American automobile drivers.

Don't worry, European drivers are just as bad. Especially, as you mentioned in the "impatient lane", the left lane which is the overtaking lane here in Europe, where the impatient people drive and tailgate eachother. I like the US way of highway driving, in which you are allowed to overtake on the right. Here in Europe you can get fined for it, if they catch you doing it. I still don't know why, seeing as people in the US seem to get by fine overtaking on the right.

When most people can't tell left from right, you HAVE to allow overtaking on both sides.

...

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