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Name	Zorba777
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2020-10-14 06:38:15

Re: "SOL of My Dreams"

Board » General Discussion

Hi Scara,

That's a really good business plan you basically made there. And I see that quite a few of the ideas from it have become a reality already and/or being worked on as we speak.

I am a fan of the idea to give paying SYC members more customization options of their own personal page. Besides the SOLer's race results it could be a space where photos of own boat (if any), IRL race results/reports (if any), links to personal site and social media accounts,... could be added. Even IRL sailors who are not very active on SOL may want to keep up (and pay for) a SOL profile to get exposure for their boat and their races (and dare we say it, their sponsors.

And SOL themed merchandizing (T shirts, etc..) is an easy way for SOL to get some extra funding that can pay for server and other costs, as well provide some prizes for certain races. It has become very easy for clubs to create an online shop.
2020-10-12 06:49:24

Bora experience

Board » Sailonline Race Committee » Race proposals

Just a thought. There could be some races that introduce SOLers to very specific types of local winds. As an example I made a little course in the Adriatic sea, which is well known for its bora winds.

There is a long list of local winds that could be used as the theme for similar races:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_local_winds

***

Bora tends to blow most strongly during the winter months and can reach speeds above 200 km/h. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bora_(wind)

This proposed race starts in Venice, turns around Cres island in front of Rijeka, and finishes at the seaport town of Ploče.
Something for SOLers that like to navigate between islands.

The course is about 270 NM. Could be done as a weekend race. Or as a timed race with a fast catamaran. Catching the right time window when bora winds set in would not be easy and some really fast times could be set in the right wind conditions.
2020-10-10 11:51:20

Re: QtVlm polar for Trireme O

Board » Technical Support

Hi Bimmer,
I think Bonk has included the person who created AGL with the observations and questions we had about AGL failure to interpolate the trireme polar chart. I don't know if there has been any answer.
2020-10-06 14:58:45

Re: Public testing new HTML5 client

Board » General Discussion

Great update. People (including me) like the long predictor line.
Just a small suggestion:
1- I don't think there is any need to display the small 15 minute dots beyond the first 6 (or 12 hours). I would even go to display only one dot every 3 (or 6 hours) after the first 6 (or 12 hours), that will make it easier to see. Now it becomes like one very thick line on zoom outs.
Some people seem to ask even longer predictor. While it probably doesn't have much use (other than see expected upcoming wind variability), why not give them 72 or 96 hours, as long as it can be chosen in the options... For SOTP solers it may be useful in at least some races.

--- Last Edited by Zorba777 at 2020-10-06 14:59:11 ---
2020-10-02 08:55:45

Re: qtVlm thread

Board » Technical Support

Hi Satori. I liked your Rum Run report. Figuring out how to squeeze a little bit more out of QtVlm routing is part of the fun for some of us. I think you are on the right track with your experiments. I am still learning too, but some of the things I try are:
1) Using barriers is a good way to force the routing to go around a buoy, or to close off possible paths that lead nowhere (like dead end fjords) and thus made the routing faster.
2) Another way to optimize/simplify faster is by using the "Selection" tool (blue square icon) and only optimize/simplify on that selected part. Much faster, especially on multi-day routings.
3) Watching the isochrones unfold during a routing is important to spot tactical alternatives. I mark them with waypoints and then do separate routings from boat to those waypoints to see how much they differ in time and to see which routes are improving (or getting worse) on subsequent WX updates.
4) As you pointed out in your report, with tallship polars QtVlm can sometimes struggle with the polar hops. You can then see the isochrones behave strangely and may even fall apart completely. Then you have a very unreliable routing. In that case try to route again with longer steps.
5) Varying the step can also give you routes that optimize better. 30 minutes or even 1 hour steps will sometimes give you quicker routes that a routing with 5 minute steps didn't find. Experiment.
6) It's also important to verify. Your boat position after 4 or 5 hours should be very close to where your used routing indicates it should be. If not you may be on wrong polar or be using an out of date grib. Both have happened many times to me. Checking where my boat is helps me to spot those problems.
7) When the routing tackes/gybes a lot it is often useful to adjust the route manually, before simply/optimize. Reduce the number of tacks/gybes can give you a faster ETA.

