Alright, well the coaster's done and I've just finished uploading to youtube. Here's the ride from a few offride and onride angles. I hope you've enjoyed this overview of rollercoasters. Again if you have any coaster related questions send me an email and I'll be happy to answer them. Good luck on finals!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Part 5: The Little Things
We'll start today with a description of one more element, then to a brief overview of energy dissipation methods, and conclude with talk of supports, ride colors, and themeing.
The last element on our ride is the helix. The helix is simply a turn that keeps on going, generally over more than 360 degrees of rotation. A helix can be as simple as a constant radius, slowly descending curve. This element's been around pretty much forever, and has a lot of unique examples. Here's a pretty cool one as Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
Notice how the designer used the changing height of the helix and adjusted the radius and banking angles to create a really unique diving exit. For our ride I'd like to make an intense helix inside of the first turn off of the launch. This will save space and create a few near misses along the way. After the corkscrew the track is right at the ground, so I'll build an ascending helix up and over the first turn. I'll also make the radius decrease as the track ascends, to keep the g forces constantly high.
Cool, now we've got the last element of our design done and finished. What to do now but slow the train to a stop! For a long time coaster brakes were mechanical clamps which dissipated the train's final energy by grabbing metal fins on the bottom of cars. Here's a picture of these brakes on the track. The fin on the underside of each car passes through the gap in the middle of the gray blocks, which are computer controlled to precisely manipulate the coaster's speed (or stop it completely).
A revolution occurred in 1999 when Millennium Force (still my favorite ride in the world) opened at Cedar Point. This ride broke some 13 world records, but the important one was the first use of a magnetic breaking system. This technique uses permanent magnets mounted on the track to oppose the motion of the cars traveling past by simple magnetic repulsion. Because there is no longer physical contact the system is much easier to maintain and much quieter. Additionally, because the system imparts a force based on the velocity of the train (as opposed to a harsh static frictional force), the deceleration is much smoother. Here's a picture of some moveable magnetic breaks. With the help of pneumatics the assembly can rotate away from the track and completely remove themselves from affecting the ride's speed.
The discussion of brakes wouldn't be complete without a brief overview of blocks. Blocks on a rollercoaster refer to a section of track with a controllable entrance and exit. 2 trains should never be in the same block at the same time. This is because, as in any field, failures happen. If a wheel assembly were to fail and a train were to grind to a halt, there needs to be a way to make sure the next train won't plow full speed into the back of our unsuspecting riders. To achieve this, no train is allowed to enter a block until the one that preceded it has safely passed through the next block's control point. It's a complex topic, so here's an example on our ride. See here that a train is sitting at the launch, waiting to go (we'll call this train B). However, the train in front of it (train A) has not yet cleared the final brake of the ride.
This situation means that there is some slim possibility that train A will stall and get stuck on the circuit. To assure the safety of all the riders, train B must wait until the moment that train A has cleared the final brake. That way, even if train A were to fail immediately after clearing the brake, train B could be stopped by the final brake before a crash would occur.
At this moment train B is clear to launch. This type of blocking occurs for all coaster types across every block, which can include stations, holding brakes, lift hills and mid-course brakes. Mid-course brake runs (MCBRs) are used to allow greater capacity on longer rides. For example, here on Dragon Khan in Spain, there is a MCBR approximately half-way into the circuit time wise. You can see it here, it's the flat piece of track with catwalks. The catwalks allow riders to be evacuated if a major problem should occur.
In this example, 2 trains can be on the "live" part of the track at once. One can be between the lift and the MCBR, while another can be finishing up after the MCBR and towards the final brake. This allows for greater capacity, which means less lines, happier riders, and more revenue.
Well, our coaster is mostly complete. However, it seems to be floating in the air. Yep, we need some supports to hold it up. Unfortunately, this is one area where No Limits doesn't really excel. There is no simulation of the forces going into the supports, so creating them is largely an exercise in cosmetics. Honestly I just try and imitate real rides from photos. It'd be hard to analyze the dynamics of supports, especially with myself not having taken a materials class first. Anyway, let's move onto the final stuff, colors and themeing. I've never really been one to theme a ride, but it can significantly help pull people's attention to rides. Themes can make a mediocre ride interesting, but can't make up for a terrible ride path. Our ride doesn't really need a theme, as it's a pure thrill ride. However, I've decided that a Boilermaker Special badging is in order. Therefore, I'll prepare a special car texture and change the colors.
Colors are slightly important because they are a clear visual draw to a coaster and can create a small sense of distinction from ride to ride.
Alright, that's it for today's update. I'll have one more update, featuring a few pics of the final ride and a point of view video. As always, thanks for reading.As a side note I'll be updating the first entry to better cover launch systems and lift hills (it made more sense to put the discussion there).
The last element on our ride is the helix. The helix is simply a turn that keeps on going, generally over more than 360 degrees of rotation. A helix can be as simple as a constant radius, slowly descending curve. This element's been around pretty much forever, and has a lot of unique examples. Here's a pretty cool one as Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
Notice how the designer used the changing height of the helix and adjusted the radius and banking angles to create a really unique diving exit. For our ride I'd like to make an intense helix inside of the first turn off of the launch. This will save space and create a few near misses along the way. After the corkscrew the track is right at the ground, so I'll build an ascending helix up and over the first turn. I'll also make the radius decrease as the track ascends, to keep the g forces constantly high.
Cool, now we've got the last element of our design done and finished. What to do now but slow the train to a stop! For a long time coaster brakes were mechanical clamps which dissipated the train's final energy by grabbing metal fins on the bottom of cars. Here's a picture of these brakes on the track. The fin on the underside of each car passes through the gap in the middle of the gray blocks, which are computer controlled to precisely manipulate the coaster's speed (or stop it completely).
