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I'm just going to randomly toss a couple of ideas out into the middle of the room for smarter or at least more techy people to toss around.

Could you build a visual glide slope indicator into a heads up display like a goggle or google glass kind of eye mount? So what we're talking about would be like a small solid state gyro and visual hash marks in a heads up display so that as you moved your head the hash marks would always be seen at the set angles? I mean fighter pilots are now using things like this to expand their field of view beyond the glass window of the cockpit. Oh look the bad guy is turning under neath me, lets dive that way...

So what I'm thinking is this.

The Gyro only has to hold for a min or two. You can sit still staring at a point on the horizon as it calibrates and the lite goes green. Push a button and it gives you a cross hair and you just hold that still on the horizon till the accelerometer locks in the gyro to what is up and down. I don't think you could use a... compass when you might fly by a mountain.

The visual display might be more tricky as the exact geometry relating to the eye. Once the gyro is locked it might give you three more aim points in your field of vision at preset angles. So the retical moves and turns red. You move your head so that it is once again on the target point on the horizon till it turns green. With two or three of these you now can map the angle to visual points in the field of view. You just calibrated the scale to how the glass screen sets relative to the eye. Ready to jump.

In flight it could give you a series of hash marks that are actually locked at a certain angle relitive to the ground in your field of view. Now with a true unchanging reference you could better judge whether you are going to make it over that ridge. If you see the terrain falling below that mark you are going to clear it. If you see it steady or rising relative to that mark it means that you are falling short and you need to bail on the line. Turn away or dump. It's the old accuracy trick but with an actual fixed site that you can see the dilation by. I mean we do it all the time already but with out a fixed reference. You should be able to judge it much earlier with fixed angle lines. I mean if you just stair at some thing how hard is it to see it move? Think plane on jump run on a clear blue day. But if their are clouds in your field of view suddenly you can see the speed much more clearly.

So if that could be built... lets talk fancy. What if you also had a pressure altimeter and a GPS. Your tracking and not changing attitude that much. It could be mounted on your helmet, so good air flow. A lot of the AAD problems go away so you should be able to get a pretty good rate of decent. With GPS you have good true horizontal speed data. With that could you draw a horizontal line on the HUD for your glide angle? What if you could see your true glide angle in real time in your frame of view. Even if you did it with one of these external fins which I think look very awkward but I think GPS is the way to go because it corrects for wind. It doesn't tell you how well your flying, like a fin, that's more akin to an airspeed indicator to your efficiency. This would tell you whether you are going to clear or not. Don't get me wrong, both are good information and valuable but people seem to keep hitting things and running out of altitude. Personally I think this is a decision/judgement issue but that's a whole nother topic.

So there's a basic concept. An idea for a calibration method that might make it accurate enough to work. And an idea to expand it to include real time glide. I just tossed a hacky sack into the middle of a crowd. Now lets see how long you can keep it in the air. Feel free to turn this into a disection of how stupid and impractical it is. I just want some entertainment.

Lee

I read this twice and am still pretty lost on your concept of calibration. I do think the idea is pretty cool though. You have a preset flight path in your HUD based on your current trajectory/glide ratio. You can see in real time whether or not you can or can't clear something.

I think the technology would be great, but I'm not as optimistic about implementation. Having never flown a wingsuit though, take my perspective as an uneducated one. If people can see in real time what their trajectory is going to be, that also means that if they are flying conservatively they might think they could push it a little bit harder. This would speed up progression, which I generally see as a negative thing. Also, consider that the real time glide ratio will not be indicative of the average glide ratio for that flight. Suppose on the HUD a flyer sees they will barely be able to clear a ledge. They might go for it because the technology is telling them that they can make it at that time. But given the ever changing effects of wind, glide ratio/velocity/whatever might change to the point that they are not able to clear it. In this situation, trusting the technology too much could be a bad thing. Of course, this is all dependent on the judgement of the flyer, and more knowledge is usually better. I care more about people making mistakes out of ignorance than I do because they had poor judgement, though both situations are tragic.

Another thing that I don't think you mentioned, but I might have missed it, is the idea of waypoints. I'm particularly thinking of a triple wingsuit fatality that occurred a year-ish ago from having flown the wrong line. If you were able to set a predetermined flight path, either in 2-D or 3-D, it would be pretty cool, and I think enhance safety. The idea sounds really cool, but it all depends on how this tool would be applied.

First off their are several separate questions here. There's a technical question of a retical oriented in a 2d display in your goggles as you move your head. That's basically off the shelf technology. Their is an accuracy question. And lastly their is an issue of human factors relating as to how this would be used. I'll start with the last.

