On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 5:35:51 AM UTC-5, waremark wrote:
On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 10:50:01 AM UTC+1, wrote:

On Wednesday, 24 October 2012 08:57:21 UTC+1, Roel Baardman wrote:



My money would be on a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) based



solution.







Largely because this is technology which is extremely widely used



(every laser mouse does it in hardware).







Optical mice use integrated circuits like the Agilent ADNS-2620:



http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/data...cyqglz0hcy.pdf







So, unless you can form a 2D image of the particles'



velocity and have the ic process that image, I don't



see how you would do it.







I've heard about model airplanes using it to stabilize bank angle



(more speed = lower wing).







Quite possible. Many years ago I saw one of the



optical mice in the form or a ring on a finger.



With the appropriate focussing distance, the room



itself was used as a mouse pad.



Whatever the tech ultimately used to achieve this, what will it do to the sport? I know some people thought flight computers would ruin the sport, then GPS, then moving maps, but thus far it is still far from ruined. But visible thermals sounds like the biggest step yet towards reducing the challenge. What do others think?

it will turn a flight that previously would've gone 300km into a 500km flight. would probably lead to a huge increase in the number of pilots flying cross country and in contests. records would start falling everywhere. i can't wait