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authorkimberlygrey · 5 years

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I write Flight Rising stuff now I guess?

So I joined FR last year, played for about two weeks and got bored because I need some sort of goal or story to keep my attention and I was working on my novel Ascendant. Then this year @prayforelves started playing so I dusted off my account and joined her. Then she started making her own story for her dragons and again I followed in her footsteps.

I’m still coming up with my main conflict and the majority of the world building and plot points but I did write a couple of character origins for my favorite Pearlcatcher father-and-son duo.

This first one is for my probably-MC BogDrowned

They tell him that his father is beautiful, that his mother is powerful. They croon that he will unite their greatness and bring it forth in countless generations. They whisper that though his father is a light dragon, he will be shadow, he will bring power and prestige to their clan, to their god.

Beside him, his siblings chirp eager replies. He joins and his voice makes the whisperers quiet. For a moment, he thinks that perhaps he has done something wrong, then warmth wraps around the shell of his world.

They tell him his voice is beautiful, the most beautiful they have ever heard. They tell him he will be Magnificent. He sings to them that he can’t wait.

The world grows small and cramped, he presses against the walls and feels them buckle. The voices are singing encouragement, and he sings determination in return. Light floods his eyes and the world grows ten million times in size with one single crack.

“I’m here!” he sings, “I’m here! Look at me, aren’t I beautiful as you said?” He must be, for his scales shine, blacks and browns and greens. The same colors as the beautiful, beautiful world around him. He puffs his chest forward and looks up to see the singers at last.

They are speaking to a towering white dragon, though they are all towering to him. His lip curls, surely this dragon is ugly. Blisteringly bright, and not at all like the world around them.

“Ah,” says one of them, “that’s that I suppose.” This one is colored with bright greens and pinks. Ugly he thinks, surely this is what ugly looks like.

“Don’t worry,” says another, “you get some like this in every batch, its no reflection on you.” Her scales are glittering and bright, is she ugly too?

“Too bad about that voice though,” says a third. This one is colored in purples and blues.

“He will use it to sing praises to the Shadowbinder,” the final speaker is looming over him, nudging him with his polished muzzle. Colored blue and red. It is striking it is bright, surely this is an ugly dragon.

“Aren’t I beautiful?” he asks, even as the ancient dragon nudges him away from the shattered remnants of his tiny, dark world.

The ancient dragon doesn’t answer, only herds him to a small gathering of other hatchlings. Their colors are dull, or mismatched. One has a wing that hangs oddly from her side. They, he realizes, are not beautiful. He is not beautiful.

He casts a glance back at his tiny shattered world and wishes he could go back. Back to the dark where the beauty of his colors did not matter, only the beauty of his voice. He wishes that he’d never come into the light, into this massive world that somehow, manages to be smaller than the one he came from.

***

They do not call him beautiful at the temple. They call him singer, they call him tithe, they call him servant. Here, at least, his colors do not matter, only his voice. They do not want him to speak, only to sing with his beautiful voice. Songs of shadows and praise for their mistress.

So he sings. He sings of her beauty, of the shining of her luminous eyes, of the strength of her wings. He lifts his beautiful voice from his ugly throat and sings praise to the goddess that is so so beautiful.

He sings day and night, his voice echoing over the river, over the clouded scrying pool, over the shadows and the moon. The nameless priests stop on their endless patrols and sacrifices to hear him sing and they call his voice beautiful.

It tastes bitter, it tastes like mockery and derision though he knows they don’t mean it that way.

***

Once, his father comes to the temple. Even the highest priests scrape and bow to be visited by these shining beautiful dragons. Whose eyes glint with health and life, whose colors swirl in mesmerizing patterns, whose scales are polished and cleaned with pride.

They call his father healer. They call him a servant of Light. They call him beautiful.

It burns in the back of his throat like acid, more bitter than anything else he has tasted.

His father, he learns, was a Light dragon who, for one reason or another, left his clan. No one can agree if it was a trade of pedigrees or if he was captured in a raid, or if he was outcast. No one cares though, because Zephyr is beautiful and powerful, and his healing has saved countless lives.

He learns that his father is considered one of the most beautiful in the clan, even without his healing powers. His scales shine in the darkness, whites and golds and blue-greens that swirl over his shoulders and wings. The delicate grey of his paws. He is beauty incarnate.

He looks at his father and he looks at his own muddy colors and he wonders, how could something so ugly come from someone so beautiful? He sees the way the other priests look at him and wonder the same thing.

