How can TURN be PLUS?

[JHern]

I have zero doubt about the simulation working, don't get me wrong. What I don't trust is the consistency of the manufacturers. It's more likely than not that the disc you actually receive will fly differently. =)

Ah yes, the quality control (QC) issue crops up, and this is very important. Some manufacturers might not be interested in going to a higher level of QC. I think some of them will, and the ones that do will become regarded by players as the highest tier of disc makers very quickly...think about how the disc golf community will view a disc line that, albeit slightly more expensive (but not by much, it will be more like a step in plastic grade in relative cost), is really much more reliable and consistent. They'll quickly increase their market share.

The flight simulator is the ultimate quality control tool. By this method, I can QC in terms of the aerodynamics itself, the way variations in one disc to another (of ostensibly the same mold) make it fly differently, and that's what really counts (OK, grip and feel also matter, but these are also easily quantifiable).

I don't know if you should consider selling it to the highest bidder, for some reason I like the idea of licensing it to anyone wanting to use it better. It could probably work as a solid base for a proper disc golf game apart from just being a plaything for manufacturer websites.

If I wanted to be very ambitious, I could just start making my own discs. I could take the market by storm if I had enough of an initial investment.

 

[Ryan C]

It would also be a possibility to have discs with consistency ratings. So that if you measured 15 Teebirds from 15 different runs in a wind tunnel, the differences between the discs would be given a rating. As in, "this disc varies 5% from the median." Wider winged discs would probably have a much larger spread, making them rated less consistent, and thus more likely to be different. I guess I don't know how this "super ratings system" would exactly work, but checking multiples of the same mold would definitely be an improvement over checking just one disc from just one run.

 

[jubuttib]

Measuring the PLH of discs would be a pretty trivial task for a machine vision based system (among others), and the discs could be sorted accordingly. Done before the weighing the relative PLH could be marked on the bottom along with the weight (something like --, -, + and ++). I kinda like the variety were getting now, I'd just wish the specific discs I like would be easier to find.

Dreaming is nice...