A revolution occurred in 1999 when Millennium Force (still my favorite ride in the world) opened at Cedar Point. This ride broke some 13 world records, but the important one was the first use of a magnetic breaking system. This technique uses permanent magnets mounted on the track to oppose the motion of the cars traveling past by simple magnetic repulsion. Because there is no longer physical contact the system is much easier to maintain and much quieter. Additionally, because the system imparts a force based on the velocity of the train (as opposed to a harsh static frictional force), the deceleration is much smoother. Here's a picture of some moveable magnetic breaks. With the help of pneumatics the assembly can rotate away from the track and completely remove themselves from affecting the ride's speed.
The discussion of brakes wouldn't be complete without a brief overview of blocks. Blocks on a rollercoaster refer to a section of track with a controllable entrance and exit. 2 trains should never be in the same block at the same time. This is because, as in any field, failures happen. If a wheel assembly were to fail and a train were to grind to a halt, there needs to be a way to make sure the next train won't plow full speed into the back of our unsuspecting riders. To achieve this, no train is allowed to enter a block until the one that preceded it has safely passed through the next block's control point. It's a complex topic, so here's an example on our ride. See here that a train is sitting at the launch, waiting to go (we'll call this train B). However, the train in front of it (train A) has not yet cleared the final brake of the ride.
This situation means that there is some slim possibility that train A will stall and get stuck on the circuit. To assure the safety of all the riders, train B must wait until the moment that train A has cleared the final brake. That way, even if train A were to fail immediately after clearing the brake, train B could be stopped by the final brake before a crash would occur.
At this moment train B is clear to launch. This type of blocking occurs for all coaster types across every block, which can include stations, holding brakes, lift hills and mid-course brakes. Mid-course brake runs (MCBRs) are used to allow greater capacity on longer rides. For example, here on Dragon Khan in Spain, there is a MCBR approximately half-way into the circuit time wise. You can see it here, it's the flat piece of track with catwalks. The catwalks allow riders to be evacuated if a major problem should occur.
In this example, 2 trains can be on the "live" part of the track at once. One can be between the lift and the MCBR, while another can be finishing up after the MCBR and towards the final brake. This allows for greater capacity, which means less lines, happier riders, and more revenue.
Well, our coaster is mostly complete. However, it seems to be floating in the air. Yep, we need some supports to hold it up. Unfortunately, this is one area where No Limits doesn't really excel. There is no simulation of the forces going into the supports, so creating them is largely an exercise in cosmetics. Honestly I just try and imitate real rides from photos. It'd be hard to analyze the dynamics of supports, especially with myself not having taken a materials class first. Anyway, let's move onto the final stuff, colors and themeing. I've never really been one to theme a ride, but it can significantly help pull people's attention to rides. Themes can make a mediocre ride interesting, but can't make up for a terrible ride path. Our ride doesn't really need a theme, as it's a pure thrill ride. However, I've decided that a Boilermaker Special badging is in order. Therefore, I'll prepare a special car texture and change the colors.
Colors are slightly important because they are a clear visual draw to a coaster and can create a small sense of distinction from ride to ride.
Alright, that's it for today's update. I'll have one more update, featuring a few pics of the final ride and a point of view video. As always, thanks for reading.As a side note I'll be updating the first entry to better cover launch systems and lift hills (it made more sense to put the discussion there).
Part 4: Rolling Over
Alright, unfortunately I'm fresh out of dynamics material to cover so from here on out it's all history, technique, and my own philosophy on design. First, I'll explore the rest of the basic inversion types, starting with corkscrews. Corkscrews were the first inversion that was actually ridable (barely). They beat modern loops by a single year (1975 at Knott's Berry Farm).The first company to make corkscrews was Arrow Dynamics, and they became a staple inversion on almost all of their rides through the 1990s. Corkscrews are named for a ride path that resembles the wine-cork removing implement of the same name, and are naturally shorter than loops. Originally corkscrews were perfectly circular, sort of like moving at constant speed and rotation around the outside of a barrel.
Old school:
This led to some funky transitions into and out of the corkscrew, and made for lateral forces in the bottom half of the inversion (not so fun). Modern corkscrews are a bit fancier, and generally involve rotating mostly around the apex and have very slightly banked entrances. This ensures the lateral gs are minimized. Here's the new fanciness:
Look at the banking of the last car in the train, half-way up the corkscrew. It's only about 45 degrees from the horizontal. If you look at the cars half-way up the old-style corkscrew, you can see they are already on their side, banked at 90 degrees. At this point, however, the ride path is still curving upwards and thus to eliminate lateral force the train needs to be banked at less than 90 degrees. It's a strange concept to get, but think of how uncomfortable it would be to begin curving vertically upwards from a sideways position. Due to the complex assortment of roll variations available today, corkscrews are now more generally defined as a rotating inversion with positive g force. There are so many manufacturers making so many sizes and shapes of corkscrews that it's kinda hard to keep things straight, especially when they start giving them different names (wing-overs, flat spins). I just call them all corkscrews to save myself the trouble. I'll be putting one on our ride, here it is.
Next, the roll! This is really as simple as it sounds. It was first made in 1985 (on this bizarre thing) and wasn't terribly exciting then. They're easy to make and require the least speed of all of the inversions, but I've never really liked them much. Moving on to something more worthwhile, the zero-g roll! This type of roll gets its name because, simply enough, it's a zero g hill that's warped into a roll. This gives riders a sensation of floating while rotating, a really cool inversion. They were first done well by Bolliger and Mabillard (who, to me, really began the modern design era in 1993 with Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great America). Here's a side view of a sample zero-g roll.
