Virtual only Fizzy -- Is it possible?

[+essap2]

With the release of virtual rewards 3.0, I'm curious if it would be theoretically possible to get a virtual only fizzy grid. Has anybody looked into this/know if this is possible? If not I hope that people consider hiding the unhidden d/t's when publishing their new virtuals. 

[geoawareUSA9]

6 hours ago, essap2 said:

I'm curious if it would be theoretically possible to get a virtual only fizzy grid.

 

I hadn't ever thought about this, but I looked into it using Project-GC's DT Matrix tool. I used a zero finds profile so it was looking for the full grid of D/T values. The tool can't look at every single cache, it has to either search by max distance or search by country, so I picked by country and did a search for the US and Germany.

 

This is the US result, only 52 D/T combinations exist.

 

 

This is the Germany result, a little better, but only 62 D/T combinations exist.

 

 

That actually doesn't add up with what I get from the geocaching.com search tool, since there are two 4.5/5 virtuals in the US, GC6DC7 and GC1192. So I'm not sure what the disconnect is.

 

At any rate, while I didn't do a search for each individual D/T combination, the few I tested did seem to be available somewhere in the world. So as an individual achievement, as long as the combination exists, sure, it could be theoretically possible as long as there are caches for it.

 

The follow-up question, "could you do a challenge cache for it," is likely no, since challenge cache owners need to qualify before submitting a challenge and have to be able to provide a list of local cachers who qualify (depends on the reviewer how many and how local, but usually it's about 10, and within a few hundred miles or kilometers).

[+Hügh]

In theory, yes, it is possible. Here are the numbers of active Virtuals for each D/T combination (as of about two weeks ago):

 

 

It looks like 4.5/3 is the most difficult combination to fill, with only 2 Virtuals available. One is in Mississauga, Ontario and the other is in New York—both are Virtual Reward caches.

 

I personally have managed to fill 32/81 squares, which is pretty good! In fact, two were filled very recently: GC8911D and @thebruce0's GC88ZP8.

 

Edited July 31, 2022 by Hügh

[+essap2]

Thank you Hugh and geoAware! Very interesting. I wonder who will be the first to achieve this massive feat.

[+Vooruit!]

That will be kuschelchen, he's only missing the 5/4.5 D/T rating, and I know he has plans for that particular one. Look at this beauty:

 

 

I'm working on it myself too, but man, is this the hardest challenge ever. Still 33 ratings to go.

 

Another fun one is the earthcache fizzy. Slightly easier, but still 17 to go.

[+barefootjeff]

On 7/31/2022 at 4:13 PM, essap2 said:

If not I hope that people consider hiding the unhidden d/t's when publishing their new virtuals.

 

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I'd really hope hiders of new virtuals would put rare D/T combinations pretty low down their list of priorities when deciding how to use their reward. Maybe I'm in a minority these days, but my most memorable virtual finds are the ones that provide a great outdoors experience, ideally something that couldn't be done with a regular cache, not the ones that fill a hole in my grid.

[+JL_HSTRE]

True high D/T Virtuals should be incredibly rare.

 

A high terrain location is probably a good location for a physical cache since muggle activity is usually low.

 

High difficulty Virtuals seem hard to imagine considering they normally involve a few questions or photos.

[+GeoElmo6000]

I'd be interested to see examples of what a high difficulty virtual is.  High terrain I get, but high difficulty?  I'm guessing that would mean the information required to count the virtual as a find would be difficult to retrieve.  And if that's the case, why?  Just for the D/T rating?

 

I just had my VR 3.0 published.  It's a 1/1 on a bridge between two US states, with beautiful views of the area.

[+ChriBli]

43 minutes ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

I'd be interested to see examples of what a high difficulty virtual is.  High terrain I get, but high difficulty?  I'm guessing that would mean the information required to count the virtual as a find would be difficult to retrieve.  And if that's the case, why?  Just for the D/T rating?

You just have to look at the published high-D virtuals to get examples. I had a look at two D5 virtuals in Sweden, both are on the concept of "visit a number of places scattered over a large area, selected from a set of 30-40 waypoints that are assigned different number of points, reach 10,000 points". The first one was published in 2019, very popular with many FPs, the second obviously modeled on the first. None of them worth D5 it seems to me, but I haven't done them.

 

Why are there D5 unknowns? If you just make the puzzle easier to solve, you could get a lower D rating. Some people enjoy solving difficult problems.

