Announcing WeGlide Segments

A completely new kind of gliding competition. Compare yourself to pilots in your area or chase your shadow.

Moritz Althaus · Announcements · January 25, 2022

We are very excited to finally announce WeGlide Segments. They are a new way to compare your performance to other pilots in your area. Segments are popular routes from a start to a finish gate. All pilots automatically get scored on all segments they pass during their flights.

Overview of some segments in southern Germany

Scoring

The gates are 30km wide (15km to each side). The difference between the start and finish altitude is calculated into the final speed based on MacCready theory. If you finish lower than you have started, you get a small time penalty. If the weather is very bad and you fly slowly, the time penalty for the same altitude will be higher.

Medals, Cups, and Local Legend

You can earn medals and cups for your performances on different segments. If your performance is one of your top three performances, you earn a medal. For example, with his flight from 3rd of May 2021, Tobias Welsch earned a gold medal on the Rhine-Main Highway while placing 13th overall.

Tobias Welsch earned a gold medal on Rhine-Main Highway

The person who has flown a segment the most (in the time frame that is set by the filters), becomes the local legend and is displayed with a laurel crown on top of the ranking. For example on Frankenstein, Mathias Arnold is the local legend as he has flown the segment the most often.

Philipp Kapferer earned a bronze cup (3rd best overall) and a gold medal (personal best) with his flight from 19th of August 2017.

Philipp Kapferer earned a bronze cup and a gold medal

Filtering

The different filter options on WeGlide Segments enable completely new kinds of competitions. You can filter for different date ranges (year, month, days) and for clubs, airfields, or individual users. Different filters can also be combined.

In the segment overview, you will see all existing segments on the map and also in the list. If you zoom in closer, only the segments which are in the map section will be displayed on the list. For every segment, the distance, the number of times the segment has been flown, the last date that the segment has been flown, and the number of points of the winner are shown.

These values adjust to the filters that are set, e.g. if we filter for a club, the aircraft symbol shows the number of times that the segment has been flown by members of the club. The winner behind the trophy is the pilot of the club who has flown the segment the fastest. If we set a filter for a season, the numbers adjust and we see how many time times the segment has been flown in this season and who was the fastest.

Date filter

If we switch the date filter to the 2021 season, we see that in this period, Engadin Rally has been flown 190 times. We also see that for 2021, Mathias is now the leading pilot, scoring 111 points on this segment. We can also select individual days or months.

Your segments

By filtering for your name in the segment list, you can see all the segments that you have flown. For example, Benjamin has flown Engadin Rally 26 times.

If you want to compare yourself to a mate of yours, just filter for both pilots. You can then see who is leading on which segments. Why not challenge a club mate to see who can win the most segments in a season?

Club competition

You can filter for clubs or airfields to see which club member was the most successful. This is a great way for clubs to set out small competitions to see who can fly their local segments the fastest in a season.

We have already heard from three clubs that will make a small cup for the club member which flies a close-by segment the fastest.

Another filter possibility is to filter for juniors or women. The Parcours has been flown 502 times by a junior and 40 times by women.

Segment Ranking

Let's have a look at the ranking for Engadin Rally. Next to the name of the segment, we see the distance, the number of times the segment has been flown, and the name of the local legend. The local legend is the person who (in accordance with the filters set) has flown the segment the most often.

Below we find the best flights of the segment. If we hover above them, the trace is displayed on the map. Benjamin has the top performance of all time. The arrow before his speed indicates that he passed the segment in the South-West direction on the 9th of June 2014.

Ordering

There are different possibilities to order the flights in the ranking. The default order is per speed, but we could also select the earliest. Then we would see who has finished the segment the earliest in the morning. If we select the latest, we see the flights ordered by who has started the latest in any day.

Sven Richter had completed Engadin Rally by 10:16 UTC

Creation

The existing segments were created based on historic flights uploaded to WeGlide. Specific algorithms optimized the exact positions of the gates to match as many flights as possible. If you think a segment is missing or the placement of the gates is not optimal, don't hesitate to write us.

If you have a better name idea for one of the segments, write us. The best one wins!

Uploading old Flights

All flights get scored for the segment, even if they are uploaded very late. So upload your old flights now and see if you can beat the reigning champion on your local segment or if you will become the local legend.

Integration

We are working on having a native integration into LXNAV and SeeYou devices. You can download the segments in different formats:
- as cup file as a tsk file or as an airspace txt file.

Sponsored Segments

There are some segments with a logo and description of a sponsor. For example, Jonker Sailplanes and SteFly sponsor some cool segments. For the segment on the Swabian Alb, Just Soaring is awarding a full Glider Sim Pro for the fastest pilot of the year.

Feedback

Here is what some of the pilots that have tried WeGlide segments for the last couple of weeks say:

Adam Woolley, Australian Cross-Country Pilot

Loving the new segments feature, another race within our daily race or flights! It brings back memories of racing a 'ghost car' as a school kid on a video game, it's really cool to challenge yourself to be the fastest on known common legs in your area or to have a friendly competition between clubs - anything is possible! What is important, is that it adds another element of fun for our wonderful sport.

Maximilian Karl, flight instructor

Especially for newbies in our club, WeGlide Segments are nice challenges. Beginners can fly popular local routes, earn a medal and try to improve over time.

Stefan Langer, German champion and record holder