Note how the yellow heartline follows a basic parabola to create the zero-g while the track rotates around it to create the roll. Here's a real-life version, on Scream at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
I'll put a slightly tweaked version of this into our ride, right after the loop and a turnaround. The turnaround was made 'by hand' meaning I placed each track node individually. This isn't very precise, but I'm on a steep time budget here. I've made the turn ascending, so we end up high in the air in the middle of the loop.
Now, Since we're already so high in the air, I'll skip the first half of the parabola and do a flat roll through the loop into a zero-g finish. This'll give us a distinctive element which is still within ridable limits and that seems feasible. This sort of cautious innovation is what I base most of my designs on. I like to see what a manufacturer does, then move to the next logical extreme. This gives my rides unique elements that push the envelope of technology, something that's always fun.
Anyway, now that we've covered the basic elements we can start to get into combos. Most compound elements consist of some combination of corkscrews, zero g rolls and loops. I'll give 4 of the most popular here. First, the dive loop. This consists of a zero-g roll that stops rolling at the apex and drops into a half-loop all the way to the ground. Bolliger and Mabillard do this really well, here's a good example on Mantis at Cedar Point.
I've decided to feature a dive loop on our ride, right after the complex roll. Our dive loop soars over the final brake run. I'm always a fan of tying a coaster in knots. Here it is in it's final placement.
An 'Immelman' is the exact reverse of the dive loop, starting with a half loop but then rolling over into a descent. Here's 'Dive Coaster' and its stupidly huge Immelman at Chimelong paradise in China.
The next inversion type is kinda like an Immelman and a dive loop combined. The 'Cobra Roll' features a half loop then a sort-of half corkscrew. Next, a half-corkscrew throws rides back upside down until a second half-loop points them back in the direction from which they came. This is kinda hard to illustrate with words so here's The Incredible Hulk at Universal Studios Florida to do it for me.
This element is supremely useful for turning a ride around, and is a great feature to play with pacing a bit. Next, the batwing was a favorite of Arrow Dynamics for a long while. Almost the opposite of a cobra roll, the batwing consists of a half-corkscrew into a half-loop, then a second half-loop leading into a second half-corkscrew sending riders, again, out the way they came. Here's Viper's batwing at Darien Lake.
Many other inversion types exist, but most are possible only in certain train configurations (some more bizarre than others). Others are simple changes on the ones listed above, and aren't really that important.
Now that we've got our inversions straight, let's move back to our coaster. Originally I had thought that, after the dive loop, 2 corkscrews over the launch would occur. This brings me to the next important part of coaster design, pacing. Pacing really amounts to the intensity of elements and the speed at which they are taken. While strong forces are good, it's not really fun to spend an entire ride squashed in your seat at 4 gs. It's important to give riders a break, both to allow time to enjoy the experience and because the human body can only enjoy so much disorientation. With this in mind, I scrapped my original plan to create 2 corkscrews in a row after the dive loop. After riding a rough version, I felt that there was far too much rotation going on over this small section. I based this largely on my experiences in coaster design and what I would theoretically enjoy most on a coaster. I thought there was simply too much rotation and not enough time for the passengers to reidentify what was up and what was down. Therefore, I made the first corkscrew into a simple airtime hill. Again, it suited the style of ride and kept up the speed while still allowing a little break from all the spinning. The hill is also thrilling in its own right, giving riders a bit of a head-chopper effect underneath the first airtime hill. A 'head-chopper' is a percieved near miss above the track. Fortunately, at high speeds it's difficult for the human brain to differentiate between what is dangerously close and what if just out of the way. Therefore while the track above the riders is quite safely out of reach, it appears to be dangerously near. I love making extremely cramped coasters simply to create such crossovers and near misses, raising excitement levels greatly.
Here's an overview of most of the layout of our ride. You can see the launch (in the closest tunnel), the airtime hill, the loop, the turnaround, the zero-g drop, the dive loop, the second airtime hill, and the corkscrew.
Anyway, now that we've got all of the inversions out of the way, I'll wait explore the miscellaneous other important info next time. Until then.
Old school:
This led to some funky transitions into and out of the corkscrew, and made for lateral forces in the bottom half of the inversion (not so fun). Modern corkscrews are a bit fancier, and generally involve rotating mostly around the apex and have very slightly banked entrances. This ensures the lateral gs are minimized. Here's the new fanciness:
Look at the banking of the last car in the train, half-way up the corkscrew. It's only about 45 degrees from the horizontal. If you look at the cars half-way up the old-style corkscrew, you can see they are already on their side, banked at 90 degrees. At this point, however, the ride path is still curving upwards and thus to eliminate lateral force the train needs to be banked at less than 90 degrees. It's a strange concept to get, but think of how uncomfortable it would be to begin curving vertically upwards from a sideways position. Due to the complex assortment of roll variations available today, corkscrews are now more generally defined as a rotating inversion with positive g force. There are so many manufacturers making so many sizes and shapes of corkscrews that it's kinda hard to keep things straight, especially when they start giving them different names (wing-overs, flat spins). I just call them all corkscrews to save myself the trouble. I'll be putting one on our ride, here it is.
Next, the roll! This is really as simple as it sounds. It was first made in 1985 (on this bizarre thing) and wasn't terribly exciting then. They're easy to make and require the least speed of all of the inversions, but I've never really liked them much. Moving on to something more worthwhile, the zero-g roll! This type of roll gets its name because, simply enough, it's a zero g hill that's warped into a roll. This gives riders a sensation of floating while rotating, a really cool inversion. They were first done well by Bolliger and Mabillard (who, to me, really began the modern design era in 1993 with Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great America). Here's a side view of a sample zero-g roll.
