For those who claim to ride as fast during the day as during the night??? On the road, yep, on easy riding stuff, yep, but the moment it becomes mountainbike???
Riding familiar ground I can reach dayspeeds with one single piko 700 lumens light on the helm.
On unknown ground it ‘s a different story, it might work, taking a much bigger risk, but whether with 700 lumens, 2250 lumens or 50 000 lumens, it still isn’t close to daylight!
If I ride between trees, big rocks, high(wet) corn or edges I get so much light reflected back into my eyes that I partly blind myself, and I am blind again if I get back into the dark open. A bit as riding from the open into a dark forest on a sunny day!
Dust or fog also lights up pretty well!
I guess that is why people use remote controlled light switches!
If I ride dirt, even without jumping, it is hard to estimate angles and distances. No matter how much light, it comes from the wrong direction! The tacocopter might solve this!
If I jump, or ride a drop, I have to point my helmet down a bit to see what is behind it, creating this overbright spot, and moving the head unbalances me even more and I need to look upfront preparing the landing and spotting the line after that. ( I rely on my peripheral vision to keep balance, but this peripheral field is not lighted).
Wildlife also tends to freeze into the trail staring at you light,….
And, at dusk or down, I tend to use as much daylight as possible, in most cases I can ride flat out without light when others are using their lights, most of the time I need to put on my light because other people start blinding me with their lights (certainly if they have bright rear lights).
If I want a lot of light I need a lot of battery, If I am willing to spend a 1000 euro’s I can get a Wilma and a piko with a 3 hours batterypack around a kilo, to keep things affordable and get the same light output, I think I would end up with a 2 kg system. Somehow I doubt that this would make me go faster or make the bike more nimble.
The weight of my old, heavy Princeton tec (1,5 kg for both helm and bars) wasn’t really helpful when they were not lit anyway, and after several hours I really started to feel the 100 grams of the spot in my neck.
My new piko 6 weighs around 300 grams, and on the helm it allows me to ride about as fast as with the betty/ piko combo while in eco mode, providing me 700 lumens for over 4 hours, and the 55 grams is less noticeable than the 100 grams of the Princeton.
The difference between the 700 and 900 lumens is also hard to notice as it takes 12 flashes to change in between modes, I have the feeling the 700 lumens are spread more even and it gains me 40 minutes burn time!
But I really like the spot/ flood configuration, so I might end up buying an additional piko3 to put on the helm, instead of a Wilma on the bars, ending in something like 550 grams, with the spot at half the power and the bars at 700 lumens that would allow me 4 hours of riding again with around 1000 lumens in total, and I am pretty certain that, unless someone comes to ride next to me with an extreme bright setup I will not be any slower compared to both on full power or the betty/ pikko setup with 3100 lumens! But, I’ll try some other lights first!
I can agree with colleen that a smarter reflector with less spill high into the sky would help, there miht besome disadvantages: On pumping track style rides this would mean you rely completely on your spot facing the next bump? But on the whole, it would make the lumens much more effective!
I would like an even 180° glow starting under the handlebar, shining a few meters far, progressively narrowing and getting brighter to a spot, still providing a well lit area (usable throw) around 60-80 meters. Without lightning the air too much 600 real lumens should be enough to get a perfect flood with real colors, and 1000 lumens should be plenty. Combined with a 450 lumens narrow spot I guess It would be much more usefull than the current monsterthrowers!
An other option would be to measure the lightreflection into you eyes, if there is so much reflection that it might trigger the pupil to close, the light (or a section of it) dims. The system could also adapt the brightness on your riding speed.
So, there is a lot that can be ameliorated, but just taking the most up to date led emitter and putting current through it isn't what I am waiting for!