Your Mom SA

Thanks! It looks like a large fleet will beat my time by a day soon... but... perhaps they'll have worse luck than me in the Pacific. There are a few boats who started after me, who will be closing the gap on me in fleet compression in the North Atlantic... I'm not sure if I can stay ahead of them by enough. We shall see...

Thanks again. I didn't know about 2D. That definitely makes a variety of things easier. Although it's a little less fun than 3D.

Thanks! So I guess you and the others who take this seriously are spending money to buy green chips, then? I don't care enough about it to put money into it... So I use VMG only for maybe half my races, and nothing the rest of the time. Interesting that the wind sock information is so critical. Since I never use it (except when the game gives all options, which seems to be for the first race of each event), I hadn't figured out the timing yet, so I didn't pay much attention to it. I've just been sailing for dark water and hoping the shifts will average out. The truth is, though... I foul other boats way to much, which has nothing to do with options. I know the rules, and in real life, I can control my boat quite well and avoid contact, but... in the game, I find it very difficult to avoid contact without over-steering, etc. And then sometimes downwind I'll gybe into a boat I didn't know was there, etc. And I frequently approach the windward mark on port tack and decide it's better to plow in there and eat the foul than waste time trying to avoid the inevitable. I guess if I was paying for the options, sometimes I might be able to get out in front of the carnage, though.

I don't do Inshore much... usually just at times like now when I have zero Offshore races going. I'm trying to get a better understanding of the options you can choose at the beginning of each race by spending green chips... I can't find any Help or other discussion about this. Am I missing it somewhere? -Start ling timing. I've seen what it does... when you're pointed at the start line, it gives you the straight-line time to get there. Is that at your current speed, or does it account for acceleration (which makes a big difference with F50s!)? -Layline. Seems pretty simple... it just extends the laylines out to infinity, right? -Best VMG. This is the only one I've been spending green chips on. Push B on the keyboard, and it steers VMG upwind or downwind for you. Nice. It seems to do it pretty well. Do the best racers use it, though, or is it actually possible to do better with hand-steering if you're good at it? And does this do anything else? -Wind Shadow. I've used this a couple times. I can see that it shows you your shadow and your opponents' shadows, which is helpful. My question is... If you don't pay for this... do you still have a shadow that you simply can't see? If so, then the competition is fair and this is just for visibility. But if you have to pay for this to have a wind shadow, then you need to be paying for this to be competitive. -Wind intelligence. Is this just the wind socks at the top of the chart? What do they show? Impending windshifts? How far into the future? Thanks! -Mom

I run into that a few times per week... Turning the phone off to force a reboot always solves it.

For the last few days, my iPhone has asked me to provide my iTunes password every time I access a race. Even if I log in, it asks again the next time I access a race. Is anyone else having this problem?

@Oxven Thank you for responding quickly to explain the situation. While the decision to proceed without isolating in-process events is very upsetting, I appreciate your efforts to explain the decision. Will anything be done for the people who feel wronged about this? Is there any value in submitting a support request, or would we be wasting our time? Personally, I haven't decided yet if this actually helps me or hurts me. It definitely kills my chances of beating the boats who have already finished under 40 days. I don't think I can achieve that now, whereas I had a chance before this change. It cost me at least a few hours. But... it probably also killed the chances of 100+ boats behind me of beating 41 days... so if I get to the finish under 41.5 days or so, it's possible that my result might be better as a result of this rather than worse... In which case I would feel bad for those who were hurt worse than me, but I would not feel justified in asking for a refund.

If this is applied to JVT before it closes, I will be requesting a refund of my JVT entry fee. It will destroy the validity of that event by forcing those of us who are still racing to clear the doldrums in less wind than those who have already finished. I am very happy about this decision, but PLEASE don't apply it to in-process races, especially the JVT.

Thanks! With it all being in French, it's hard to know what has already been discussed.

By the way... I'm not talking about people trying to simply use the rules to win with aggressive racing. That's ok as far as I'm concerned. For example... a quick gybe from port to starboard too close for a boat to get away, resulting in them fouling you... in real life, you wouldn't be able to get away with that... in virtual racing, you usually can... I don't have a problem with that, and will do that kind of thing myself. I'm talking about people abandoning all efforts to actually race, specifically to ruin someone else's race.