Note how the yellow heartline follows a basic parabola to create the zero-g while the track rotates around it to create the roll. Here's a real-life version, on Scream at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
I'll put a slightly tweaked version of this into our ride, right after the loop and a turnaround. The turnaround was made 'by hand' meaning I placed each track node individually. This isn't very precise, but I'm on a steep time budget here. I've made the turn ascending, so we end up high in the air in the middle of the loop.
Now, Since we're already so high in the air, I'll skip the first half of the parabola and do a flat roll through the loop into a zero-g finish. This'll give us a distinctive element which is still within ridable limits and that seems feasible. This sort of cautious innovation is what I base most of my designs on. I like to see what a manufacturer does, then move to the next logical extreme. This gives my rides unique elements that push the envelope of technology, something that's always fun.
Anyway, now that we've covered the basic elements we can start to get into combos. Most compound elements consist of some combination of corkscrews, zero g rolls and loops. I'll give 4 of the most popular here. First, the dive loop. This consists of a zero-g roll that stops rolling at the apex and drops into a half-loop all the way to the ground. Bolliger and Mabillard do this really well, here's a good example on Mantis at Cedar Point.
I've decided to feature a dive loop on our ride, right after the complex roll. Our dive loop soars over the final brake run. I'm always a fan of tying a coaster in knots. Here it is in it's final placement.
An 'Immelman' is the exact reverse of the dive loop, starting with a half loop but then rolling over into a descent. Here's 'Dive Coaster' and its stupidly huge Immelman at Chimelong paradise in China.
The next inversion type is kinda like an Immelman and a dive loop combined. The 'Cobra Roll' features a half loop then a sort-of half corkscrew. Next, a half-corkscrew throws rides back upside down until a second half-loop points them back in the direction from which they came. This is kinda hard to illustrate with words so here's The Incredible Hulk at Universal Studios Florida to do it for me.
This element is supremely useful for turning a ride around, and is a great feature to play with pacing a bit. Next, the batwing was a favorite of Arrow Dynamics for a long while. Almost the opposite of a cobra roll, the batwing consists of a half-corkscrew into a half-loop, then a second half-loop leading into a second half-corkscrew sending riders, again, out the way they came. Here's Viper's batwing at Darien Lake.
Many other inversion types exist, but most are possible only in certain train configurations (some more bizarre than others). Others are simple changes on the ones listed above, and aren't really that important.
Now that we've got our inversions straight, let's move back to our coaster. Originally I had thought that, after the dive loop, 2 corkscrews over the launch would occur. This brings me to the next important part of coaster design, pacing. Pacing really amounts to the intensity of elements and the speed at which they are taken. While strong forces are good, it's not really fun to spend an entire ride squashed in your seat at 4 gs. It's important to give riders a break, both to allow time to enjoy the experience and because the human body can only enjoy so much disorientation. With this in mind, I scrapped my original plan to create 2 corkscrews in a row after the dive loop. After riding a rough version, I felt that there was far too much rotation going on over this small section. I based this largely on my experiences in coaster design and what I would theoretically enjoy most on a coaster. I thought there was simply too much rotation and not enough time for the passengers to reidentify what was up and what was down. Therefore, I made the first corkscrew into a simple airtime hill. Again, it suited the style of ride and kept up the speed while still allowing a little break from all the spinning. The hill is also thrilling in its own right, giving riders a bit of a head-chopper effect underneath the first airtime hill. A 'head-chopper' is a percieved near miss above the track. Fortunately, at high speeds it's difficult for the human brain to differentiate between what is dangerously close and what if just out of the way. Therefore while the track above the riders is quite safely out of reach, it appears to be dangerously near. I love making extremely cramped coasters simply to create such crossovers and near misses, raising excitement levels greatly.
Here's an overview of most of the layout of our ride. You can see the launch (in the closest tunnel), the airtime hill, the loop, the turnaround, the zero-g drop, the dive loop, the second airtime hill, and the corkscrew.
Anyway, now that we've got all of the inversions out of the way, I'll wait explore the miscellaneous other important info next time. Until then.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Part 3: Downside-up
Well, it's been a while since the last update. I spent a lot of time working on a fancy formula to generate a perfect ride path which, while very interesting to myself, doesn't really have a good bearing on the class. With that in mind, I've put the ridepath generator on hold and moved back to the coaster at hand. When we last left off I had built a formula to generate airtime hills. That's done and finished, so we can move on to the third element in our ride, the vertical loop. Loops are one of the easiest inversions, and one of the most popular elements. They provide a great wow factor and are relatively simple to work with. First, some history. Loops appeared as early as the 1800s. These loops, however, weren't exactly fun to ride on. For starters coasters didn't have wheel assemblies as we see them today, and were therefore held on the track solely by the normal force experienced by traveling along the path. Therefore, if the train were to go slower than expected (due to some mechanical failure or some weather condition) it would fall off of the track. This, of course, is very bad. An additional problem with early loops was the shape of the loop itself. Here's one of the early loops:
For simplicity, it's a nearly circular shape. Let's do some analysis to see why this doesn't really work. Starting at 20.83 m/s (the speed we left off at last time), we want a loop that generates 4 vertical g forces at the bottom to match the pull-up from the airtime hill. Calculation of the radius of loop required to generate this force is pretty trivial. We'll also see what the situation at the top is.
