Kappius has been manufacturing hubs that look like they're from the distant future for some time now, although this is the first that we've actually featured them. I'm not sure why that is. After all, these things not only look incredible, they also sport some clever design features that set them apart from the hundreds of different yet all similar aluminum shells with bearings pressed into them and some sort of generic freehub mechanism stuck on the end... most hubs are pretty standard and boring. The KH-1 is not. The two most obvious talking points have to be the milled out carbon fiber hub shell and strange looking, cone shaped freehub body. What kind of cassette fits on that, you ask? Only the ones that Kappius modifies to fit, which includes either ten speed 11 - 36 and SRAM's XX1 and X01 eleven speed blocks, or a single speed setup. You can either send in one of your own to be modified to fit the KH-1, or Kappius can sell you a new and already modified cassette for the same MSRP of a standard version. Kappius goes to all this trouble in order to move the hub's bearing stance out as wide as possible, which they claim makes for a more rigid and reliable hub. Oh yeah, the hub's pawls are also magnetically sprung (no pawl springs to tire out, no contamination issues), and there's an incredibly quick, 1.5 degree engagement interval. The 265 gram rear hub fits either 135 QR or 12 x 142mm rear ends, and the matching 110 gram front hub can do QR, 15mm, or Lefty forks. As you probably guessed, these bad boys ain't cheap: $699 USD for the rear (plus the cost of a cassette if you need one), and $299 USD for the front. - Mike Levy |
I'll admit that my knowledge of virtual reality, and video games in general, stops somewhere in the mid-90s, right around the time Nintendo released the Virtual Boy, a table mounted gaming system that promised an immersive, 3D experience. That system ended up being a commercial flop, thanks to its high price and odd red graphics that made it feel like you were inside of a submarine, but twenty years later the concept of virtual reality still hasn't lost its appeal, which is why Outdoor Demo attendees were flocking to Shimano's booth. Using six helmet mounted cameras, Shimano was able to put together a video of a mountain bike trail being ridden that included footage from all angles. When viewing this footage through an Oculus headset (Oculus and Shimano are two separate, unrelated companies), it was possible to check out the scenery in all directions thanks to a motion tracking device and the headset's stereoscopic lenses. Look up, and you'd see the sky; turn around, and catch a glimpse of the rider behind you. There was even a set of handlebars that had been set out to make the experience feel more realistic. The video will eventually end up on Shimano's website, part of the marketing campaign for their 2015 XTR group, and the headset was simply a means of showcasing it in a slightly different way, but it was still quite fascinating. Anyone who's spent more than a few minutes on an indoor trainer knows how mind-numbingly boring they are - could this be the answer to making those mid-winter spin sessions a little more tolerable? - Mike Kazimer |
The next innovation destined to hit the mountain bike industry has been in serial production for over 12 years. Rotor asymmetrical chainrings are not new to mountain or to road riders, nor is the concept itself, but thanks to SRAM's successful one-by drivetrain revolution, their time has come. Before all you old-timers stop reading and begin crying out loud about the ill-fated Shimano Bio-Pace chainrings back in the 1980s, take the time to read a little farther down the page. For about a decade, asymmetrical chainrings have been winning major races under cycling's greatest names. Like Schwalbe tires among downhill racers, Rotor and its closest competitor, Osymetric, asymmetrical sprockets have been one of the most commonly blacked out non-sponsored components on ProTour road racing bikes and it is estimated by some that they are used by 40-percent of the riders. Many champion Triathlon and World Cup XC racers uses them as well. Rotor has done its homework, and its claims of increases in power output of almost seven percent are also supported by Osymetric - and by experienced pros who live by their power meters. Modern asymmetrical rings are designed like cams, with specific diameter variations designed to match the leverage rate and muscular efficiency of the human leg as it pushes the pedal around the crank's axis. While cycling's oral historians have preached that we all should be pedaling perfect circles, the concept is laughable. Sure, we have taught ourselves to pedal round chainrings with legs that were intended for walking and running, but step outside the narrow confines of traditional cycle-thought and it doesn't take a bio-mechanical scientist to understand that modifying the leverage rates of the pedal circle to better-match the kinematics of human locomotion would lead to more efficient and powerful pedal strokes. Barring the usual push-back from cycling's luddite luminaries, the main reason that asymmetrical rings have not been embraced by the likes of SRAM and Shimano is that their varying diameters wreak havoc on the front derailleur action. Only a safe cracker can fine tune a front mech to shift an asymmetric two or three-by crankset and, presumably, the Big Two drivetrain makers chose perfect shifting over a potential improvement in efficiency and power. One-by drivetrains and the introduction of the narrow-wide tooth profile, however, have changed that game. With no front changer to fiddle with, those barriers no longer exist. Asymmetrical chainrings are the next logical performance improvement for mountain bike drivetrains. Rotor has handed it to us on a silver platter. The promise of a wider speed range and easier, more powerful climbing - exactly what one-by riders need - would be foolish to pass up. - RC |
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Most materials lose a % of their magnetism when exposed to physical shock, knocks, constant vibration, and you know I'm just not so sure I'd want my hub full of things just dying to suck any metal particles towards them.
