Im totally in for a pair of those in 45 :)

totally okay with this design, as long as it comes in a 49 or 50

OK, so LOTS of work has gone on in the months since I posted this.

1) Philip Majure, the former head of Pearl Izumi footwear for 12 years is heading up our effort to get this manufactured as a consultant.

2) The design idea remains the same, but is significantly refined - improving both performance and looks!

3) My initial CFD work was woefully inadequate. I was brand new to CFD when I did this and my learning curve has been very steep. As I came to realize this and started to improve my models, my computer quickly became inadequate. Models I run now would take a week (literally) for my HP Spectre x360 laptop to get through!! So after spending a hefty chunk of change on an absurd computer than can complete those simulations in a few hours (hardware nerds, see bottom of this post) CFD results are getting much better in terms of believeability and they have driven me towards some important design changes.

4) Our initial last design (the last is the model of the foot that the shoe is built around) is complete. We should have fit prototypes done soon. Getting these made and finding a great manufacturing partner has been made extremely difficult by our escalating trade war with China - even if we don't want to make them in China, all other manufacturers are fleeing China flooding factories across the world with business.

5) After getting fit feedback from my fit guinea pigs, if the last is OK we will modify the prototypes with 3d printed soles, etc, and head to the wind tunnel with a few different ideas.\

6) Now that the CFD work is starting to go smoothly I'm able to start looking at some interesting things like interaction of the shoe with other bike components!

New hardware: Dual socket AMD EPYC 7301 (16 cores each so 32 cores total), 16 DIMMS x 16GB 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM (256GB total)

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

I continue to love this idea and it looks like you are making some solid progress. Keep up the great work!!!

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Thanks for the update. Let me know when you guys decide to go to the tunnel. I’ve got the itch to test some things. If you guys make a prototype in a 10.5 you can get a few runs in comparing them to my traditional Bont tri shoes and my Simmons monocoque carbon shoes.

Thanks, Thomas!

Also, another update - due to trademark concerns I've changed the name. I kept the falcon/mountain 'cause I like it :)

The new name is VeloVetta. Vetta is Italian for peak or summit. So yeah, it's a language mashup but it sounds cool :)

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Thanks -

There is a strong possibility that new intellectual property will be created during tunnel testing so everyone in attendance has to be covered under non-disclosure agreements in order to protect patentability. There will also be a number of designs which are not yet patented or disclosed so those also have to be covered.... I wish it were not so! So far everything I have disclosed here is covered under patent applications.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Looks great!!! Any chance a speedplay specific shoe would be up for consideration?

Very nice. Looking forward to these. Interesting pressure map. You can see why an aero crank would be a good idea. Lots of red on those crank arms.

Interesting computer choice as well. I hadn’t realized AMD was competitive again. While the core count was high, they seemed to have lost out to Intel in raw processing power. Also sort of surprised CFD isnt a GPGPU application, but I really don’t know much about it.

PS. Speedplays would be my choice as well

Ryzen. AMD has slightly lower IPC still but better efficiency and much better pricing than Intel. Bang for buck, it's no contest.

Regarding the GPU, I'm guessing there isn't a lot of parallel processing, which is what GPUs are good for.

Nice shoes. Idd speedplay zero aero.

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Follow my project on Project 100 miles / 4 hours

There's a lot to be gained through parallel processing (can get to several million parallel calculations per cycle) but it's floating-point operations. The performance gains are not as significant, and usually not enough to offset the enormous price increase of GPUs driven by the machine learning crowd. I do my CFD on a 32-core CPU machine but we're looking into getting one of the new Tesla GPUs - ANSYS claims a 60% speedup compared to an equivalent CPU-only setup, which could be nice if it works out.