Well, we've got a big problem. To have rideable forces at the bottom of our circular loop, the coaster stalls before it can complete the loop. If we keep positive forces at the top of the loop, we see the force at the bottom raises to unsafe levels. The differences between N1 and N2 are too high in every case! So, what do we do now? Well, we wait until 1976 when Werner Stengel and Anton Schwarzkopf, both Germans, made the jump to modern design. Both men are largely credited with making modern loops work, and also pioneered the heart-lining concept which makes complex modern maneuvers possible as explained in part 1. Stengel still works in the coaster field today, completing almost every facet of design from ride path generation to structural analysis for the majority of rides built today (seriously, almost every new ride comes through his company). Anyway, the first real modern vertical loop was Revolution at Six Flags Magic Mountain. The only real change was using a radius of curvature that decreased as the cars turned through the loop (in a clothoid or euler spiral configuration). This allowed the force at the top of the loop to be much closer to that of the bottom, and for a much better overall experience. Here's the loop that started modern inversions:
Modern loops can have all sorts of shapes and sensations. There were loops by Arrow Dynamics, whose sharp teardrop shape created heavy positive gforce throughout. Here's an example of this, again at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Note the extreme change in shape from the circular loop.
Other types of loop are more passive, and give riders a small sense of floating over the crest. This can be desirable when a designer wants to slow down the pacing, and gives riders more time to notice that they are, in fact, very upside-down and very high in the air. Here's an example at Cedar Point. See how it curves less aggressively over the crest.
To suit the style of our ride, I want to make a loop with heavy positives at the bottom leading to about 1 g at the top. It's hard to show the dynamics of this problem due to the constantly changing radius, so I'll just highlight the method I used and the final result. To make our loop I utilized an alternate version of my airtime generator from the last update. I set a switch based on the value of the ascent angle. For the first and last quarters of the loop (0 < Theta < pi/2 and 3*pi/2 < Theta < 2*pi) I set the vertical g force at 4. For the top half of the loop, I set the gforce to vary as a sin function from 4 to 1 and back (Gforce=1+3*abs[sin[theta]]). Then I forced a constant offset to the side so the track does not cross through itself. This isn't really how loops are designed in the field, but I found it a fun use of my formulas and the results were very solid. This formula gave an intense, fast loop but still allowed for a little time to breathe. Here's a picture of the final loop, with a little preview of the next part of the layout.
That's it for today, tomorrow I'll get Part 4 (corkscrews and rolls) and Part 5(The little things) done tomorrow. I'll also have some video of the ride sometime over the weekend. To conclude, Here's a pic showing how silly a circular loop looks on a modern ride.
For simplicity, it's a nearly circular shape. Let's do some analysis to see why this doesn't really work. Starting at 20.83 m/s (the speed we left off at last time), we want a loop that generates 4 vertical g forces at the bottom to match the pull-up from the airtime hill. Calculation of the radius of loop required to generate this force is pretty trivial. We'll also see what the situation at the top is.
Well, we've got a big problem. To have rideable forces at the bottom of our circular loop, the coaster stalls before it can complete the loop. If we keep positive forces at the top of the loop, we see the force at the bottom raises to unsafe levels. The differences between N1 and N2 are too high in every case! So, what do we do now? Well, we wait until 1976 when Werner Stengel and Anton Schwarzkopf, both Germans, made the jump to modern design. Both men are largely credited with making modern loops work, and also pioneered the heart-lining concept which makes complex modern maneuvers possible as explained in part 1. Stengel still works in the coaster field today, completing almost every facet of design from ride path generation to structural analysis for the majority of rides built today (seriously, almost every new ride comes through his company). Anyway, the first real modern vertical loop was Revolution at Six Flags Magic Mountain. The only real change was using a radius of curvature that decreased as the cars turned through the loop (in a clothoid or euler spiral configuration). This allowed the force at the top of the loop to be much closer to that of the bottom, and for a much better overall experience. Here's the loop that started modern inversions:
Modern loops can have all sorts of shapes and sensations. There were loops by Arrow Dynamics, whose sharp teardrop shape created heavy positive gforce throughout. Here's an example of this, again at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Note the extreme change in shape from the circular loop.
Other types of loop are more passive, and give riders a small sense of floating over the crest. This can be desirable when a designer wants to slow down the pacing, and gives riders more time to notice that they are, in fact, very upside-down and very high in the air. Here's an example at Cedar Point. See how it curves less aggressively over the crest.
To suit the style of our ride, I want to make a loop with heavy positives at the bottom leading to about 1 g at the top. It's hard to show the dynamics of this problem due to the constantly changing radius, so I'll just highlight the method I used and the final result. To make our loop I utilized an alternate version of my airtime generator from the last update. I set a switch based on the value of the ascent angle. For the first and last quarters of the loop (0 < Theta < pi/2 and 3*pi/2 < Theta < 2*pi) I set the vertical g force at 4. For the top half of the loop, I set the gforce to vary as a sin function from 4 to 1 and back (Gforce=1+3*abs[sin[theta]]). Then I forced a constant offset to the side so the track does not cross through itself. This isn't really how loops are designed in the field, but I found it a fun use of my formulas and the results were very solid. This formula gave an intense, fast loop but still allowed for a little time to breathe. Here's a picture of the final loop, with a little preview of the next part of the layout.
That's it for today, tomorrow I'll get Part 4 (corkscrews and rolls) and Part 5(The little things) done tomorrow. I'll also have some video of the ride sometime over the weekend. To conclude, Here's a pic showing how silly a circular loop looks on a modern ride.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Part 2.5: A formula for floating.
I tried to challenge myself by designing a formula for perfectly continuous airtime, as discussed a little bit over in part 2. I used a program called 'Elementary' which designed to help make elements for nolimits rides. The program runs a 512 iteration loop and can plot formulas directly to nolimits track elements. Oddly enough, I did most of the work on the formulas 3 days ago and thought it wouldn't have much relevancy to our dynamics stuff, as it was all physics energy balance stuff. I was very surprised when we covered almost the exact same formulas the next day (actually, it was kinda creepy). Anyway, here's an overview of the velocity update.