He is a stain on his father’s legacy and it tastes bitter on the back of this throat. How dare he seek to make someone like Zephyr lesser? How dare he be born so ugly.

His father speaks to the priests and they show him the newest arrival, who is sickly and weak even to the temple. The hatchling is ugly. With a dull purple coat and random patches of brilliant orange that give the impression that someone has thrown up on her.

Zephyr heals her anyway. Touches her ugly scales with his beautiful ones and speaks to her gently.

He is surprised to learn that his father’s voice is nothing special. It is not ugly, nothing about Zephyr could be ugly, but it isn’t as beautiful as his own voice.

His father glances at him once, and his beautiful yellow eyes, smiling down at the hatchling he has healed, dim with disappointment.

Then he leaves.

That night, when he raises his voice to sing of the Shadowbinder’s beauty, his voice has a bitter, mocking edge to it. How beautiful is his goddess, more beautiful than the sun and the light, more beautiful than the glittering ice and the raging storms.

How beautiful. He laughs. So beautiful. He mocks with derision. As if beauty means anything. Why should it? Here in the darkness where no one can see clearly anyway.

He laughs himself sick and sobs himself sicker. He rakes his claws over ancient trees, twisted and gnarled. Lashes his tail and disturbs the scrying mirror, muddled and murky. There is no beauty here.

“Do not destroy the temple,” the head priest says, she doesn’t admonish the anger, only the expression of it in the temple.

He flies over the walls and unleashes his anger beyond them. His roars shake the trees, send animals fleeing and flying away from him. His claws tear through plant and rock and the water churns around him.

When his anger is spent, he collapses in the shallow water and can’t bring himself to move. His eyes close.

…...No….that is not a proper end at all…..

His eyes open and he stares into the face of his goddess. She is not beautiful. She is horrifying. He has spent his years singing of the shine in her eyes, the glittering sleekness of her scales, the delicate colors of her mighty wings.

Her eyes shine like the eyes of long-dead things. Glassy and milky and somehow, staring right through him.

Her scales glitter wetly, melting down her body. Thick and viscous, creeping through the water. Dead fish float up in its wake.

Her wings are torn and limp at her sides. Her colors are muddy and muted: murky purple, dull green, muddy brown and watery black.

She laughs at his horror. It is rasping and rattling, as though it might shake her entire, melting, rotting body apart to make such a sound. “....so surprised to see me…..am I not beautiful, my son?”

He dares not reply because the only possible answer is No.

She shakes her head. “Such foolishness….that my children have fallen to….such pointless vanity….Not you though….little ugly thing…..” She laughs again. It sounds more like a death rattle. She looms over him, the sickly shadows that melt off of her skin swirl around his paws. “I could use someone like you.”

He wakes to water in his nose, in his mouth, in his lungs. He coughs and chokes for hours, for days, it seems. When he can finally breathe again, he opens his eyes to find the world changed. The shadows remain as deep and dark as always, perhaps even darker, but he sees what they hide as though it is right in front of his muzzle.

He doesn't see the world as though it is daylight, he sees the darkness and the shadows as he always has, but they do not hide things from him anymore. They easily offer up their secrets to him and him alone.

“What--” he begins, and then stops, touching his throat with horror. His voice, his beautiful voice is as raspy and rattling as Hers had been. “What did you do to me?” he asks with his creaking, rattling, rasping voice. It sounds like claws against stone, like trees creaking in the night wind, like the death rattle of prey and foes.

It is not beautiful. Nothing about him is beautiful now.

“A gift,” the shadows snicker in a rasping voice. “For my most devoted worshiper.”

He doesn’t return to the temple. His goddess isn’t there, in the pale shadow of beauty. She lives in the bog where he drowned, She lives in the black tears that drip from his eyes, in the gnarled, twisted branches of the trees, in the deepest, darkest shadows.

She gives him her gift and she slips back into the shadows to see what he will do with it.

He finds a bird with golden feathers and slaughters it. Cleans its skull and wears its beautiful golden feathers around his head and laughs at the idea of his father’s beauty. It is an ugly sound, but he is an ugly dragon, so at last, it fits.