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

That's actually a drag map, not pressure! When you're looking at forward-facimg surfaces it looks similar to pressure but on rear-racing surfaces, high pressure will look blue.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Ryzen does not do so well for CFD - they are designed for compute-bound processing and with CFD access to memory bandwidth is usually the bottleneck. That's why I went with dual socket so I could get 16 memory channels. The EPYC chips are among the best you can get for CFD. Some of the Intel Xeon processors are good too, but if you can make them better it's only a tiny amount better and they cost twice as much as comparable Epyc chips.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

OK, so everyone requesting a speedplay-specific sole:

I do not think it is likely I will offer that. I will not be able to offer more than one sole design, and if I can do only one I think it has to be the most versatile.

However, I do not think using the adapter plate with this sole will put you at any disadvantage to a speedplay-specific one, even though there will be like 1.5mm extra stack height. That stack height has very little to do with the aero performance of the shoe and the sole shape has A LOT to do with it. I cannot get into why, but I doubt that I can design a speedplay-specific sole that is faster than the one I have arrived at so far. I don't know this for sure because I have not tried, but I doubt it.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

I just got back from Europe, visiting factories in Spain and Italy. Nothing is signed yet, but it is likely that we will be making the shoes in Italy. The factory makes TOP OF THE LINE shoes. Seriously - they are beautiful. They make shoes under their own brand, but also some others you've heard of at various times.
I also visited a factory that specializes in carbon fiber manufacturing and co-molding (injection molding a second material on top of a part made of a different material) that makes cycling shoe soles and other parts - but they also make many of the large exterior and interior carbon fiber parts for Ferrari, McLaren and BMW M Performance. I was amazed at the quality and beauty of the stuff they produce and we will work with them on the sole and perhaps some other parts as well.

I should have my first fully-functional prototype in 8 weeks, and then we'll head to the wind tunnel. It won't be a production shoe - the upper will be simplified and the hard parts will be 3D printed.


I updated some of the images on the original post but will put them here too, now that my patent applications have been updated and I can share publicly. The graphics on the shoe are just placeholders for now. The hinge depicted here is a prototype hinge. The production hinge will be a lower-profile rivet.

If you want to be kept up to date, go to velovetta.com and sign up for the mailing list!






CFD results of conventionally shaped shoe with smooth front (no closure mechanism)


CFD results of VeloVetta shoe with closure mechanism. See difference in airspeed under the sole.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

This is awesome!

Very cool! Good luck.

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Formerly DrD

Looks cool.

Random thoughts from random thought guy:
Why not boat-tail the underside of the shoe? If this is going to be footwear that stays bolted to the pedals through T1 and T2 and used for flying mounts, why not infill this area with an aerofoil tail? Surely that would be beneficial?

So that is basically what I have done, but to a less extreme degree than what you have depicted. I did CFD analysis of more extreme versions with little benefit. I may test one of those versions in the tunnel - not decided yet. Also, this way looks cooler :)

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Great work.

I'm looking forward to these shoes!!

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Dan Kennison

facebook: @triPremierBike
http://www.PremierBike.com
http://www.PositionOneSports.com

Wow, these look really really nice! Not sure I want to know how much they will cost but good luck with your venture!

Because most people don't do flying mounts and dismounts?

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

If someone looks at those shoes and does not do that....

They are lovely shoes BTW really nice to follow that process

As for speedplay I would say that people that buy this shoe would be very likely to be 50% speedplay people
I understand what you say but what I would do is to find somebody that will drill speedplay specific holes aftermarket. I think that would entice more people.

These look great and very cool idea!

Could you break up the wind more with "aero mesh" frontal material or is smooth better? Seems like skinsuits and socks have ridges or dimples which aim to break up the wind before it disappears behind you. Examples: Drag2zero: https://drag2zero.co.uk/d2z-shop/
Rule28: https://www.rule28.com/

Also, could you put in a boa dial in the rear? Maybe that dial is easy to tighten, but if you are mounting your bike and tightening the shoe, it looks like you'll need a your thumb inside the shoe at the heel, then turn that dial. Would an exterior boa be better?

I'm in London, shipping is easier her from Spain/Italy. Happy to test! :)