Here's a reference pic for angles, axes, and various values.
For starters, we need to get a few differential values established.
Ok, let's move on to the energy balance parts. As always:
This form works well for final locations, but isn't
as helpful for an iterative program like mine. I'll update it accordingly.
Unfortunately, I can't use our convention for potential and kinetic terms as V is taken as velocity and T is taken as a global time constant. I'll use P for potential and K for kinetic. So:
Let's get our energy updates now. Note that we've divided each term by mass (nice how that works out all the time):
Right, now for the velocity term. Integrating dK=dU-dP, we get K=U-P. Taking K from this and knowing K=1/2*V^2, we get
This is essentially the energy balance I did for the program, with a little reworking to better work with Elementary.
Whoo, now we just need to calculate our rho for desired g force. To simplify things, I assumed a constant g force (although it would be possible to update my formulas with a changing value of g over time, I didn't really want to go that far into things). Here's the calculation for rho:
Finally, we need to update our theta. We know the arc length struck is r*alpha. Alpha is the angle struck by ds (the change in angle from movement along the path, not our theta from before. Luckily, however dAlpha turns out to be dTheta. So, knowing our differential arc distance (dS from before):
Alright, now our math's all set and we're good to play around. Here's the final elementary formula file, and here's a direct file link to download Elementary itself, if anyone feels like playing along. To open the formula, install and run Elementary and press ctrl-f. Open my formula and set the divisions box to 256 or 512 (more divisions=longer element). Finally, click the 'Force number of Segments' box and choose 8 or above. Unfortunately to actually ride the elements generated you must have the full version of Nolimits, but you can at least see shapes. I'm pretty satisfied with my work on this formula, and the resultant elements work well.
Anyway, to conclude here's a pretty airtime hill generated by the program.
Update-5/1/09
After speaking with Rhoads and Krousgrill we finally got the formula to accurately work. Turns out it's more accurate to consolidate the code to 4 lines. Here's the new iterative code, if anyone's interested:
I also added a switch so the gforce can be varied over time, meaning complete hills can be generated. If anyone's interested I can send you the new formula and show you how to use it, just send me an email. Anyway, thanks for reading!
Here's a reference pic for angles, axes, and various values.
For starters, we need to get a few differential values established.
Distance traveled: dS=V*dt
Vertical Movement: dY=V*sin(Theta)
Horizontal Movement: dX=V*cos(Theta)
Ok, let's move on to the energy balance parts. As always:
T(1)+V(1)+U(1-2)=T(2)+V(2)
This form works well for final locations, but isn't
as helpful for an iterative program like mine. I'll update it accordingly.
0=dT+dV-dU
Unfortunately, I can't use our convention for potential and kinetic terms as V is taken as velocity and T is taken as a global time constant. I'll use P for potential and K for kinetic. So:
0=dP+dK-dU
Let's get our energy updates now. Note that we've divided each term by mass (nice how that works out all the time):
Change in potential: dP= (dY * g)We'll talk about what the value of the normal force actually is in a little bit here.
Change in non-conservative forces: dU= -(s*g*N)
Right, now for the velocity term. Integrating dK=dU-dP, we get K=U-P. Taking K from this and knowing K=1/2*V^2, we get
V=Sqrt(2*K)
This is essentially the energy balance I did for the program, with a little reworking to better work with Elementary.
Whoo, now we just need to calculate our rho for desired g force. To simplify things, I assumed a constant g force (although it would be possible to update my formulas with a changing value of g over time, I didn't really want to go that far into things). Here's the calculation for rho:
Finally, we need to update our theta. We know the arc length struck is r*alpha. Alpha is the angle struck by ds (the change in angle from movement along the path, not our theta from before. Luckily, however dAlpha turns out to be dTheta. So, knowing our differential arc distance (dS from before):
dTheta= -(dS/rho)
Alright, now our math's all set and we're good to play around. Here's the final elementary formula file, and here's a direct file link to download Elementary itself, if anyone feels like playing along. To open the formula, install and run Elementary and press ctrl-f. Open my formula and set the divisions box to 256 or 512 (more divisions=longer element). Finally, click the 'Force number of Segments' box and choose 8 or above. Unfortunately to actually ride the elements generated you must have the full version of Nolimits, but you can at least see shapes. I'm pretty satisfied with my work on this formula, and the resultant elements work well.
Anyway, to conclude here's a pretty airtime hill generated by the program.
Update-5/1/09
After speaking with Rhoads and Krousgrill we finally got the formula to accurately work. Turns out it's more accurate to consolidate the code to 4 lines. Here's the new iterative code, if anyone's interested:
;Theta updater
theta= theta - (v*dt/(v * v / (cos[theta]*EG - gwant*EG)))
;Velocity Updater
v = SQRT[2*(Energy - (v*dt * Abs[gwant*EG] * 0.0275)- ( Y * EG))]
;Y position updater
Y= Y + v * sin[theta] * dt
;X position updater
X= X + v * cos[theta] * dt
;We hate Z
Z= 0
I also added a switch so the gforce can be varied over time, meaning complete hills can be generated. If anyone's interested I can send you the new formula and show you how to use it, just send me an email. Anyway, thanks for reading!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Part 2: Airtime!
