merlinextraligh

You're mixing apples and oranges.

Porsche GT3 RSR, for example, used in professional sports car racing doesn't have a PDK. It has a sequential six speed gearbox. So there's no full automatic mode to use.

The transmission used in various racing series is regulated by the specs for the series, and I'm not aware of a series that allows fully automatic transmissions. In fact they're banned as an impermissible driver's aid in F1.

And the fact that race cars don't use PDK in no way negates the fact that a car with PDK driven in drive mode does amazingly well on the track, both faster than the manual version of the same car, and faster than operating the PDK version in manual mode.

The gains to be had over driving in manual mode, 1) the Computer always shifts at exactly the right point on the torque curve, 2) it never selects the wrong gear, unlike a human, 3) it can get from 7 to 2 faster than you can push the paddle 5 times, and 3) (and most important) it frees you to focus on other pressing matters, such as he line and what's around you.
s

And as an aside, if you're doing all this racing, why in the heck did you get a tiptronic in your 911?

Fox Farm

Wow, I thought that this thread was about SRAM etap....

hueyhoolihan

that was so yesterday...

gotta be fast on your feet to keep up with these threads. learn to juke and jive. be an expert (or at least appear to be) on many subjects. learn to argue every point no matter how trivial and above all, have the last word!

rpenmanparker 

Tell me about it.

merlinextraligh

pretty much sums it up. Guilty as charged.

Back on topic, if the integration of electronic shifting, power, data, gps etc., can approach what high performance cars are already doing, there's the potential for some really cool stuff.

We're just scratching the surface of what's possible.

RJM

We need HUD displays in our Oakleys.

mpath

Done....Recon Jet or Sportiiii

BoSoxYacht

as far fetched as that sounds, it is in the works.

merlinextraligh

Now if they can incorporate eye controlled shifting, we'd have something.

RJM

I wonder if the HUDs will display live Strava segments too. That actually would be really cool.

BoSoxYacht

Have you seen Oakley Airwave goggles?

RJM

No, but now that I checked on them they look cool. They need to integrate that tech into a Radar or Jawbreaker road lens.

BoSoxYacht

From what I've been told, that's the plan.

Google and Oakley's parent company have partnered, but so far I haven't seen any prototypes.

joejack951

I figured I should check back in on this thread and relate some of my musings from recent road rides. I also wanted to make sure 69chevy and I finished our totally related camera discussion ;-)

Commenting on the bolded section, the 'personal' part of making a photo is want I want control over. The brightness (what you incorrectly refer to as 'exposure') of the photo is far less important as long as it's close enough (for my D3S at least, for an ISO-less camera it matters even less or not at all). In summary, I'm happy letting the camera do the 'thinking' for the least important part of the photo while I take care of the creative part, including adding light as needed, reflecting light, framing the scene, positioning the subjects, etc.

How this relates to bikes, I could make the analogy that auto-ISO is like indexed shifting. And I really like both.

BoSoxYacht

Don't worry about relating anything to eTap. It's been days since that topic has been brought up here.

joejack951

My final thoughts on the subject of automatic transmissions in bikes and cars:

Cars - There certainly is a growing body of evidence that a properly programmed automatic, but still clutch-based, transmission shifted by a computer can be faster around a track than a manually shifted version of the same transmission. I've long since accepted that servos can shift a transmission even faster than the best Formula 1 driver so perhaps some day I'll accept that a computer can make even better shifting decisions than the same driver. It would be interesting to see this played out in a real race, not just lapping around an empty track. However, as someone who grew up doing all the work to shift a transmission (save for having working synchros in most of my car's transmissions), I enjoy the act of shifting enough that I'll continue to do it for as long as I can even if that just means pushing a button these days. My '86 944 Turbo won't be getting an automatic any time soon, though.

Bikes - I took a 78 mile belated b-day ride on Tuesday and thought a lot about an auto-shifting bike. As I was warming up and coasting down a particularly twisty stretch of downhill road, I went to pedal on a straight stretch and found myself in way too low of a gear. Score one for an auto-shifting system that could have recognized my speed and been prepared to shift to the big ring as soon as the pedals turned. As I coasted to a stop several times after having quickly downshifted enough gears to my preferred starting gear, I wondered how an auto-shifting bike would handle that scenario. I guess it could remind me to soft pedal as I slowed so it could downshift, or maybe shifting will get good enough that it can drop those gears as I get moving, though that would be hell getting started on a steep hill. As I approached some steep sections, I also questioned how the auto-shifting transmission would appropriately drop several gears to prepare me for the hill. Or how it would figure out how to shift up a gear or two before I stand to sprint, or shift smoothly enough that shifting as I'm sprinting wouldn't be a total disaster.

Any of those failing could be addressed several ways I suppose and I guess I should be excited to give it a try some day. I definitely want to go try the new Shimano MTB group with its sequential shifting based on Leonard Zinn's report.

joejack951

Oh yeah, eTap, um....when can I try it in a store near me?

PepeM

When do we get wireless Claris?

69chevy

And my analogy would be a bike with an automatic shifting system that allows you to choose your cadence, and chainring, but picks the cog for you based on your desired speed.

This is the reason I even brought it up.

You said you are better able to choose than the processors, which I believe is a delusion.

JohnJ80

Seriously - what is the expected ETA for eTap? I have a bike that is mech now that would convert nicely to eTap and allow me to take the mech components on that and upgrade another bike.

J.

joejack951

This makes no sense, unless I'm expected to constantly tell my bike which cadence I want to ride at. Unless I'm riding very flat roads, my cadence can vary quite a bit depending on what I'm doing, and even on the flats I like to mix it up a bit.

Choose what? My aperture and shutter speed? Of course, I can do that better than the camera. How does it know what I'm trying to do? My cadence and rear cog? Again, how does the computer know what I'm trying to do (without a ton of complexity that likely doesn't work as well for a human powered machine as it does for a gas/electric powered machine)?

colnago62

There are certainly less variables with an engine than a human. There are so many factors that dictate optimum cadence, it would be hard to account for a of them. l live at the top of a hill that does about 9% with last stretch at 11%. Sometimes I want to go up it slow in a 28, sometimes standing in a 25 or 23. How would the micro processor know which I chose?

Looigi

Unlike Recon and others, here's a true HUD for cycling Everysight

BoSoxYacht

End of April 2016

MSRP $1660 for shifters, F+R derailleurs, batteries and charger.

colnago62

Money wise, it is a shot over the bow of the other two manufacturers.