#Flight rising #FR #FR lore #Flight rising Lore #Flight Rising art #Eugenics Dragon Hell #Dark #angst #This is why I can't have nice things #I make them angsty #Sorry people who follow me for writing advice #This is my new hyperfixation TM #or at least until I get unstuck with Ascendant #which might be awhile #rip

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Disintegration review – a quirky but troubled sci-fi shooter • Eurogamer.net

Back at last year’s E3 – an event that now feels like a lifetime ago – I had a chat with V1 founder Marcus Lehto to pin down what Disintegration was all about. Due to the game’s dystopian sci-fi setting and Lehto’s background as the co-creator of Halo, I came away thinking Disintegration’s narrative had the potential to explore some fascinating topics, including post-humanism and the threats to our world today.

Disintegration review

Developer: V1 Interactive

Publisher: Private Division

Platform: Reviewed on PC

Availability: Out now on PC, Xbox One and PS4

In the end, Disintegration doesn’t ever delve too far into these ideas: but what I didn’t expect was a silly yet genuinely convincing shooter hidden beneath the surface.

Disintegration bills itself as a first-person shooter with real-time strategy elements, half campaign and half multiplayer, set in a future version of Earth ravaged by every bad thing under the sun. Climate change, pandemic, war – all things so alien to us here in 2020… The premise is that swathes of the Earth’s population have chosen to “integrate” in order to survive the harsh conditions: a process of transplanting someone’s brain into a robot body to preserve their consciousness. It was intended to be a temporary measure, but a nefarious group called the Rayonne decided integration was actually the future of humanity. The motives for which aren’t really established at the start of the campaign, unfortunately, but at least you can tell they’re bad guys from their glowing red eyes. As Romer Shoal – a celebrity who previously convinced people to integrate – you and your band of robot outlaws team up to take down the Rayonne using a combination of your Gravcycle (a weaponised hoverbike) and ground units, each of whom boast special abilities and can be commanded to attack specific enemies.

Here is Black Shuck, antagonist and Rayonne thug who menacingly thrusts a robot switch-blade at you when angered.

Disintegration’s story blurs into a jumble of missions, but the levels are such a romp that I didn’t really care about the narrative reasons for being there – I just knew I was having a good time. Each one introduces new challenges, with varying team compositions, Gravcycle weapons and enemy types which force you to reconsider and evolve your tactics. Thanks to the hybrid nature of the combat, you can opt to just shoot your way out of trouble, but the secret to success is managing battles through the RTS mechanics. It’s about knowing your enemies, and which ones to prioritise. I soon discovered aerial units and snipers could easily destroy my Gravcyle, which was also hard to heal and would instantly fail the mission if blown up. I started commanding my troops to prioritise those units first, and later learned how to manipulate the Gravcycle’s mobility to swoop behind cover. It’s easy to be overwhelmed during the chaos of these battles, and sometimes the best approach is to methodically pick off enemies while keeping your Gravcycle distant, rather than flying in guns blazing. As I learned to my peril.

The enemy AI is surprisingly responsive, with enemies ducking and rolling behind cover when shot. The player’s own units, however, can sometimes be a little slow to react when directed to certain areas. Yes, that is an enemy there, you can shoot them.

Some of the main tools in your arsenal are unit abilities, and these are deeply satisfying when used to good effect: landing a mortar barrage on a bunched-up group of enemies results in a satisfying crunch of robot bodies, while a time-slowing dome creates a shimmering Matrix moment amidst the disorder. Adding to the chaos is the destructibility of the surroundings, which shatter and explode across the screen. It’s not just about cool explosions, however, as destroying enemy cover will make it far easier for your team to get a clean shot.

In classic video game form, someone’s left dozens of hazardous exploding oil barrels around the place. Who keeps doing this?

The level design in Disintegration’s campaign forces significant changes in gameplay style more broadly, some areas requiring the player to ferret enemies out of hollow brutalist buildings, others providing life-saving refuge in the midst of a heavy aerial battles. One tense rescue mission requires precision flying and sneaking around in tight spaces – without backup from your team – armed only with sticky grenades. Another sees you shepherd your team between protective domes, or risk being stunned by an EMP pulse mid-battle. And there’s just something rather lovely about the use of scale and perspective in these levels. One of the earliest sees you fight amongst ruined wooden houses and a graveyard, like directing toy soldiers between doll houses. Later in the mission, you skim over vast golden plains to explore the wreckage of a vast, burnt-out spaceship which dwarfs you and your crew. There’s storytelling within the levels that feels enjoyably dramatic in a Call-of-Duty way, with my personal favourite mission seeing the outlaws ascend grassy hills to fight a climactic battle atop a dam. Despite the world feeling desolate and barren, I kept wanting to explore and admire the gorgeous North American landscapes.