Alright, let's move on to part 2, airtime hills. These elements are specially designed hills to drop the normal force of the coaster seat on its riders to zero (or, as we'll see later, into negative forces). Weightlessness is a feeling that fascinates many. Falling is scary but exhilarating, providing an appearance of danger through speed and sensation. The feeling of weightlessness derived from such a fall became very popular, and was one of the main attractions behind many of the rollercoasters from both yesterday and today. Airtime hills were some of the first elements developed for coasters as, once a ride got up in the air, it made perfect sense to drop back to the ground. The first airtime hills were based more on experimentation than dynamics problems, but modern coasters take complex approaches to providing perfect hills. Before we add such a hill to our ride, I'll give some background on airtime hills over time.
The year is 1976, and Arrow Dynamics is building the first truly modern coasters. Each has a series of elements, usually culminating in the popular double corkscrew. Now, as an Arrow Dynamics engineer, how would we go about designing an airtime hill? The norm for the day were constant radius curves attached in series. A small curve up, a long arc pointing downwards to create airtime, and a small curve bringing the train back to the horizontal. From our coursework, we can easily calculate the speed required to float over the crest of a hill given a path curvature or desired force. I'll walk through a relatively simple example. We'll assume I can target a speed of 15m/s (54 km/hr) at the top of our example curve. What radius should we create for perfect weightlessness? It's easy enough, as shown here:
Now that we have a suitable radius, I'll build a short test track with the specifications above. Here's an editor side view of our hill. You can see the three separate sections of the hill. I've added 2 support columns to further illustrate how the center section has a constant radius.
Now let's simulate our track, using the track and train style of the time. Riding in the middle of the train, we can see that, at the crest of the hill, we have a perfect 0.0 vertical g reading. This is the weightlessness we were looking for! Note that, because the train does not travel at a constant speed over the curve, the g force will vary over course of the hill.
We also note that, even in the position we based our radius calculation off of, the front of the train holds a -.1 force, as shown below:
Why the difference? The entire train is constrained to move as a single unit, and the speed of the train as a whole over the hill is higher when the front and rear of the train traverse the top. This is due to a lower center of gravity for the entire train (translating to higher kinetic energy). For the first half of the hill, the front of the train will get less than the target g force, having stronger airtime. However, on the second half, these seats actually experience the opposite effect, having slightly more than 0 g. Such differences are less important import for smaller trains but a critical issue for larger ones. From this idea, it's clear that the front and back seats of a coaster will have slightly greater airtime spikes but will also experience times where airtime is less strong. The middle seats will have the most consistent airtime. This principle, of course, only applies to symmetrical elements.
Alright, now that we've designed the perfect airtime hill for 1976, why don't we just put it in our ride? Well, for starters, this element is slightly painful. The change from positive gforce in the first section of the hill to weightlessness in the next is extremely abrupt (with, in fact, absolutely no transition between them), leading to a jerky, unnatural motion. This jerk is best illustrated in this onride video of Cedar Point's Corkscrew ride (it's right after the lift hill). Note the instantaneous shift from an upwards slope to the airtime section. In order to keep our vertebrae in their proper order, we need to move to the current age of design.
Modern airtime hills contain several improvements over their forerunners. First and foremost, they are parabolic in shape. The radius of the airtime section decreases as it nears the crest, allowing for a continuous stretch of the target weightlessness. The curve tightens as the train slows, keeping the acceleration of the passengers the same. Modern hills also feature sweeping transitions from positive g force to weightlessness, giving a smoother ride and a much safer one. For our track, I'll use a technique developed by a pair of German students called 'force vector design.' This system inputs a series of g force formulas and time intervals, and generates a perfect ride path based on the desired effects. Unfortunately, beyond this basic concept it's a bit too hard to formulate a model for the hill, mostly because our dynamics-fu is not yet advanced enough. I don't have experience relating multiple dynamic iterations such as is needed here. I am, however, currently working on an attempt at this. A new post will follow sometime this week, and hopefully together we can get something working. For today we'll just skip ahead to the result; a modern, parabolic airtime hill creating a constant -0.5 g force. Wait a minute, you may say, how does a coaster experience such a strong negative force? What's to keep the train from flying and crashing into the ground? The solution is a complex wheel assembly involving, in the case of our Intamin train, 6 wheels per point of contact. The two wheels underneath the track can take the force created by the rider's upward acceleration, keeping the ride on track. Here's a real-life example on the world's second fastest coaster, Top Thrill Dragster:
So why do we want less than weightlessness? The sensation of 'ejection' airtime, or an experience of being thrown from the train causes an even stronger force and feeling of danger. This type of airtime is my absolute favorite. A major concern for ejection airtime is the restraint system; it needs to be comfortable and extremely reliable. The system needs to contain the passenger in the car without bruising while hopefully allowing freedom of movement. Luckily, Intamin trains are among the most comfortable in the business, utilizing either a unobtrusive 't-bar' as seen in Top Thrill Dragster above or a newer OTSR (over the shoulder restraint) design which is still quite comfortable. Here's Hershey Park's Fahrenheit with such a design.
Alright, after justifying our hill, let's see it in action! Note again that our g force is off the target because the front car has passed the crest of the hill.
Hooray, we've got ourselves a solid element. This is, however, just one example of a modern airtime hill. We could have used hills with varying amplitudes and speeds to create a variety of effects. Here's an example of a slower hill which holds its airtime for a longer period of time. This is one of my finished rides, for the final round of a design tournament (I ended up winning).
There also exist speed hills, as illustrated in this picture from 'Thunder Dolphin' in Tokyo. This type of hill has less airtime but a much higher velocity, leading to a unique sensation. It's at the very bottom of this picture (Sorry, it's partly obscured as I couldn't find a better picture):
Ok, that was part two. Our coaster's still very basic, but we'll work on more complex things when we return. I'll describe most of the common track elements and implement several of them in our design. Until next time!