[+Hügh]

1 hour ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

I'd be interested to see examples of what a high difficulty virtual is.  High terrain I get, but high difficulty?  I'm guessing that would mean the information required to count the virtual as a find would be difficult to retrieve.  And if that's the case, why?  Just for the D/T rating?

 

I just had my VR 3.0 published.  It's a 1/1 on a bridge between two US states, with beautiful views of the area.

 

I've seen this:

 

To log this cache, choose your favorite piece from any of the three areas described above. Because it may be so hard for you to choose, we have given this a difficulty rating of 5. Take a picture of yourself or your caching team with your favorite glass piece and post it with your log.

 

https://coord.info/GC7B6BQ

 

Is this a Difficulty 5? Not... really? But from having found this Virtual, I will agree, it is very difficult to choose. 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Hügh

[+ChriBli]

On 7/31/2022 at 3:04 PM, geoawareUSA9 said:

That actually doesn't add up with what I get from the geocaching.com search tool, since there are two 4.5/5 virtuals in the US, GC6DC7 and GC1192. So I'm not sure what the disconnect is.

The disconnect is that PGC limits the list to 1,000 suggestions. If you filter for D >= 2 you get the following US result:

All the D1 and D1.5 combinations also exist in the US, plus the combinations that the non-empty profile I used has already found. So there are six missing combinations in the US.

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by ChriBli

[+Isonzo Karst]

 

I placed a 1/5 virtual reward. At some point I learned that because the title starts with Q, it's on some wish lists - people working old alphabet all virt challenges.  Never occurred to me.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Isonzo Karst

[+ChriBli]

On 7/31/2022 at 4:45 PM, Hügh said:

In theory, yes, it is possible. Here are the numbers of active Virtuals for each D/T combination (as of about two weeks ago):

 

 

It looks like 4.5/3 is the most difficult combination to fill, with only 2 Virtuals available. One is in Mississauga, Ontario and the other is in New York—both are Virtual Reward caches.

 

I personally have managed to fill 32/81 squares, which is pretty good! In fact, two were filled very recently: GC8911D and @thebruce0's GC88ZP8.

 

May I ask where you get these pretty charts from? Neither geocaching.com nor PGC seems to produce them. Just out of curiosity of course, I have no trouble keeping track of my eight found D/T combinations of virtuals.

[+essap2]

8 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I'd really hope hiders of new virtuals would put rare D/T combinations pretty low down their list of priorities when deciding how to use their reward. Maybe I'm in a minority these days, but my most memorable virtual finds are the ones that provide a great outdoors experience, ideally something that couldn't be done with a regular cache, not the ones that fill a hole in my grid.

I was thinking the same thing. My hope is not that people inflate simple virtuals to high D/T's but actually hide virtuals with accurate D/T's that are rare. That said, it is very hard to hide a high difficulty virtual. I think the hardest virtual I've ever found was GC7B7FY or GC9073. Both of those examples deviate from the norm of go to a site and take a picture or gather info. I guess what I'm hoping for then is that people think outside of the box when they are placing their new virtuals and hopefully that will lead to some more interesting D/Ts.

[+essap2]

8 hours ago, Vooruit! said:

That will be kuschelchen, he's only missing the 5/4.5 D/T rating, and I know he has plans for that particular one. Look at this beauty:

 

 

I'm working on it myself too, but man, is this the hardest challenge ever. Still 33 ratings to go.

 

Another fun one is the earthcache fizzy. Slightly easier, but still 17 to go.

WOW! I hadn't realized someone was that close. I knew a couple people have finished an earthcache fizzy which is also an impressive feat.

[+Hügh]

2 hours ago, ChriBli said:

May I ask where you get these pretty charts from? Neither geocaching.com nor PGC seems to produce them. Just out of curiosity of course, I have no trouble keeping track of my eight found D/T combinations of virtuals.

 

The chart of my found Virtual D/Ts? I have an Project-GC Checker for that. 

 

https://project-gc.com/Challenges//70383

 

(Technically that is not the exact checker which generated the above table. I have a separate checker which does D/T grids for all types and sizes simultaneously. It is available here, but it isn't accessible unless you are a PGC script author/tagger. Happy to run your name through and privately message you the results if you are interested.)

[+ChriBli]

1 hour ago, Hügh said:

 

The chart of my found Virtual D/Ts? I have an Project-GC Checker for that. 