It’s hardly a narrative masterpiece, but Disintegration’s campaign is about putting a new spin on the classic sci-fi shooter… and letting rip on waves upon waves of robots. The mechanics alone are novel enough to keep you entertained, and once the ability to multi-task the FPS and RTS elements clicks, there’s plenty of room to keep refining your techniques. Once I’d finished the campaign, I went back to replay levels on a higher difficulty with my new-found knowledge, and found myself thinking more carefully about timing my special abilities, and how to smoothly manoeuvre the Gravcycle through levels. In short, it not only entertained me for the nine hour campaign, but kept me coming back.

The multiplayer is, unfortunately, where all this good work comes unstuck. I played a brief two-hour session before Disintegration’s release, but I wanted to test the multiplayer in public matches before writing this review. After three days of trying, I have been unable to connect to a match on PC. Judging by comments left on Steam and Twitter, I’m not alone in experiencing this, although I cannot say whether the problem lies with a technical issue or a simple lack of players.

It’s a shame, because I felt I’d only just scraped the surface of Disintegration’s multiplayer experience. It’s a team-based shooter, kind of like Overwatch if everyone played Pharah. You can pick between nine different Gravcycle crews, all with different perks, strengths and specialities, in three different game modes: Zone Control (capturing zones), Collection (basically team deathmatch with tags), and Retrieval (attack/defence). The modes themselves are fairly standard stuff, but the complexity comes from the ground units, team composition, and maneuvering your Gravcycle. In the first few matches, I initially focused my attention on enemy Gravcycles – which you would, seeing as they’re the enemy player. Yet that’s only half the story, as the ground units are often essential in completing each mode’s objectives. In Collection, for instance, points can be gained from killing enemy ground units rather than just other Gravcycles, and it makes more sense to target these as they’re much easier to kill – and there are simply more of them. In Retrieval, only your ground units can carry the core to the drop-off point.

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I tried flitting between a few different crews to get a feel for them, and went with the obvious tactic of choosing faster crews for attack, and tankier Gravcycles for defence, but I found some of the lighter crews would simply crumble into dust when put under any kind of pressure, and the increased maneuverability wasn’t enough to balance it out. I enjoyed experimenting with the different abilities for each crew, but in the end I found myself favouring high-damage crews like The Ronan to keep up with the carnage. Or maybe that’s just my playstyle – dumping a load of rockets on a fellow journalist’s Gravcycle is quite fun, what can I say?

There were moments in the demo session where I felt the team genuinely start to pull together: people were healing each other, moving as a group to target weaker Gravcycles, and setting up proper defences on zones using proximity mines. To Disintegration’s credit, the multiplayer did make me want to improve. The battles are frantic and not immediately readable to new players, and I imagine there’s a fairly high skill ceiling. This might be where the problem lies, as the multiplayer doesn’t instantly grab you, but becomes more interesting over time.

In the end, of course, I wasn’t able to spend more time with the multiplayer – and it’s disappointing, because Disintegration’s campaign gameplay is so compelling that I would happily recommend it to anyone who asked. Yet it’s hard to justify a £39.99 price tag when half of the game is, for many, currently unusable. I also fear Disintegration’s realistic art style and gritty sci-fi setting makes it appear run-of-the-mill, when its gameplay actually has quite a lot to offer. This might be a case of holding off until later (or perhaps until V1 makes the multiplayer free-to-play), but if you do decide to take the plunge on Disintegration, I can guarantee you one thing: somehow, inexplicably, you will never get tired of smashing robots.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/disintegration-review-a-quirky-but-troubled-sci-fi-shooter-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=disintegration-review-a-quirky-but-troubled-sci-fi-shooter-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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omg-seo-build-blog · 4 years

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How To Overcome Challenges And Come Out Winning

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For everything, there is an explanation and a reality that should be confronted, comprehended and vanquished, typically in a specific order: Faced, comprehended and prevailed. We face reality, completely get reality lastly completely overcome it when we see completely how to manage it. For the most part, everything works like a power of nature. I won't state "happens like a power of nature" since it is absolutely our decision to confront reality or not face reality to begin where everything starts, Nigeria Jersey 2020

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egooksconnolly · 6 years

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How to drive in snow, sand, or mud—and get your car unstuck

It’s winter, and that means anywhere it snows—from Tahoe to Tallahassee—you’ll see cars flipped over or stuck in ditches pretty much the second a flake of white stuff falls from the sky.

