This would help with judging

[Paul Taylor]

Wonder how this worked.

[Dan McEntee]

   Must be the same kind of software they use to track the flight of a golf ball on televised golf tournaments. This is the first I've seen for stunt use. Would be cool to do it yourself for training purposes.
   We missed you at Paducah Paul!!!!
    Type at you later,
    Dan McEntee

[frank williams]

Awesome!  I like it ... someone figure out how it works ...

[Carl Cisneros]

any one know of the actual program for this?

[Clint Ormosen]

As a judge, I dig it!
As a pilot, I'd be screwed.

[Brett Buck]

I wonder if this is live, or post-processed? It would be an ideal solution, if real-time.

    Brett

[RC Storick]

This is what I talked about in 07 on SSW

[Will Davis]

For  actual judging , I do not know how it would help, it would depend on the software  and application ..

for judge training and coaching the flyer , it would be a very handy tool to use. A lot better visual aid than critique sheet diagrams on paper .

Thanks for posting Paul, missed  you at Paducah ..

[Mark Scarborough]

it seems by reading the comments on the you tube page, he did this frame by frame, not automatically,, which is a bummer

[Air Ministry .]

Talking to the dude who did the telemetry for the Americas Cup Yacht Races, in Newzealand ;

He said a telemetry Transmitter would weigh less than ONE OUNCE be almost the size of a matchbox & about 1 cm ( 3/8 in. ) thick.
and have infinite Transmit Time Phase . But Ea pulse uses the electricity - so that governs power source .
They used 10 seconds , but He Thought 1/10 Sec. would be No Trouble . Might want one on thehandle coordinated , for the constant distance bit .
But a Position Recorder'd be a box adjacent the circle , on the field .

might Mean Four Foot alt. at the Center is the center of the hemishere !? .

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Hold On , baby . He Has Other films there . https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRHitr5tXqC5CX8VWoG8QTQ



This dudes flyings not as sloppy.  

[Jared Hays]

That would be a great tool for practicing and see where you need to improve...  That 4 leaf clover I see flown like that so many times where the second loop cuts the first loop in half lol.

[Brett Buck]

This is what I talked about in 07 on SSW

   Right, and people have been doing something similar since the 50's with movie frames and or flashlights taped to wingtips. What is missing is the real-time display that could be used for judging. I think everyone agrees that seeing this on the fly would be ideal - this is what the judges are supposed to be doing in their heads, but it's not easy.

      Brett

[Dennis Moritz]

A friend of mine and I were looking over old modeler mags. In 1966, Bob Gieseke won the NATs with a score of 450. At least that's what the caption to a picture of him and plane said. Made my friend and I wonder about a few things. Was the above a representative flight at the Worlds? Are we scoring too high?

[Keith Renecle]

You could always make a machine like this.......



Keith R

[RC Storick]

   Right, and people have been doing something similar since the 50's with movie frames and or flashlights taped to wingtips. What is missing is the real-time display that could be used for judging. I think everyone agrees that seeing this on the fly would be ideal - this is what the judges are supposed to be doing in their heads, but it's not easy.

      Brett

Harley-Davidson has this software to watch bike on the test track in AZ in real time. I don't know what it costs or how it works I just know its already available.

[john e. holliday]

This would be a good training tool for contestants and judges.   But like the strike zone thing they use in big league baseball on TV,  it would put people out of a job and make baseball watching boring.   Might be good also for instant replay on a scoring dispute like in baseball.  Even though the gentlemen in New York have blown a few calls that can't be rescinded.  Lets keep the human factor in .   Now as far as scoring, I think back in 66 they still used Navy judges that called it the way they seen it with the little training they go.   

[Randy Powell]

I'm with Doc. I prefer the human factor. Technology isn't effected by cool.

[Mark Scarborough]

I'm with Doc. I prefer the human factor. Technology isn't effected by cool.