I don't think you can control how a tool is used. Every tool will be misused by a certain percentage of the population. It doesn't make it a bad tool and I don't think it's a valid argument for it not to exist. Example, Last week I put together one of my striped lowers into a new AR15. So basically I built a gun. Their is now one more gun in the world. Last week some one walked into a community collage and shot some people. I haven't head the specifics but I'm assuming that it was a gun just like mine. Does the miss use of a tool make the tool it self bad? I own many guns. Approaching manymany possible even lots. And not one of them has ever been fired at another human being. Should pain killers or anesthesia exist. If it was gone from the world their would be no more heroin addiction but you would be turning back surgery to the 18th century where people regularly chose to die rather then to endure relatively simple procedures that would have saved their lives.

There is a very valid argument that the best thing we could do for the sport is to throw away all of the wing suits in the world. We need a common since wing suit ban. The abuse of wing suits leads directly to 90 percent of the fatalities we are seeing today in our sport. In theory wing suits should do the opposite. If used properly no one should ever die again on a big wall jump. Are wing suits inherently evil? Is the guy from Birdman doomed to hell for selling the first commercial wing suit? Like the gun I see the question of a tools existence and it's use as being separate and independent of each other. I don't blame hammers for swollen fingers, or knives for cuts, or guns for murder. In the same vain I can not blame wing suits for fatalities. I think the ability to judge more accurately your glide relative to the terrain is a good thing. How it will be used is a human question and can only be delt with with training and education. I don't think their will ever be a total cure for human ignorance or stupidity. You will never be able to save people from their own bad judgement. On the other hand their are people dieing. And oddly a lot of them are some of the most experienced and skilled among us who should in theory live forever. I still think their is a question of judgement in the type of lines that they are flying but I see that as a separate issue. These people are not short in skill. They can fly their suits, but they seem to be getting trapped in situations where by the time they realize that they are in trouble it's too late. I sounds like a question of information to me. A tool that gives them that information has value. I see the question of how that tool would be used as separate from it's creation.

In it's most basic form, just a retical of hash marks or mill dots as I like to think of them locked in your vision relative to a gyro wold give you a much better idea of your glide relative to the terrain. This is completely separate from the idea of a lift over drag vario which they are rightly doing with a vain in the wind. That tells you how well you are flying and in theory should help you stay well below you best glide to give you a margin for error when you are close to terrain. Every thing you say about changing conditions and wind along your flight path is true but I don't see that as diminishing the value of this information. I'd argue the exact opposite. Being able to see when the conditions change and you are no longer making it is by far the most valuable peace of information you can have. And the earlier you can judge that the more options you can have to save your life. Say you're looking at a ridge line and you're making it. As you get closer and the winds change you would see the point of dilation move closer to the ridge line. You can see your margin decreasing. Now you see the ridge begin to move up relative to the marks in the HUD. Now you know that you are not going to make it. At some point in this I would hope that you would turn away to an alternate path, or pull. If neather of those is an option then I hold that there is a bigger problem in your judgement and planing. I consider that a separate issue. Any plan that does not have a bail is a bad plan to begin with. But the sooner you can make that judgment the better off you are. The ability to see if you are going to make it and more importantly by how much could save your life.

The whole calibration thing. That's the math geek in me coming out. A set of hash tags is easy and most of what you need. All you need for that is for the guy to stand there on the exit point and hold still till the gyro locks. But to be able to accurately plot a specific angle in your field of view, like to draw a glide angle line across your view, you have to calibrate it relative to your eye some how. Nerd time. You're establishing a difimorphism and to do that you need a few points to establish where the glass is setting relative to your eye. I think it's important for the accuracy of a glide line. It's just a thought for a relatively quick and easy calibration for the system when you put it on.

As to the idea of mapping course lines in a HUD. With a GPS that should be possible. At least a turn here go that way kind of thing. I honestly think that you should already have that kind of in your head. I personally can't imagine a jump where I would need an in flight map but some of the jumps these guys are doing are well beyond my experience.

Lee

Recon Instruments products have a HUD that runs on an Android-based operating system and you can write your own apps for them. The Snow2 has a built-in accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer (compass) as well as an altimeter. That's basically all the hardware/sensors you need to do something like what you're describing. All you need to do is write the code. I have a Snow2 and learning how to write apps for it has been on my to-do list for a while. It sounds like it's not that hard if you're familiar with Java, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

Wouldn't a gyro only give you Angle of Attack?

If the gyro is attached to your head, it wouldn't know the angle of attack of your body. It just knows how your head is oriented. So the gyro knows where your head is pointing, the GPS knows where you're on glide-slope to be, and the computer does the math on whether or not you're going to make it. I think that's what the OP is basically describing.