 

https://project-gc.com/Challenges//70383

 

(Technically that is not the exact checker which generated the above table. I have a separate checker which does D/T grids for all types and sizes simultaneously. It is available here, but it isn't accessible unless you are a PGC script author/tagger. Happy to run your name through and privately message you the results if you are interested.)

 

Thanks. Since there is no such challenge yet I just assumed there was no checker, but of course one can make one if one has the powers. I can tag scripts but not edit them, if that makes sense. It doesn't matter, I have no intention of trying to fill that grid. But what about the top chart, showing available virtuals for each D/T worldwide? Apparently not something PGC can do.

[+Hügh]

26 minutes ago, ChriBli said:

But what about the top chart, showing available virtuals for each D/T worldwide? Apparently not something PGC can do.

 

GSAK macro/script to pull the numbers from the API and then a small Python program to render it out to HTML.

 

It actually does counts for all ("all") cache types:

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Hügh

[+barefootjeff]

8 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

A high terrain location is probably a good location for a physical cache since muggle activity is usually low.

 

Most of the higher terrain ones I've done have been in places (typically national parks) where getting permission for a physical cache would have been difficult or impossible. The location I was considering using, had I received one, would have been a T4 hike out to a vantage point in a local national park where I'd previously had a physical cache knocked back on a technicality, but the NSW national parks geocaching policy allows virtual caches or waypoints to be set without explicit permission and in fact they encourage it as it brings visitors to their parks.

[+thebruce0]

On 8/1/2022 at 4:32 AM, barefootjeff said:

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I'd really hope hiders of new virtuals would put rare D/T combinations pretty low down their list of priorities when deciding how to use their reward. Maybe I'm in a minority these days, but my most memorable virtual finds are the ones that provide a great outdoors experience, ideally something that couldn't be done with a regular cache, not the ones that fill a hole in my grid.

 

I'm not against people publishing to fill DT gaps on principle, but I think as most would say, as long as the D and T are relevant and (arguably) accurate (it's always a subjective call on the CO) - intention is important. Both can be true and good at the same time - finding a great place to place a [virtual] cache, and being influenced to create one that will [sufficiently] hit a specific D and T rating.

 

IMO, the problem of the map being filled with any kind of 'rare' rating newly published was addressed when HQ disallowed "Placed before" dates in challenges. Ultimately, it won't matter if someone complains that now there's so many virtuals when they used to be rare, because that falls under the same sort of situation as the California Fizzy being grandfathered. If you want certain D/T's to remain rare that sounds like it's only for those date-limited challenges; and we already know where hq stands on that. So, there really shouldn't be any inherent problem with people placing geocaches to fill rare DT combos.  But absolutely we can/should advocate for accurate ratings!

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 8/1/2022 at 10:10 AM, ChriBli said:

I had a look at two D5 virtuals in Sweden, both are on the concept of "visit a number of places scattered over a large area, selected from a set of 30-40 waypoints that are assigned different number of points, reach 10,000 points". The first one was published in 2019, very popular with many FPs, the second obviously modeled on the first. None of them worth D5 it seems to me, but I haven't done them.

 

Like certain challenges that can't easily be verified with a checker, this sounds like D5 for the bookkeeping involved. It also seems needlessly complicated.

 

There are physical caches that take seekers over long distances, but in most cases I think they are a mistake. It's one thing to have a multi that requires an all-day hike down a trail. It's quite another to send someone driving all over a multi-county area.

 

It's not a matter of being "too hard". Rather it complicates planning because the other waypoints aren't on the main map, and are hidden entirely if sequential. I think is true of Labs, Viruals, and physical caches. In most cases if all waypoints aren't within about about a 5 square mile area it's better to have multiple caches.

[+ChriBli]

2 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Like certain challenges that can't easily be verified with a checker, this sounds like D5 for the bookkeeping involved. It also seems needlessly complicated.

 

There are physical caches that take seekers over long distances, but in most cases I think they are a mistake. It's one thing to have a multi that requires an all-day hike down a trail. It's quite another to send someone driving all over a multi-county area.

 

It's not a matter of being "too hard". Rather it complicates planning because the other waypoints aren't on the main map, and are hidden entirely if sequential. I think is true of Labs, Viruals, and physical caches. In most cases if all waypoints aren't within about about a 5 square mile area it's better to have multiple caches.

