The Trace’s height accuracy and jump recognition is somewhere between mediocre and atrocious.
What
I’ve been using the Trace for a half year, and had my first session with a Woo yesterday. I compared the results in the charts below to gauge accuracy. The Trace results have been very frustrating. Jumps I know I went high registered low. Strange readings. Missed jumps. High jumps when I didn’t jump… ect. So going out with two sensors, I couldn’t but help compare the results.
Setup
Just moved from LF Envy to an Eleveight FS (12M for session)… for what it’s worth, ceteris parabis, I’m jumping 50% higher with the new kite and broke my record in 19 knots of wind. Previous high was on a LF Envy 7M in 35 knots. 1 hour session on Breach Inlet, Sullivan’s Island SC.
How
I basically took a screenshot of the entire session the OCR’ed the pdf to Google sheets so all data was captured. I then matched jumps as best I could. I’m sure there are errors, but I would look at a Trace track, then compare it to the timestamp and height of the Woo recordings. This took over 20 minutes and was a nightmare b/c the data was all over the map. But I believe I’m around 95% accurate.
Other posts
I’ve seen other posts comparing Trace vs Woo vs Xensr. The findings are pro Woo and Trace, but that was not my experience at all with the Trace so I felt compelled to run my own. Disclaimer… I’m no math expert so please take all of this with a grain of salt.
Analysis
I ran two analyses.
One compared the entire session to the other. Because there were so many unmatched entries, had to take a high level view of the results.
The other was all matched jumps over 15ft. Basically, I believe I was able to match each entry for both the Woo and the Trace here.
Here is a link to the spreadsheet. https://goo.gl/n8hvYM
Session results
Main takeaways:
- Trace missed many jumps
Some jumps marked on gps didn’t make sense (they are wrong)
The data was too messy to match small jumps with a high degree of accuracy
Timestamp would go a long way
Results frequently did not match up with memory
- Trace missed 33% of Woo’s jump readings, Woo missed 6% of Trace’s
Woo picked up more substantially more low height jumps, and slightly more jumps over 15ft
With two different data sets, comparing the values has limited value.
Matched 15 ft or higher
So to really compare the results, I filtered out all jumps that were below 15 feet and unmatched, so that we could look at the data fairly. Main takeaways:
- Trace height accuracy is poor
Based on memory
Based on viewing marked jump data with gps of track
Based on Woo being accurate
Trace height is lower by 15%
Trace hang time is lower by 8%
Trace G-force is lower by 14%
The Woo data made sense based on memory and consistency compared to the Trace
I can’t recall hang time or landing force details as well as jump height, but the charts show the differences between the Woo are significant
Air
Time
G-Force
Trace errors
Jump not recorded, see downwind glide at the end of the track.
Erroneous jump, xx feet but didn’t go downwind??? I don’t think so.
Double entries, how can one jump twice, 15 ft and 22 feet in a single downwind glide… fail.
Conclusion
I enjoy the gps element of the Trace, but the jump inaccuracies are problematic enough that if I had to choose it would be Woo by a long shot. Here’s to Trace improving their accuracy, or Woo adding GPS.
