Zezo forum:

Post by MichelleWhy | 2017-12-19 | 10:25:27

I was sailing in close quarters to the leading group. Predicted route was 140� TWA before we gybe the last time around noon today. The router didn't indicate any sail changes even when I am off the ideal route by 1 or 2 degrees. That's what I checked this morning after Grib update. But somehow the server thought to put 4 sail changes within the last 15 minutes on my boat. Surprise, that cost me about 100 places :(

37 Comments

Post by zezo | 2017-12-19 | 12:29:21

Yep. The client displays different winds than the server and then for TWA 140 C0 and HG overlap. If there is any difference it's very small (like 0.01 kts or 0.1%) and you wold be fine sailing with the wrong sail.

But the server has no hysteresis and will change sails every minute if it thinks the other one is 1cm/year faster.

I've also seen client and server differ in their notion of best sail.

Post by zezo | 2017-12-19 | 12:39:14

I got a penalty 5 days ago and have never used autosail since. Got to switch from 140 to 143 for two hours last night to avoid the need of C0 (it was also the VMG angle, so no harm done, and it was suggested by the router too)

Everyone should read the other thread one more time ;-) http://zezo.org/forum.pl?tid=6195

Post by MichelleWhy | 2017-12-19 | 12:56:47

Yeah, understood. I could and should have avoided that too by going up 1 degree in TWA..if I only knew that would happening. I read the other thread. But it wasn't that clear to me as I completely relied on the router. And I was unable to predict windspeed in such marginal (or should I say important) nuances. Well, lesson learned the hard way ;-)

Post by zezo | 2017-12-19 | 13:06:22

The only way to be sure is by using the Dashboard and monitoring the exact reported TWS and server-side vR/vC boat speeds vs. vT (and suggested sail)

The proper way of course would be for VR to:

1) Fix the client to display server-side parameters sent in the protocol
2) Fix the server to use 2-minute update cycle for the wind fiend to avoid spurious sail changes. Also add a hysteresis to avoid sail change below 0.1% difference or so.

Post by MichelleWhy | 2017-12-19 | 13:14:15

You only want me to get tired by sitting all night long and stare blankly at the screen whilst you having your beauty sleep and then carry off the laurels. Smart :D

Post by CaptKAOS | 2017-12-19 | 12:59:42

Problem is when you have activated the autosail it�s not possible to de-activate, or issit?

Post by MichelleWhy | 2017-12-19 | 13:06:39

Yes, exactly. It's not possible to switch it off. You've to wait until timer runs out, which will be in like 12 minutes for me.

Post by Inicio | 2017-12-19 | 13:10:35

Yes, it is.
If you select the sail, even the same sail you are carrying. You got a penalty, even if you select the same sail, but you deactivate the AutoSail.

Post by CaptKAOS | 2017-12-19 | 14:37:21

You can only deactivate by running our the card
Stupid that you cannot deactivate manually

Post by zezo | 2017-12-19 | 13:07:56

You can, but still suffer a sail change penalty for that.

Post by CaptKAOS | 2017-12-19 | 14:47:10

Correct what I meant to say you cannot use it at the appropriate time without the penalty

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2017-12-19 | 17:35:38

Are you sure about that?
When I de-activated my autosail 3 days ago (I put 20 days before start !), I did not notice any penalty.
Ttw, when I checked my boat at the weather forecast update this morning, I had a surprise, the wind angle changed from 140 to 142�. I thought this bug was solved, but it appears it is not the case. In normal circunstances, it should not impact that much, but in catching strong winds as I was, any tiny speed lost has impacted the speed of my boat for the rest of the night.

Post by eljot | 2017-12-20 | 01:01:38

Sail change is almost as important as heading change,so I wonder why there is no Sail Programation. Another solution would be an option to choose to use Autosail card once (given sail at a given time) or for 12 hours as it is now.

Post by YourMomSA | 2017-12-20 | 01:23:15

My personal recommendation is... Think of yourself as the Captain of a vessel where the Watch Captain for the other watch is an idiot. You need to tend to your responsibilities and get some sleep, but whenever you're off watch, you have to remember that the idiot is out there. He'll call for 5 sailchanges in an hour if you let him. So don't put him in a situation where he might. Simple as that.

(And, FWIW, I usually sleep 6-8 hours straight each night. I don't solve this by being online 24/7. Everyone needs to find their own personal best solution for managing the idiot watch captain)

Post by UR2L8 | 2017-12-21 | 10:45:11

LOL,

I totally agree :-)

Post by JohnT | 2017-12-21 | 09:25:11

Yet another aspect of the game that was so much better in VR2: the ability to switch off autosail any time....

Post by nsp | 2017-12-22 | 00:57:38

@ Mom

I tend to agree with you. And as a matter of a fact we have to addapt to the tools we have or to the "boats we are in".

That's the pragmatic way of dealing with the situation that gives us an add value.

Simply it's a fake add value created by our pragmatism in a supposed "state of the art" game in a smulation of a last generation sailing machine in the ultimate virtual sailing race.

We were supposed to don't be sailing with the wrong sails for hours because it does't worth it when a peeling is so fast in real life and no skipper hesitates in doing it, more he has to do it to save their sails in good shape ...Something is really wrong here!