With the Snow2, which is the only HUD system on the market that I know of, the HUD display isn't on the lens. It's a small screen in the corner. Instead of a projection up onto the lens, you'd probably have something a lot less sophisticated-looking, like a sticker in the shape of a circle. You'd calibrate the gyro to know where the sticker is relative to your eye. After that, you could read the GPS and do the math and maybe have a red, amber, green display on the screen telling you how much margin you have. As long as you aren't doing any really aggressive maneuvers, the gyro shouldn't precess much.

It doesn't relate in any way to angle of attack. The idea of a L/D vario with a vain relates, indirectly, to angle of attack. What we are talking about here is really nothing more then the old accuracy trick. If you are moving towards some thing the image dilates. It expands out ward from the point of, not the best term but, point of impact. Every thing you are going to clear moves down in your frame. Your actual flight path holds steady and any thing you are going to pass below moves upwards in your frame of sight. So imagine if you could basically have a glass fish bowl around your head. With, for lack of a better term, lines of latitude scratched on it. You could actually see the angle to any point around you. You could turn your head in any direction and look at any point and see the angle to it. Now imagine that the fish bowl is magically fixed so that it always points up no mater how you move. So you can jump and dive and fly but the bowl will always hold it's orientation. What I'm talking about is the virtual equivalent of this. I'd say that all you need is a series of hash marks vertically in front of your eye that stay fixed in frame relative to the horizon. So normally you stair at and fixate on a point on the ridge. You're trying to see if it's moving up or down in your line of site but as you stair at it your eye naturally tracks with it and you have to get very close and it really has to start to move before you can detect whether it's moving up or down, ie. whether you are going to clear or not. With this magic fish bowl, these little hash marks that stay fixed relative to the horizon, when you stair at it you actually have a frame of reference to instantly see whether it is above or below the point of dilation. You could judge whether or not you could clear that point much earlier. Hopefully while you still have options, like turning away to another flight path.

That's really the basic concept. To expand on that, the next step would be to actually keep track of your glide. With real time rate of descent and horizontal speed data you could put a moving mark on your display showing your current glide. This is a more complex problem but it might be doable.

I'm not a tech guy. I don't even really know the state of what is out their. Their are all of these virtual reality goggles which are basically what we are describing on a much grander scale. Their have been monicals and little heads up displays in the military for years. It seems like this technology is becoming more accessible. I really don't know what's out their right now. It seem like a lot of the peaces are available off the shelf. I am not smart enough to put some thing like this together. I'm just floating an idea.

Lee

I think making the inside of your goggles look like an F16 cockpit is kind of ambitious, but I think you could get the same effect with something a lot simpler like a sticker and an Arduino with some LEDs. It would work something like this :

1. Zero the reference point (sticker) to the horizon before jumping
2. The gyro keeps track of how far below the horizon you're looking
3. The GPS keeps track of how far below the horizon you're flying
4. The computer subtracts the two angles
5. If the result is less than zero, the red LED comes on. If the result is between zero and 10 degrees, the yellow LED comes on. If it's more than 10 degrees, the green LED comes on.

Google "Arduino" and check them out. They're super cheap and easy to use and they're designed for electronic projects like this. They run on a pretty simple programming language and you can attach all kinds of electronic components to them (LEDs, gyros, accelerometers, etc). The Raspberry Pi is also pretty cool and has more functionality, but isn't quite as portable as the Arduino.

Microsoft HoloLens would be perfect!



Just fill the terrain where you shouldn't fly to with holographic zombies and where it's good to fly to with nekkid chicks (or dudes, if it's your thing), and ya good to go!

M$ announced today the dev edition that costs $3K.

Faster than we think this stuff will be as cheap as a pair of sunglasses.

I got me my first Arduino years ago, was able to use it with a small GPS sensor and got to parse out GPS data and all. there is a lot of data out there on the Arduino. Specifically, a lot of sample programs on how to interface with all sort of sensors.
Main thing is to learn how to use the existing programs and how to modify them to your requirements. You don't have to work from scratch (with a few exceptions).

I recently got another Arduino with a 3-axis accelerator, gyro, SD card reader, and GPS sensor. The idea was to build a box that gathers parachute data (opening shock among them) and store it in an SD card with the intent to load the data to a computer and do some statistical analysis and number crunching with something like Matlab. But I never have enough time to get to work on it :(.

