Costyn

Just today I've made my first video with my new 550D. It works great for video in freefall. Mind you I'm not using an IS lens, so the image could still improve. Check it out here. And yes, you can take pictures while using video, but the video will pause for 1 second while the camera stores the picture. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Sounds really good. You're touching on a lot of points which people have been thinking about how to solve. So yea we're all ears!

Yes, yes, yes!!! I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time. I'd some some preliminary research into papers that have been written, but hadn't come across any promising articles yet. But if you say it can be done, that would rock very hard! Autodetecting people in the formation would be very cool and useful. Thanks for posting that and helping out. Cheers, Costyn. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Looking at the meta tags on the website, it was made by James Boole (unclecharlie95). And agreed, looks very nice and professional. Cheers, Costyn. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

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

Cool, works perfectly under Mac now! The tolerance settings in the exported image is nice, I like it. But in mine it shows the full path to the image used, that's maybe unnecessary? Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

It crashes quite easily under Mono though, by using undo for example. Tom, do you want the error messages posted to the terminal or not? Cheers, Costyn Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Coooool.... works for me too now! Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

I downloaded and installed Mono on my Intel Mac, but I have no idea how to start the .exe from your webpage in mono. It's not really obvious. Or do you need to provide me with a different binary? Cheers, Costyn Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

I'm also a Mac user and I can higly recommend VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/ as an free alternative to VMWare Fusion. Of course you still need a Windows disk... Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Cool! Is there going to be a boogie before or after? Or just the competition? Cheers Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Agreed, very cool. How long were you able to keep flying it stable? Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

If you have a car available, driving is a good option. Terni is just above Rome and you can take the very nice Italian A1 autostrada through Italy. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

+1 Can't believe I'm appreciative of Yuri. "the king of D/L" +1 I too like this "performance flocking" idea. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Nice! There were very mixed messages as to when the 550D might be coming out, but I guess now we know. Thanks for the heads-up. This one looks very interesting. With 60fps and an IS lens, I think you ought to be able to get a usable image during skydiving. Still looking for anyone who has tried the 500D in video mode during a skydive? Cheers, Costyn. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

The Canon 500D has been out for a while now, but seeing as my Sony HC5 videocamera died recently and my the tiny screen on my Canon 350D is getting on my nerves, the 500D is starting to look very interesting to see if I could get one camera to do both. My question (and yes I used the forum search): has anyone tried to take the 500D up to take video with on a skydive? Is it any good? I haven't read anything about shake compensation/image stabilization in the video mode, so I was wondering how it would do on a skydive. They do speak of the rolling shutter which will cause things to lean when panning, but I'm not sure that would be a real problem on a jump. More details on the 500D movie mode Cheers, Costyn. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

I have to agree with Johan here. It sure is nice to have extra margin for when you need it to keep flying your slot. If you're already flying 80% and need 25% to keep flying your slot, you're fuxxored. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Some of you may have already seen it on Facebook, others on wingsuitnews.com, but in case you haven't, I wanted to share this with you all. Check out this hilarious video of a Japanese tv feature where they follow Japanese wingsuiter Shin Ito as he does various wingsuit related things, such as a high altitude jump, participating in the Wingsuit Bigway 2009 in Elsinore and some other things. They have funny Japanese voice-overs of various dz.com regulars (at 3:45) and the ever present show audience going "ooh, aah". Scott Calantine explains the formation at 6:45.

I imagine DSE is thinking of something along the lines of twitter or similar, where you can send a short question which will be read by someone who is at the symposium from their laptop and then answered by whoever is the speaker at that moment. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Chuck, as part of "the Netherlands" team I'd just like to make some comments: Firstly, we're not looking to get our system accepted at this time. Our goal at the IPC was showing that there are alternatives to the grid in the wingsuit community and asking the regulatory bodies for more time to develop one of the methods (could even be the grid with some changes) into something the majority can be happy with. Jarno and Ronald are going to be presenting several methods today at the IPC: our own, Zach's and Kallend's. After the IPC we will release our software so everyone can play with it. We then would like to implement Kallend's method into our software so people can play with that as well. In the coming year we would like for the community to try the methods on the various formations that have been made and will be made and see what works and what doesn't work, and let us know what changes in the methods and/or software will make it better. Cheers, Costyn. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Hi Sebastian, Thanks for your thoughts. I totally agree with you that "it should be hard". I don't know when we're going to see docked formations, but until that time, as a wingsuit community we're going to be flying undocked formations and wanting to evaluate their quality. I also completely agree with you that someone with only a few wingsuit jumps should not be able to join a record attempt. The issue is that you can assign a slot which is fairly easy to a newby and they can contribute to the formation. Are there slots like this in RW and FF? Not to say that putting a better person there wouldn't improve the formation. What I've often seen is that putting a newby up front in the easy slot will make it harder for the people behind him/her because they tend to weave left/right & up/down. If you put them in the back, they have trouble flying their slot because it's just a harder place to be and figure out where you are supposed to be. During the 2008 Elsinore event, I was way in the back of one of the tails and I was having a pretty challenging time with flying my slot (even though I had 500+ wingsuit jumps). So in wingsuit formations there are easy places and hard places, but it definitely makes it easier for the people in the back if there are skilled people up front: which is why I'd say not to put newbys in formations bigger than 10 people if you want it to look good. Anyways, just some thoughts... Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Agreed: In any record attempt, the cameraman used for taking the photos/video should be sufficiently skilled to be straight above the formation and know how far above he should be to not get the flyers at the edge to close to the edge of the picture. In my opinion, allowing the picture to be edited to compensate for x or y distortion would indeed open up another can of worms (fuel for discussion/argument). Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Interesting idea, but I think you'd need quite a heavy piece of metal to counteract the force of the air coming past. What I and others did on their Blade is make an air scoop for the leg wing inlet with a piece of stiffner material (any type of plastic that isn't too rigid) to get more air into the wing. Most wingsuits being made these days have some sort of scoop design on the inlets, mesh is on the way out. Unfortunately I can't seem to find any pics on my computer. Maybe someone else has some of their scoop mod? Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

Yea... Ever since I saw your thread title, I have been trying to figure a way to throw the eating of children into the thread, but have so far come up empty... Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

John, I've read through this thread again and I like the simplicity of your idea. Like Jarno, I'd like to see it added into our software to and see what it does with various formations. The interface shouldn't need too much tweaking, we only need to add some code to do the calculations. Yes, you can do it with a ruler and some tracing paper, but I think if we want more people to play with it, we should have something where you can click around and have it come up with a number. So yea, those are my thoughts. Cheers, Costyn. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News