Good luck.
2020-10-02 06:11:31

Re: QtVlm polar for Trireme O

Board » Technical Support

I just found a workaround to get AGL to work for downloading the WX updates and for setting DCs.
Here is what to do:
1)In the folder you have set up for this race go to the "SOLGribXml" subdirectory and find the "auth_raceinfo_1388" file there. You can open it in a simple text editor like Notepad.
2)Scroll down in the text until you see this line: "<name>Trireme Olympias v2</name>". All the numbers after that point are the polar data that AGL is failing to read for some reason.
3)Do the same for an earlier race. I used "auth_raceinfo_1386", which was the Darwin to Perth race, but any other race will do. Locate the same boat data in this file, and copy everything starting with "<tws_splined>0 1 2 3 4..." until "</vpp> </boat>".
4)Now paste this data in the file for race 1388, replacing the boat data it failed to use.
5) So what we have done is copy in working, but wrong, polar data to bypass the interpolation error AGL has with the Trireme. Now, save this tweaked "auth_raceinfo_1388" file and start AGL again and it will work normally for pulling in the WX updates or editing your DCs. It will not work for some of the functions that require the correct polar.

--- Last Edited by Zorba777 at 2020-10-02 06:16:06 ---

--- Last Edited by Zorba777 at 2020-10-02 06:17:33 ---
2020-10-01 11:36:37

Re: Weather - Brain Storm

Board » General Discussion

An other way to add uncertainty is by introducing a random factor that depends on the SOLers actions. The best candidate for that would be "wind shadow" that is caused by the other boats near you in the direction where your wind is coming from. When you are sailing in "dirty wind" your boat slows down a bit. This is also the case IRL sailing. By assigning a certain performance loss % if another boat is putting me in dirty wind, we would create uncertainty and introduce the sailing tactics that are know from real races.
I think this factor should be quite small to keep it practical. Maybe 98% performance if you are in wind shadow from another boat, we would need to test what works. This would cause boats to avoid wind shadow by moving away from the optimal routes that their routers crank out.
I think this would be very interesting, but more so for the short races and sprint races. In long ocean races it should be a very small factor (or not useful at all).

--- Last Edited by Zorba777 at 2020-10-01 11:38:14 ---
2020-10-01 11:28:14

Re: Weather - Brain Storm

Board » General Discussion

@dtayls @Vlbex Good comments. This is exactly what I hoped to see in this discussion. As weather models and routing software become more accurate the human factor in SOL races would become smaller and smaller. That's not what we want. I think we all enjoyed the recent Melbourne to Osaka race because we had to deal with many unexpected WX changes and a lot of position changes. High WX uncertainty = more interesting race. Compare that to the current Darwin to Perth race, where the weather has not changed at all. There is hardly any new message on the chat, people just set their DCs for the next 24 hours and nothing happens. If WX becomes more reliable then we will get more Darwin to Perth type races, an fewer races like Osaka, where we all had problems and scenario changes to deal with.
There is probably still a few years time until WX models become too good, but we can already exchange ideas on how SOL could adapt to that if needed.

I think what most of us want is a realistic simulation, not just a "who has the best routing software" type competition where all you have to do is execute the ideal route. In real life sailors have to deal with real weather differing from what the WX update forecasted. Can we mimic something like that in SOL? And if so how?

Introducing a random factor that makes the grib we play differ a bit from the official GFS (or other) weather model was suggested. Personally I am not a fan of using random factors. The reason is that the people who implement or help to run SOL behind the screens are volunteers and often participants at the same time. There would always be a suspicion that insiders have knowledge (or access) to those random factors, while normal players can not see them.

So, *IF* any "random factors" are to be used to add uncertainty (and thus stop routers from finding optimal solutions/routes) then those random factors should come from the weather itself imo. For example, as the article I linked to mentions, there will be more access to near-real time weather data (from drones and buoys) in the future. Let's say we have a race in an area using GFS data as we currently do. Every 6 hours we have a fixed map that we sail. But if there are a few buoys in the given area that put real time wind data on internet then we could use those real time data to change the weather map we use in SOL every hour or every 2 hours. That could be as simple as adjusting all wind speeds on the basis of the difference between predicted wind speed and measured wind speed for the given locations and times. That's isn't to hard on the server as it is only done once and hour. But it would add uncertainty. And we can experiment how much weight we give to the real-time data, so that routing keeps some of its use, but adapting to changes in real weather becomes important too. If we do that we will have a much more realistic simulation, because that's what IRL sailors do too.
2020-10-01 10:46:09

Re: QtVlm polar for Trireme O

Board » Technical Support

@Renegade Same here. AGL is stumbling on the polar for some reason. I don't know if Kipper can produce a fix on time. Even a way to switch off the boat polar and just download the WX updates for the grib to be used in routing programs would do for me...
2020-09-10 08:46:02

Re: Weather - Brain Storm

Board » General Discussion

Windy has a great article on the pros and cons of the most widely used WX models: https://windy.app/blog/what-is-a-weather-forecast-model-guide-on-forecast-models-all-around-the-world.html

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