Time will tell of course.
Hope Pro 3.0 RS with Ultegra cassette
Worse on my pro iii mono road wheels with ultegra cassettes.Caused creaking and rough shifting as cogs not held 100% secure and timing ramps now out of position.
Hope good enough to replace the first two FOC, third time gave me steel body foc, but its added a huge lump of weight to what was previously a light weight hub
All my hope MTB hubs were using SRAM pg990 cassettes with spider and still the gouging on the small non fixed cogs
Best option for alloy free hubs is american classic with steel reinforcement strips, but they patented that smart idea!
Tech support rep/ PC enthusiast moment there, sorry. Back to bikes now...
the graphics chip in the PS4 and Xbox One is based on the GCN (Graphics Core Next) Architekture, like AMD's current PC Graphics Cards (The PS4's chip has 1150 Shaders and 72 ROP's (XBOX1 768 48 ) which makes it comparable to a r9 270 and because stuff is better optimized for the consoles than for PC (and you have less driveroverhead and so forth..) the new/current consoles should have enough power to run a virtual reality headset. You wont be able to run a simulation with it though, as the processor is only a Jaguar based AMD CPU.
And Sony is developing their own Virtual Reality Headset called Project Morphius (dont know if i spelled that right)
And the r9 270 has 1280 shaders
That aside the system is bottle-necked by the disc reader. If it was a downloaded system you than have the issue that the ps4 only runs sata II so it is immediately limited in its transfer rate, Although people are still gaining benefit from putting a SSD in the system is way under whelming than it should be. So even if the graphic card was capable you run into other issues if you want something so detailed as a simulator.
hoping they will release a later version with sata III and trim support.
And having your game on an SSD is a little bit faster than on a HDD, but its only very little and you wont notice a difference except when benchmarking.
And you cant compare bandwith on a PC Graphics Card to the consoles, because the CPU GPU and (V)RAM sit on one board (they even share the same memory).
Oh and both the PS4 and the XBONE run the graphics clocked at 800Mhz.
Although since everything is way better optimized on the consoles (think about it - they just have to optimize for 1 CPU/GPU) so it actually makes more sense comparing the picture of the consoles to those renderd by a PC.
If you look at comparisons for games like Watch Dogs you will find Tests saying the PS4 offers the same Picture as the PC Game with High/Ultra settings but without the AA/AF.
Sorry if I made any mistakes, explaining such technical stuff in englisch is hard for me
I took the liberty of comparing some real world benchmarks on the Ps4 to the r9 270. The ps4 gets maybe 75% the performance of the r9 270. That's still considerably better than I thought, but considerably worse than you were saying it was.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=InermmePbd4
game loading, while most games are fairly close and other tests tend to show only a few seconds too. Overall most tests show the SSD to be about a 30% improvement with hybrid in between. But with sata III enabled it should be much faster. Its a jump from 3gb/s to 6gb/s.. I will note that most other tests use the 840 pro not the crucial.
Having said all that, I like the way they feel, and the basic concept makes sense (it just has not been proven by any independent source to work). Shifting does suffer relative to round, so 1x drivetrains are great. Rotor makes 1x rings with narrow/wide profiles that work fine for MTB, but they require a special spider so the whole package gets pricey and is limited to certain cranks. I particularly like them for mountain biking because if you get hung up on a root or rock as you are at 12 and 6 o'clock, you are pushing an easier gear to get over the obstacle while you are in a weak position. It also makes sense to me that at lower cadences, the non-round rings would have more benefit.
"The slight tendency towards improvement in power output when using the oval Q-rings (increase of 2.5–6.5 % relative to circular chainrings) suggests that Q-rings could result in slight improvement during on-road cycling performance."
If they had a large enough sample and they generated this gain, then for pros/racers, this is big. I took a speed and agility PE class in college with a guy that had worked with the Dallas Cowboys, NBA teams and pro tennis players and he claimed that top sprinters train to increase leg lift by a little as 1%. So 2.5-6.5% would be a big gain for a racer. Food for thought.
Couldn't agree more.
I actually run a three-by Osymetric setup which performs wonderfully well, especially on climbs. And it's not that tricky to get a good front shifting out of asymmetrical rings.
Damn you, Q-ring!
Note to Rotor: I keep trying to buy your rings, but they don't fit my equipment. First your 2x setup had too much extra material on the inner ring and wouldn't clear my BB shell. Now I'm running RaceFace's awesome Cinch system, and there is no ring for it. Rotor, if you make something that fits my bike, I will buy it!
absoluteblack.cc/oval-104bcd-chainring.html
If not then I think they missed a key point
Nice concept though. Worth a try.
Plus, as a kid growing up with bio pace, I seem to remember that it did climb better but it felt uneven ( sort of a power on/ power off crank rotation) when ever you upped the rpm on the cranks: flat riding and downhill.
Very interested
#lawnmowerman