On Feb 14, 4:49*pm, John Galloway wrote:
At 22:58 13 February 2013, wrote:









If the butterfly -- or clearnav, with future software -- did read
out 3 d
w=
ind 20 times a second, this would be a big advantage. Not
only could you
de=
tect lift long before F =3D MA gets the glider moving upward,
you could
tel=
l upward gusts from forward gusts and sideways gusts.
Dynamic soaring
might=
even become possible, or at least better energy extraction
from gusts.
Eve=
n the 302 has the necessary sensors, my impression is that
we're all
waitin=
g on the software development.=20

John Cochrane

Regarding gusts, the Butterfly website (in FAQ) *already claims:

"A conventional variometer uses changes in air pressure (TE-
pressure, static- and total-pressure) to determine energy
changes the aircraft experiences. Butterfly Vario does the same.
Additionally it uses an inertial sensing platform that allows for
real-time determination of airmass-movement and realtime
determination of wind. With this technology a pilot can judge
the difference between gust induced energy changes and
thermal induced energy changes."

John Galloway

The Butterfly vario does not filter out gusts. The other sensors are
used only to drive the blue ball that shows air mass movement. The
pilot responsibility is to put the two together and decide what is a
gust and what is lift based on the two sources of information. It is
not a bad solution as one can learn the vario behavior. If algorithms
are used to filter out gusts a pilot might have a difficult time to
learn the vario behavior or understand what it is showing as an
algorithm may have many paths covering many different scenarios
behaving differently in different situations. Of course if algorithm
is perfect that would not be a problem, but this is not an easy
problem to solve. I assume it will be years before this happen mainly
to extensive testing/feedback process that is required to develop and
test these kinds of algorithms what works in theory might not be good
in practice. So for the near future approach that Butterfly took is a
good one, we need to see in practice how workable it will be.