I am not going even to talk about Pro winches...a boat in a race like this not having the last model of winches and hydraulics is ridiculous... so why give that as an option? Money..just that...:S

So I agree that we and specially you guys top of the golden fleet, shouldn't let this issues die.

my 50 cents

ps: Regarding this issue of autosails in particular, I don't know if you noticed the effect of the interpolation and retrograde corrections on potential penalties. Anyway, it was discussed here: http://zezo.org/forum.pl?tid=6195

Post by UR2L8 | 2018-01-10 | 08:11:56

It's so crazy. There seem to be no way to program sail change. So this night I lost 4 hours with wrong sail because I was simply much too tired to go up at 3 in the night and make the sail change. Last time I remember when I was about to sleep was thinking "oh yeah, I must set the alarm"....
(Autosail is not an option. Ever)

Post by UR2L8 | 2018-01-10 | 08:11:56

Post by nsp | 2018-01-10 | 14:07:36

I know. When you get into that mode of being so tired or sleeping depravation. You simply don't listen to the buzzer or forget to activate the sound or hear it but just don't care. Right?

Generally I sleep the normal number of hours, with one unique exception, Sydney Hobart, because it was going on particularly well since the beggining. So i decided to take it as if it was a real race in a real boat. Untill the moment I was so tired i just forgot to set the buzzer sound on. 2 to 3 hours with wrong sail. From 1st to 177th and impossible to recover with all those starskippers out there.

So I agree it would be awesome to be able to program a sail change OR to garantee that once in autosail mode the system would prevent a safe period of time without reverse sailchange. Maybe that would be the way.

Maybe in VRO6 or 7 :P

Post by zezo | 2018-01-10 | 18:07:39

There is simple technical solution of the problem - create a 1 knot overlap area between the various pro sails. That would add the needed hysteresis and avoid unneeded sail changes.

Current logic of the pro sails is just "certain percentage of boat speed over basic sails, with merge regions and crossover points"

Post by nsp | 2018-01-10 | 19:03:30

Cvetan,
Please forgive me my probably total idiot or noob question. I understand what you say but don't understand how you mean to do it.
Could you please explain how you do it?
Or I am being so idiot that it's something so obvious and I'm not seeing it?

Post by zezo | 2018-01-10 | 19:17:32

I just say how a game should implement the Pro sails to avoid the problem. There is not much I can do about it.

Post by nsp | 2018-01-10 | 19:31:30

ahhhhhhhh ok....i thought you had a solution that we can implement now. sorry

Post by zezo | 2018-01-10 | 21:44:12

I just have a solution that VR could have implemented 10 years ago.

They solved it for a while by not applying penalties with auto sail on, but that has its own abuse modes.

Post by karriv | 2018-01-15 | 18:38:56

Simple way to avoid unnecessary swaps to a sail and back would be to make the autosain trigger for sail changes to be x % better performance with new sail. X could even be user definable.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2018-01-14 | 12:21:00

On that topic, my zero money boat do not give me any warning in case of wrong sail, no warning on the dashboard but the optimum sail is clearly giving a higher speed than the wrong sail. I only have CO + radio.

Post by karriv | 2018-01-15 | 18:34:43

Just changed from HG to C0 using autosail without any penalty.

Edit: The extension reports sail as C0 in the status report as does VR UI. According to the polar, C0 is the correct sail. However, the current status box at the top of the page of the extension reports HG as the sail.

Post by zezo | 2018-01-15 | 19:28:24

Same here, so I switched TWA from 137 to 140, causing both UI and vT to select HG. No penalty.

Post by karriv | 2018-01-15 | 22:25:37

And now back to HG without penalty (TWA 139->140). Again with autosail on.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2018-01-15 | 22:33:15

I have also noticed that a couple of times, especially on the Jules Verne. They might have implemented an hysteresis that give only a penalty if more than x % kts difference. Just looked at the dashboard of the JV. No penalty to go from LG to HG, but a penalty where apparently, no sails change.

Edit : I got a penalty, but only 10 min later.

Post by ujami-JK-Ada | 2018-01-15 | 22:41:07

same here, but 20min later when I accidentally changed TWA from 139 to 135 ...here it comes

Post by karriv | 2018-01-16 | 07:07:39

Dashboard shows me no penalty, not even delayed. Race is VOR (not doing any other races).

Post by zezo | 2018-01-17 | 08:21:32

There are at least two new parameters in the polars:

"autoSailChangeTolerance":1.003,
"badSailTolerance":1.01

The first one probably means 0.3% hysteresis
The second one probably concerns the warning display

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2018-01-17 | 13:13:36

Thanks Cvetan, wonder why they put a different parameter for both. 1.003 is a little bit small to me and 1.01 is too high. You could sail for hours with the wrong sail without notification. 1.01 means that you don't get any message if you sail at 20 kts and you could sail at 20.2 kts with another sail

Post by karriv | 2018-01-17 | 09:12:35

OK, now I got the sail change penalties, going from LG to C0 (TWA 129 to 121).

Could it be that this "autoSailChangeTolerance" defines a threshold for applying the penalty in case of autosail sail change (as opposed to being a hysteresis parameter for the actual sail change)? That would explain the behavior.

Have to give credit to VR, there's clearly a lot of development activity going on, on the UI and under the hood.

Post by nsp | 2018-01-17 | 12:02:54

I think we all are going to have the next leg full options for free for being nice, supportive and patient sponsoring beta testers. Maybe we can even have a Zezo flag in those boats like "Volvo familly"

Just giving an idea.

Do you hear Phillipe????

Good job on last update by the way "redoutable gaulois"!! ;P