And because we don’t want this to happen to you, we’re offering some professional tips, courtesy of guides who teach off-roading for a living and the folks at Bridgestone (makers of Blizzak tires, which just so happen to be the best-selling winter rubber on earth).

A caveat: Life is uncertain; driving can be dangerous. But some of what we’re suggesting should up your odds of surviving winter, not to mention driving off-road, no matter the season.

1. Practice

The first lesson is to get comfortable with the ideas we’re offering, and that means practicing. Get more familiar with your car, learn how to drive it in adverse conditions, and study how to avoid dire circumstances in the first place. Don’t wait until the blizzard of the century hits to learn how to drive in bad weather.

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Also: Just in case you do break down or get stuck, make sure you pack several items in your car just in case (more on that in a bit). Yes, you can always call for roadside assistance, but dialing an 800 number always fails to work at exactly the worst time, like when it’s -7° outside, it’s 11 p.m., and OnStar or AAA is overwhelmed with other callers.

2. Be prepared

You need the following items in your car, and you need to know how they work and how to use them.

A gallon jug of water, which is handy for everything from washing off greasy hands, hydrating, or topping up a radiator.

A heavy mover’s blanket and a 6x6' piece of tarp, both useful for warmth as well as kneeling on the ground to change a flat.

If the spare tire in your car is a can of fix-a-flat or a lousy donut on a skinny rim (if you don’t know you should check), shop eBay or Craigslist for a used rim that’s the same size as the ones that come stock and get a full-size tire mounted on it. Why? Because donuts are speed- and distance-restricted, so you might not even be able to make it home on that flimsy piece of baloney.

Be sure to have jumper cables. Better yet, get Antigravity’s XP10 portable jumper pack and tire inflator kit. (We’ll explain why the tire inflator is key even if you don’t have a flat.)

Test out the jack and tire iron that came with your car. We bet they suck, because all stock tools that come with cars these days do. So once you learn this, go to the auto parts store and you’ll learn that even cheap alternatives are superior and far easier to use. We suggest a breaker bar for the lug nuts and keeping a ratchet wrench and the correct-size socket for those nuts, too. The latter will hugely speed the process of wheel replacement.

If you’re headed somewhere remote enough that you might get stuck, you should consider traction matting. Matting is sort of like a portable bridge you lay down to get you across an obstacle your tires otherwise won’t be able to grip. We like GoTreads Traction Mats, so they eat less room in your rig. And again: practice using these before you need to.

3. Know your mojo (and its limitations)

Trick question: How will four-wheel drive help you stop skidding on black ice? Answer: It won’t. Four-wheel or all-wheel drive is only useful under power. It can help you get going from a dead stop, but once your car is actually moving, it does nothing. You could be in a rear-wheel-drive Ferrari or a lifted 4x4, and if both cars hit a patch of ice while initiating a turn, both will begin to slide.

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Both only have four tires, and in both cases the contact patch with the ground is about the size of the meat of your palm. The total area of that contact patch is only a little larger than an 8x1" sheet of paper. One reason so many SUVs end up stuck in snow: Drivers mistakenly think four-wheel drive implies some sort of superhero power. It absolutely doesn’t.

4. Know the conditions

Whether it’s 33° after a day of pounding rain, bone-dry, and -5°, or 75° and sunny with a strong chance of mushy sand on the Arizona fire road you’re about to ascend, you need to know about conditions before you go anywhere. There are plenty of driver-focused sites detailing conditions in popular off-road routes.

Most important: Do the most basic test of all—bend down and actually touch the road on which you’re about to drive. Remember: The only control you have is the contact patches of rubber that touch the tarmac. If that asphalt is as slick as snot, you can find out first with your hand, without driving an inch. That knowledge will inform what you do next.

5. Get moving

No matter what vehicle you’re driving—AWD, two-wheel drive, etc.—it’s key to understand the tech you have. Every new car sold for the past few years has stability and traction control, regardless of which wheels are driven by the engine. These systems (basically) use the antilock braking system to prevent tires from spinning. Stability control largely works once you’re already underway, but traction control tries to interfere to stop wheels from spinning as you try to get rolling. In a lot of circumstances—a few inches of snow on a driveway or when your car is parked on sand—traction control won’t let the wheels spin at all.