I don't know about the bookkeeping. In the case of GC8911R all of the waypoints are available, visible on the (small) map and associated with points values. Shouldn't be too hard to plan which ones to visit to reach the required number of points. It has 183 FP (80%) today, and was apparently voted #1 in Sweden and #8 worldwide in 2019 when it was published. So I would not say it is a mistake or needlessly complicated, it seems to be what people want.

 

Another example is GC8904M, also published in 2019, 4.5/3.5, 38 FP (62%), which requires you to visit two places 1572 km apart. No one in their right mind would do this journey just for the virtual, but people seem to enjoy logging this virtual more than, say, an uninteresting traditional container placed near either of the waypoints. What doesn't seem entirely obvious to me is that long distance traveling should go into the D rating. Driving long distances is not really difficult.

[geoawareUSA9]

On 8/1/2022 at 10:36 AM, ChriBli said:

The disconnect is that PGC limits the list to 1,000 suggestions.

 

That makes sense. Thanks.

[+barefootjeff]

4 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

There are physical caches that take seekers over long distances, but in most cases I think they are a mistake. It's one thing to have a multi that requires an all-day hike down a trail. It's quite another to send someone driving all over a multi-county area.

 

It's not a matter of being "too hard". Rather it complicates planning because the other waypoints aren't on the main map, and are hidden entirely if sequential. I think is true of Labs, Viruals, and physical caches. In most cases if all waypoints aren't within about about a 5 square mile area it's better to have multiple caches.

 

There's a multi I came across a few years back (GCK2GM) that's meant to be done on a road trip from Sydney to Melbourne, with its four intermediate waypoints at towns along the Hume Highway. Created in 2004, it's fairly popular with 54 FPs from 139 finds and won the Geocaching NSW Cache of the Month award in January 2013.

 

One of my own multis, The Great Train Heist (GC6JMDK), isn't spread quite as far but it has waypoints at three railway stations along the Central Coast line, taking in Koolewong, Hawkesbury River and Wondabyne stations which are spread along 17km of track. The final is a T4 hike up to a cliff-top vantage point above Wondabyne. Published in 2016, it's become one of my most popular caches with 29 FPs from 39 finds and it also won the Geocaching NSW Cache of the Month in August 2018.

 

Getting back onto virtuals, there's a Rewards 1.0 one in Newcastle that has eight waypoints spread along 6km of coastline. It's rated D4, presumably for the number of tasks that have to be performed although none of them are particularly difficult in themselves, and has 34 FPs from 62 finds. Most finders have driven between the waypoints but I did it as a walk from one end to the other and even had to go back a second time because I got one of the waypoint answers wrong.

 

For me, a lot of the enjoyment from these caches comes from them being a single cache with multiple parts. A bunch of traditionals (or one-stop virtuals) at each of the waypoints wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting. Yes, some of them are a lot of effort for just one smiley but I'm not doing them for the smilies.

[+CheekyBrit]

On 8/1/2022 at 3:32 AM, barefootjeff said:

 

I'd really hope hiders of new virtuals would put rare D/T combinations pretty low down their list of priorities when deciding how to use their reward. Maybe I'm in a minority these days, but my most memorable virtual finds are the ones that provide a great outdoors experience, ideally something that couldn't be done with a regular cache, not the ones that fill a hole in my grid.

I completely agree with you. I also recon with good planning and effort you can do both. It is hard to do but possible to have a great outdoors experience with something that couldn't be done with a regular cache that ALSO fills a hole in the grid.
That was the driving philosophy over the caches I built for about a year (thought they weren't virtuals). I tend to get a high proportion of finders giving favorite points but much better, I get pretty detailed long logs on them. All of them have been a real pain to design, build, and maintain though. Higher quality comes at a price I guess.
 

[hsiale]

On 8/1/2022 at 6:51 PM, essap2 said:

That said, it is very hard to hide a high difficulty virtual.

One possibility is to require something on the photo which is not a statue made of stone and not really mobile. GC891BH is about the old views of the city, from first half of 20th century, when two World Wars happened, and one of the stories is about how pigeons were used to send secret messages and how those, who wanted no secret messages to travel around, hunted every pigeon they saw. Because of this, the photo task is to stand on one of five waypoints and take a photo showing you and a pigeon. Which is doable, but definitely a lot harder than usual virtual photo task.

[+Vooruit!]

Fun fact, according to https://project-gc.com/w/Badge_Statistics, there's still no one with a Virtual fizzy. On the contrary, the Earthcache fizzy has been done by 30 cachers.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Vooruit!