That right there is the crux of the matter,, cool,, its part of the event, but its not part of the rules,,

[Steve Helmick]

What I saw in the video: It looked like the guy wasn't flying downwind, but across from the camera. See the various flags, mostly to the left side of the frame. It looked like the wind was pretty strong, so the flight may have been done mostly in "survival mode", perhaps because of the off-wind trick locations. Can't say if it was an official flight, of course. Remember that the rules call for the tricks to look correct to the pilot, not to the judges, and certainly not to the camera. Also, that sure was a noisy 'lectric engine (sic). I'd be surprised if it would pass FAI's stringent sound testing regulations, even being 'lectric. I have heard a few like that here, also. Bad bearings or something dragging inside the cowl has been the culprit. 

I've seen quite a few videos of tricks in the last few years. Some of the difficulty is lens related, even if the camera is tripod mounted and not panning with the plane. Wide angle lenses distort the perspective and would make it pretty much impossible to judge some of the tricks from the video. If the lens is set for a "normal" focal length, then the camera would have to be quite a distance away from the pilot, and then the model is often difficult to see, even if there is not a lot of clutter between camera and plane...which there always will be. That said, videos show a lot of stuff the human eye can't see in real time. I like that aspect of stunt videos.  Steve 

[Steve Thompson]

If everybody had one of these, you could fly your contest flight at your home field and then email in the trace file for official ranking!

In all seriousness, if this could be done with some kind of a phone app, it would be an excellent training aid.

[BillLee]

If you have a lot(!!!) of money and some serious compute power, this could be done in real time.

Evidence (some cited above):
Golf ball path
baseball strike zone display
fictitious first-down markers in football
custom on-field logos in several venues
etc.

Take a look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_%26_Ten_(graphics_system)
https://ai2-s2-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/ecf7/f6518efefb6ed7665bed1358822ea3dab2f7.pdf

[dave siegler]

I think you could do this with simple systems now.

OpenCV is pretty powerful. It runs on a lot of systems. 

tracking a ball is a normal university project now.  RaspberryPi and a web cam work



this is in python its not real fast.

http://www.pyimagesearch.com/2015/09/14/ball-tracking-with-opencv/

Issue is to pick the airplane of of the image, the contrast may not be enough.

[Dennis Moritz]

Was the stunt flier in the first video a member of a World Competition team? If so, what score did he receive in the competition? This looks like a practice flight. No judges visible. It would be useful to know extent to which errors apparent in recording, highlighted by tracking, are typical of competitive patterns.

[Brett Buck]

If you have a lot(!!!) of money and some serious compute power, this could be done in real time.

Evidence (some cited above):
Golf ball path
baseball strike zone display
fictitious first-down markers in football
custom on-field logos in several venues
etc.

      I don't think the fact that it is technically possible is under debate, certainly not since HD video was available. It's how *practical* it might be to implement. The previous discussions (on-line and otherwise) ended up with people suggesting/demanding that PAMPA go buy all this stuff and do it immediately, along with iPads or Newton for each judge, otherwise we are all either cheating, or lying, or were trying to maintain the "Status quo" good-old-boys club. Many of the same guys also simultaneously argued that $15 a year for dues and 6 100+ page magazines a year was highway robbery.

    Brett

[Eric Viglione]

      I don't think the fact that it is technically possible is under debate, certainly not since HD video was available. It's how *practical* it might be to implement. The previous discussions (on-line and otherwise) ended up with people suggesting/demanding that PAMPA go buy all this stuff and do it immediately, along with iPads or Newton for each judge, otherwise we are all either cheating, or lying, or were trying to maintain the "Status quo" good-old-boys club. Many of the same guys also simultaneously argued that $15 a year for dues and 6 100+ page magazines a year was highway robbery.

    Brett

... or listen to the same ones howl when the thing glitches with no data, and they have to re-fly their official flight. 

OTOH - I see uses as a coaching aid, etc. Very cool, and I played with the app on my Ipad a few years ago, so it's been out a while. I even bought a holder and tripod mount for my ipad... the trouble is, the ipad on a tripod is like a parachute in the wind...

[dave siegler]

After talking to some of my computer vision friends, this is totally possible with cheap cameras and low cost circuit boards in real time. 

Open CV can tack multiple objects at 30 frames per second with a raspberryPy . 
Literately less than 100$ of HW. 


The issue would be target identification vs the sky, light conditions and position vs the wind. 

That is the technology issue.  The human factors is another problem that all the code in the world cant.