Hold any control to read what it does.
How to fly
On a phone, the phone is your body. Tip the top away from you and your weight goes forward;
tip it toward you and the nose comes up. Drop a rail and that is your lean. Only the direction of gravity is read,
so where you hold the phone does not matter — only how far it is tilted from the pose you calibrated.
With a destination set, tap the plate at the bottom right to let go of the board, and again
to take it back.
On a computer, the mouse is your body. Click to take the board and the pointer is locked
to it: a small ring sits on the deck at the top of the mast, and the mouse's motion moves your weight around
it. Across is your weight off the board: the board rolls that way, and a rolled board turns. Bring your hand
back to the centre and the roll stops there — the bank and the turn stay until you roll it back. Pull
toward you and the nose comes up, push away and it drops. Click again to let go.
The plate at the bottom right is the autopilot. Until you have somewhere to be it reads
SET DESTINATION, and tapping it opens the list. Pick somewhere and it reads TO, with the distance left and the
time the passage is going to take, and the board is already flying itself — your lean is suspended until you
take it back. Lit amber, the autopilot has the board; unlit, you do. It flies on its own law whatever Reflex
is set to: the height hold and the whiskers are the pilot's, not yours. The landmark you are
closest to is written under the chart.
Hands off, you can look around. Drag the view and your head turns with it, the way
a panorama does — the board swings out of the frame and the bay keeps going, all the way round to
your own wake. A caret at the horizon points back to the bow once it has gone. Nothing you do while
looking touches the board: it keeps flying the route. Drag back to face forward, or just take the
board — it comes back to the bow on its own then, because you cannot fly it over your shoulder.
On a computer a drag looks around, a click takes the board and another click gives it back. By touch it depends on
which kind of hands-off you are in: if you are simply not holding the board, touching it takes it
— that press is the flying, and its first movement is a lean, so there is no drag to spare. Once
you have actually handed it over, from the plate or the drawer, the finger becomes the camera and the
plate gives the board back.
The horizon is your instrument. Its tilt is the bank you're actually carrying — level
horizon, no bank. Dry mast above the waterline is your fly height; wet mast below it is how much wing you
have left. It will not hold itself: standing still is not a stable regime, fidgeting is.
Throttle is geared. The rail on the right picks a gear, 0 to 6; scroll or tap
it to move it. The remote's real ladder is twenty-one notches (0 to 20), three to a gear, and the readout under the rail is the
notch you are actually on. Your own pitch feathers it one notch either way, the way your thumb would —
gently near neutral, the whole notch at full lean.
Rider
Rig
Reflex
The reflexes. Reflex is your own fly-by-wire and the only one most
people ever touch; the rest are the autopilot's tuning behind it — how hard it holds
a line, and how it decides to lean — and they ship where they belong. Hold a label to read one.
Slip
Autopilot
What the autopilot sees and how it keeps a line. The whiskers are a ring of rays
cast together round the boat: how far they reach, how many there are, and how often the ring
is cast. Rejoin only does anything with a destination set. Hold a label to read one.
Destinations
Race
An event turns up on its own at a generated start point — a beacon
on the chart, and a pip on its rim when it is off the edge. Get there however you
like, by hand or on the autopilot, and it offers you the start.
Races are filmed as you run them — every entry's motion a few
times a second, so one can be watched back from any camera afterwards. A race only
becomes public when you write it out and publish the file yourself.
Water
Sky
View
Sound and tilt
Ride log
Settings
Debug
No faults.