On occasion, I have encountered cases where a boat will ignore the race course and instead try to ruin my race. For example, a boat that turns downwind before getting to the windward mark, and then sits on my wind no matter how much I try to get away from him. Even if I let him pass me, he'll turn back to get back on me again. There are other cases where it's harder to know if it's intentional or not... For example, if a boat stays on starboard tack after the start beyond the layline, forcing me to overstand by a lot... maybe they're doing that just to hurt me, but I think more often that it's just that they don't realize they've passed the layline. When this is intentional, there are two possible explanations... one is that partners are "team racing" where one boat slows down the competition so that the other can win. The other is simply "trolling" where someone alone simply enjoys ruining someone else's race. This doesn't matter in free beta testing. I don't really care if someone ruins my race if I didn't pay for it. But... What can be done about this when VR eventually starts running Inshore regattas that cost credits? This is the equivalent of a Rule 69 protest in real racing. Do we have to take note of the offending boat's name and email it to VR Support, or is there a simpler way to file a complaint? Would we get any redress for our ruined race (or credits back), or is disqualification of the offender the only thing we can ask for? Does VR retain any logs of the races so that they could check to see what really happened if necessary? That's all re-active... can anything be done pro-actively? For example, maybe if a boat hasn't rounded a mark yet, it shouldn't be able to affect the wind of a boat that has rounded that mark? The truth is, though, that I've never paid for an Inshore virtual race and I'm not sure if I ever will. I'm here for the Offshore stuff. I just do Inshore when there aren't any active Offshore races. So... I don't mind if nothing is done about this. I just thought it might be an interesting topic for discussion.

For what it's worth... I think I figured out why my autosails turned off in that Clipper leg. I have posted an explanation in the "Indicate a bug" forum, for anyone interested in how to avoid that risk. The bottom line, though, is that it simply isn't worthwhile to pay for options for a race unless you can do it on a desktop machine. The App simply can't support the paid for options well enough to be worthwhile. I hope VR will improve the App to work as well as the desktop interface eventually, as I would prefer to be able to race just as competitively on my phone as on a desktop... but it doesn't appear to be a priority for them right now.

I did some experimentation. I'm not sure how the app turned my autosails off. I'm very upset because I'm pretty sure I'd be on my way to a top-10 finish in this Clipper leg if this hadn't happened. I was able to determine one thing for sure, though... The App does NOT ask you to confirm when you turn off your autosails, like the desktop interface does. So if I somehow did it myself accidentally, the App would not have asked me to confirm. Since I know the desktop application asks for confirmation, and I knew I had never been asked by the App to confirm turning off of autosails, of course it never occurred to me that my sails might be off until the damage was done. If VR could please add the same confirmation step to the App that already exists in the desktop interface, that would help to keep this problem from happening again. Of course, the App still will be quite limited if it doesn't allow more precision in scheduling than hourly straight-line scheduling and doesn't recognize the schedules that were previously submitted on a desktop. So VR has a LOT of work to do before it could be worthwhile to pay for a race if the user can't regularly access a desktop computer.

It looks like the App can only set scheduled maneuvers on the hour, not by the minute. Correct? It looks like the App can only schedule future maneuvers for straight lines, not TWA. Correct? When I have scheduled maneuvers on my desktop computer, and then I try to update my plan on the App, the App shows all of my pre-scheduled maneuvers with a direction of 361 degrees, so I have to start over instead of updating my original plan. Is this expected? I was doing very well in the latest leg of the Clipper race. I was among the boats that are now running in positions 4 through 10. I was in very good shape to place in the top 20 or better. I used the App to make some course changes on Saturday, but I did NOT turn Autosails off myself. On Sunday, I got back to a desk and set a careful route, and then I raced my real boat that afternoon. When I got back online that evening, I discovered Autosails had been turned off and my boat had been running at TWA 130 for 7 hours. The leaders were working to get out of the middle of a weak High, so the 20 miles I lost during that time quickly built to 30, then 40, and now it's about 80. The race is ruined. Two weeks of hard work to stay with the leaders were ruined. All because I had to use the App for one day. Does the App turn Autosails off somehow? I'm certain that I did not turn it off myself. If you add up all of these points, it seems that most of the options you can pay for are useless on the App. My conclusion is that I should NEVER pay to do a race unless I'm certain I can be at a desktop computer regularly from start to finish. This is really unfortunate because I enjoy these races and I was really enjoying this Clipper leg until this disaster.