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The fine art of getting unstuck requires practice, say the experts at Overland Experts School in Connecticut, who teach everyone from Navy SEALs to utility crews how to drive. You need to first learn how to turn off traction control. Then, you want to apply just the right amount of throttle to get the car to budge; too much wheelspin will dig the tires in. Can’t get the car to move going forward? Try reverse, very gently on the gas. Then forward, then back again. The idea is to get the car to move with the least amount of power, and then to keep moving very, very slowly. Nothing will get you back in the ditch quicker than too much gas.

6. Keep moving

Once underway, you can turn stability/traction control back on. Staying light on the gas and driving gently will keep you safest in messy conditions. Whether you’re on a racetrack in 70° conditions or on a frozen Swedish lake, tires are really only designed to handle one input well at a time, the pros at OEX explain. (It’s why you’ll watch Formula 1 drivers do all their braking right up to a turn, but get off the brakes into the corner.)

Braking is especially important when driving on snow or mud. At a Volvo program I attended last winter (on a frozen lake in Sweden), we were taught to allow an incredibly long time to brake. Letting the car slow down from just 30m.p.h. seemed to take achingly long.

Don’t believe us? Head to a snowy empty parking lot (be very, very certain you know where every light pole and shopping cart is), start out at 10mph, jam on the brakes, and see how long it takes to actually come to a halt. Try again at 25mph. You could easily see double or triple the braking distance vs. dry conditions. That’s why you’re really in danger if you’re following too closely in the snow, says Will Robbins, a product manager for Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations. “Remember basics like allowing more time to brake and keeping more distance between vehicles,” Robbins says.

7. Know how to tow

Towing is an essential skill—both for getting unstuck from a snow bank or a ditch, or for helping someone else get back to pavement. Having a tow strap in your car or truck is essential, as is reading the owner’s manual so you know the tow points on your vehicle. Never towed with your rig? You now have an excuse to practice.

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Partner with a friend, go to a chunk of closed or seldom-used road (dead-ends in rural areas are ideal), and carefully experiment with towing. Try towing from different angles, too; if someone stuffed their car into a snow back sideways, you may not have enough run-out room on the opposite side of the road to pull them directly out. What to do? Tow a little bit at a time, disconnect, and start again. Be patient, and logical. If you have to pull the stuck vehicle sideways you’re going to have to break that down into small pieces, perhaps only a foot at a time. This is a matter of very basic leverage, so if it looks like it won’t work…it probably won’t.

8. Use less air

Let’s say you’re stuck and no amount of reversing or trying to move forward will get you unstuck. What now? While Robbins doesn’t love this idea (he works for a tire maker!), there’s a little hack, called “airing down” that OEX recommends you can try to get underway. The only caveat: You can shred a tire if you do it wrong.

“Airing down” works because removing air increases the tire’s contact with the ground. More ground contact equals more traction and, essentially, a longer lever against the ground. Lowering a tire from 30psi to 15psi is potentially plenty of airing down to add enough traction to get you moving. If it gets you close but not quite there, another 3psi drained might not seem like it would make a massive difference, but that’s 1/5th of what’s left in the tire. Yes, the tire will look nearly flat, and yes, once you’re unstuck you have another challenge: finding a way to inflate the tires. That’s why we recommend having an inflator that works off your car’s 12-volt jack. Know that you can drive SLOWLY on tires with little air. But Robbins’ concern is valid: A deflated tire is going to greatly underperform at braking and cornering at speed, so the more you air down the more you have to drive very gingerly.

9. Consider a rubber upgrade

Bridgestone’s Robbins explains why winter tires work better than stock all-seasons very succinctly: It’s the rubber. The rubber compound in winter tires is more pliable in the cold. A summer tire at, say, 40°, can feel as hard and not very grippy at all.

Snow tires also create more surface area. “Think about making a snowball,” Robbins says. “Snow sticks to snow. Winter tires are designed with a tread pattern that packs in as much snow as possible as the tire rolls, which in turn provides snow-on-snow traction.” You’ll see that extra surface in the hundreds of tiny cuts, known as sipes, in the tread wall of the tire. The zig-zag shape of those sipes also allows the tire to grab better, Robbins explains.

Our suggestion: Mount winter tires on a set of inexpensive steel rims that you can swap with your regular wheels come springtime. Those rims will cost you a few hundred bucks, tops, and they’ll pay for themselves quickly because you won’t have to pay to have your winter tires mounted and unmounted every winter.

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Fit travel

Article source here:Men’s Fitness

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