New FS releases were made in order to keep to CIVL Plenary 2018 decisions and to reduce turnpoint radius tolerances forcing all pilots in a competition to fly the same distance.

In FAI Category 1 events (world- and continental championships), only one earth model will be used for evaluation:

a. FAI sphere for hang-gliding (2018) 

b. WGS84 ellipsoid for paragliding, and from 2019 for hang-gliding as well 

The turnpoint radius tolerance is reduced from 0.5% to 0.05%, with a minimum of 5 metres.

Important: This rule applies exclusively to FAI Category 1 events, where pilots can be expected to fly with equipment that complies with this rule. 

For FAI Category 2 events, and all unsanctioned events, CIVL recommends 

1. Transition to WGS84 where possible (using FS2018) 

2. Continue using a tolerance of 0.5% 

This allows pilots flying with varios that measure distance exclusively on the FAI sphere (as was the rule until April 30, 2018) to still compete, and be confident that turnpoints reached on their instrument will be validated by the scoring software as well. FS2018 will automatically use these settings for Category 2 and unsanctioned events. 

Competition organizers who want to reduce the tolerance below 0.5% can do so (see below for instructions). But before doing this, they must ensure that all pilots in their competition use an instrument that is capable of measuring distances with the one earth model they that will be used (FAI sphere or WGS84 ellipsoid), and have set up their instrument accordingly. If this cannot be assured, CIVL advises continuing using the default tolerance settings of 0.5%.

The choice of tolerance % remains the responsibility of the organisers, as per Section 7 Common 12.1.1: "The rules for Second Category events shall be based as far as appropriate on those for 1st Category events and must not conflict with them in principle. It is underlined that NACs are responsible for managing the sport in their own territories and have the local knowledge to do so. Therefore, NACs are best placed to make judgements on which rules are appropriate for their events. 2nd Category organisers should make their own decisions within this framework."

Two latest versions of FS: 

1. FS2016 R1.6: Compared to the last published version (FS2016 R1.3), this fixes a bug in stopped tasks, and adds a 5-meter minimum to the turnpoint radius tolerance. The latter follows the 2018 CIVL Plenary decision to reduce the tolerance in FAI Category 1 events, with a minimum of 5 metres. Distance calculations in this version are done on the FAI sphere. You find detailed information on all changes and a download link here: http://fs.fai.org/trac/wiki/FS2016R1.7

2. FS2018 R1.0: In this version, distance calculations are done on the WGS84 ellipsoid. The turnpoint tolerance is automatically reduced for FAI Category 1 events. You find detailed information on all changes and a download link here: http://fs.fai.org/trac/wiki/FS2018R1.1

Read more about versions in this explanatory PDF.

The FS versions development was done by Vollirium CIVL IT Partner https://www.volirium.com/