I also thought about embedded sensors (specially surface acoustic wave sensors or SAW) that can be sewed into the container, parachute and collect data on the system for years and hundred of jumps. Once again to perform statistical analysis. These type of sensors don't need a battery to operate; however, you do need a transmitter than pings them and reads the data. But then again...I have not gotten around to any implementation :(

> I recently got another Arduino with a 3-axis accelerator, gyro, SD card reader, and GPS sensor. The idea was to build a box that gathers parachute data (opening shock among them) and store it in an SD card

I'm curious - what can you do with Arduino that you cannot do with a smartphone? (aside from situations where there's a chance of loss of the gadget (e.g. drone flying away or crashing) or size/weight/cost limitations)

Yuri. The smart phone can do way more than Arduino, as you may already know. Main reason I went with an Arduino was because of curiosity as to the working of the sensors interface to the controller and wanting to complicate myself a bit more (specially I wanted to play with the electrical interface ); project was more of an intellectual curiosity than anything else.

You can probably do most of the same things but the Arduino is more customizable since you're building everything from scratch. The Galaxy S4 has most of the sensors you would probably need but if you wanted to do something like run an LED indicator up to your helmet, you couldn't do that with a phone.

Maybe you want to measure air temperature and pressure so you can calculate air density. Phones have these sensors, but they might be to close to your body to get an accurate temperature reading. With an Arduino, RPi, or something like that, you could run a temperature sensor out somewhere closer to the free-stream.

Maybe you want to attach a laser rangefinder to your project, which the phone doesn't have. Smart phones have a lot and they're convenient because most people have them anyway, but they come with whatever hardware they come with and all you can do is write software. I think when you can customize the hardware in addition to the software, there are a lot of cool possibilities.

There are all kinds of external bluetooth sensors for smartphones, for example, Texas Instruments SensorTag. Pressure, acceleration, gyro, compass, temperature, humidity, ambient light - all for just $25. There are bluetooth laser rangefinders, too. Lots of bluetooth GPS with sample rates up to 20Hz!

From the maker's perspective, one advantage of embedded systems is that you can make gadgets and sell them. With smartphones, you can't make the complete package and sell it.

From user's perspective the disadvantage of stand alone gadgets (like Recon HUD) is the high cost, low customizability, and that it's another thing with a battery that needs regular cycling and eventually dies and ends up collecting dust in the drawer. The advantages of smartphones are zero to low initial cost (you have it anyway, the additional cost is the apps and possibly external sensors), virtually unlimited customizability and lots of choices in terms of apps and sensors, ease of use (UI/upgrades), multimedia, AMAZING raw computing power, stunning screens, and no problems with batteries since we upgrade our phones regularly anyway.

You got me curious on using smart phones. I personally have a Galaxy S6 which appears to have a lot more sensors than I originally thought. I am very limited in time (my full time jobs keeps me real busy + the wife :)); since I never get the time to put together the damn Arduino I might just start playing with the Smart phone.

> I might just start playing with the Smart phone.

Be careful, it's addictive! You might forget about your wife...

We got quickly used to smartphones as ordinary things, but with every line of code it stuns me that we have these thin slabs of aluminum and glass with beautiful screens, packed with sensors, as powerful as desktop computers of just a few years ago, that fit our hands and now even wrists - AND are easily programmable with high-level object-oriented languages! With free development environments and nominal costs of distribution across the whole planet.

Implementing virtually any idea is now possible, the only limit is your imagination. We live in the future, now.

Just... fucking... WOW.

There's a reason the FlySight is still a lot more popular than some smartphone app. It's simple, rugged, and people have more faith that it'll work. I can drop my FlySight from eye level onto concrete and it'll be fine. I won't try it with my phone. I also don't have to turn my FlySight on, wait for it to start up, say no to some updates, etc. I just flip the switch and forget about it until after the jump.

An Arduino Uno costs about $25, the cost of a lift ticket at most dropzones, and there are different variations optimized for different purposes. You can hook pretty much any electronic component up to them. The accelerometer on the iPhone samples at about 1 kHz. What if that's not good enough for what you're trying to do? There are accelerometers that allow you to sample a lot faster (I've seen up to 2.5 kHz) and there may be applications where that's necessary. For example, if you're trying to navigate based on inertia instead of GPS, a high sample rate would be pretty important.

You can also do a lot of cool tricks with analog signals when you wire everything yourself. For example, if you want to find the difference between two temperatures, angle between two gyros, or something like that, you can measure the voltage difference across the two signals, then convert that to digital rather that measuring both referenced to ground, then doing the math digitally.

My point is that you have a lot more flexibility and simplicity when you make things yourself. Smart phones are great and I'm not trying to take anything away from them but they aren't the answer to everything. Plus you get extra style points when you make things yourself.