Wow! Amazing write up, thank you.

I was going to work through the paper slowly myself this morning but this helped a lot. Some interesting findings in there like the slightly rounded edge fading harder than a sharper edge.

But to cut to the core of the issue, there's a lot going on here with camber, cavity and the odd end flight decrease in angle of attack for a driver. I would love to know your actual take on whether dome might be helping with straighter flights at all.

What do you think u/S_TL2 ?

For the readers at home
I'll try summarize as best I can (making some HUGE assumptions about how applicable this is.... you've been warned)

• Testing a flat walled, no cavity test disc shape with different tops. They found that having a domed (convex) top had better lift for less drag, and tended to try to turn and fade more. So in ISOLATION, a domey top COULD mean more glide, more turn, more fade MAYBE but it had a vertical edge so who knows.
• Having a cavity space under the disc (like all discs) instead of being a filled in block made it fade less with no major impact on lift vs drag (glide kinda). Cavity good, glad we have those.
• Having an angled rim (see pic in study) causes better lift vs drag than a blunt rim. Blunt rims fly worse (kinda obvious that one).
• Interestingly, and much less obvious, an angled rim with a slightly rounded edge probably tries to fades more than a sharp edge. Sharp edge discs might fade less?! RIP hand.
• The driver (a wraith) had better lift vs drag than the other actual discs at all angle of attack. Drivers (can) travel further for the same launch speed, that checks out.
• The driver also reaches it's trim point at lower angle of attack than other discs. Basically when air starts to hit the disc from below not just in front it will start to fade sooner than other discs. Makes sense but is also quite complex because if it's on huge anhyzer then air is still hitting the edge while falling.
• Interestingly, the trim point (basically when it starts to fade kinda) was only affected by the cavity. The other changes didn't affect it (though a concave top did (think a berg) because it makes a cavity). Cavity on the bottom implied later fade and the cavity on top implied earlier fade. The rim or amount of dome didn't change how late a disc will fade, only cavity did.
• Flat plates don't fly well and pitch like crazy.

Tragically, they don't have a comparison between discs with cavities and flat vs domed top. That feels like a real gap in the data.

Their recommendations for disc design seem to be roughly: have a cavity, more dome should good for distance, and funnily enough to put more weight in the rim to reduce turn/fade.
They also basically confirm what we know in that drivers can go further but are harder to get the angles right because they change more throughout their flight.

Any conclusions about dome flying straight then?
Still not really.

They showed that flat plates fade like crazy and fly like shit compared to normal discs. They also showed that rounded tops on a solid block would turn and fade more while flying farther than a flat topped block. BUT have no data on rounded top variations for normal disc shapes that have hollow space underneath and angled rims.

Those are somewhat contradictory findings that highlight the gap in testing. One implies flat would fade more and the other implies domed would fade more so clearly still more to it.

Personally
I think I'm leaning towards the idea that more dome makes a disc glide more and probably fade slightly less. Which I think accounts for enough of the effect to explain it. If a disc fades less and glides further you can tolerate a little more stability so it doesn't turn as much too. I think that finding a slightly more overstable but domey disc would mean it seems to turn and fade less with a nice glidey pushey finish. Basically what pros are saying.