The year is 1976, and Arrow Dynamics is building the first truly modern coasters. Each has a series of elements, usually culminating in the popular double corkscrew. Now, as an Arrow Dynamics engineer, how would we go about designing an airtime hill? The norm for the day were constant radius curves attached in series. A small curve up, a long arc pointing downwards to create airtime, and a small curve bringing the train back to the horizontal. From our coursework, we can easily calculate the speed required to float over the crest of a hill given a path curvature or desired force. I'll walk through a relatively simple example. We'll assume I can target a speed of 15m/s (54 km/hr) at the top of our example curve. What radius should we create for perfect weightlessness? It's easy enough, as shown here:
Now that we have a suitable radius, I'll build a short test track with the specifications above. Here's an editor side view of our hill. You can see the three separate sections of the hill. I've added 2 support columns to further illustrate how the center section has a constant radius.
Now let's simulate our track, using the track and train style of the time. Riding in the middle of the train, we can see that, at the crest of the hill, we have a perfect 0.0 vertical g reading. This is the weightlessness we were looking for! Note that, because the train does not travel at a constant speed over the curve, the g force will vary over course of the hill.
We also note that, even in the position we based our radius calculation off of, the front of the train holds a -.1 force, as shown below:
Why the difference? The entire train is constrained to move as a single unit, and the speed of the train as a whole over the hill is higher when the front and rear of the train traverse the top. This is due to a lower center of gravity for the entire train (translating to higher kinetic energy). For the first half of the hill, the front of the train will get less than the target g force, having stronger airtime. However, on the second half, these seats actually experience the opposite effect, having slightly more than 0 g. Such differences are less important import for smaller trains but a critical issue for larger ones. From this idea, it's clear that the front and back seats of a coaster will have slightly greater airtime spikes but will also experience times where airtime is less strong. The middle seats will have the most consistent airtime. This principle, of course, only applies to symmetrical elements.
Alright, now that we've designed the perfect airtime hill for 1976, why don't we just put it in our ride? Well, for starters, this element is slightly painful. The change from positive gforce in the first section of the hill to weightlessness in the next is extremely abrupt (with, in fact, absolutely no transition between them), leading to a jerky, unnatural motion. This jerk is best illustrated in this onride video of Cedar Point's Corkscrew ride (it's right after the lift hill). Note the instantaneous shift from an upwards slope to the airtime section. In order to keep our vertebrae in their proper order, we need to move to the current age of design.
Modern airtime hills contain several improvements over their forerunners. First and foremost, they are parabolic in shape. The radius of the airtime section decreases as it nears the crest, allowing for a continuous stretch of the target weightlessness. The curve tightens as the train slows, keeping the acceleration of the passengers the same. Modern hills also feature sweeping transitions from positive g force to weightlessness, giving a smoother ride and a much safer one. For our track, I'll use a technique developed by a pair of German students called 'force vector design.' This system inputs a series of g force formulas and time intervals, and generates a perfect ride path based on the desired effects. Unfortunately, beyond this basic concept it's a bit too hard to formulate a model for the hill, mostly because our dynamics-fu is not yet advanced enough. I don't have experience relating multiple dynamic iterations such as is needed here. I am, however, currently working on an attempt at this. A new post will follow sometime this week, and hopefully together we can get something working. For today we'll just skip ahead to the result; a modern, parabolic airtime hill creating a constant -0.5 g force. Wait a minute, you may say, how does a coaster experience such a strong negative force? What's to keep the train from flying and crashing into the ground? The solution is a complex wheel assembly involving, in the case of our Intamin train, 6 wheels per point of contact. The two wheels underneath the track can take the force created by the rider's upward acceleration, keeping the ride on track. Here's a real-life example on the world's second fastest coaster, Top Thrill Dragster:
So why do we want less than weightlessness? The sensation of 'ejection' airtime, or an experience of being thrown from the train causes an even stronger force and feeling of danger. This type of airtime is my absolute favorite. A major concern for ejection airtime is the restraint system; it needs to be comfortable and extremely reliable. The system needs to contain the passenger in the car without bruising while hopefully allowing freedom of movement. Luckily, Intamin trains are among the most comfortable in the business, utilizing either a unobtrusive 't-bar' as seen in Top Thrill Dragster above or a newer OTSR (over the shoulder restraint) design which is still quite comfortable. Here's Hershey Park's Fahrenheit with such a design.
Alright, after justifying our hill, let's see it in action! Note again that our g force is off the target because the front car has passed the crest of the hill.
Hooray, we've got ourselves a solid element. This is, however, just one example of a modern airtime hill. We could have used hills with varying amplitudes and speeds to create a variety of effects. Here's an example of a slower hill which holds its airtime for a longer period of time. This is one of my finished rides, for the final round of a design tournament (I ended up winning).
There also exist speed hills, as illustrated in this picture from 'Thunder Dolphin' in Tokyo. This type of hill has less airtime but a much higher velocity, leading to a unique sensation. It's at the very bottom of this picture (Sorry, it's partly obscured as I couldn't find a better picture):
Ok, that was part two. Our coaster's still very basic, but we'll work on more complex things when we return. I'll describe most of the common track elements and implement several of them in our design. Until next time!
Friday, February 20, 2009
Part 1: Banked Curves
Hi 274 students! Upon looking at the homework assigned for this weekend, I could not help but apply the second problem to my dearest hobby: rollercoaster simulation. Rollercoasters, as you may well know, are mechanical devices designed to go very fast and move you from where you are now to that exact spot a few minutes in the future. They serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever and have no practical applications. However they are a perfect mix of engineering and art, and I have spent countless hours creating and tweaking ride paths to push the envelope of ridiculousness. The program I use is called “Nolimits,” and it is the most popular simulation software short of the rollercoaster tycoon series (which we will not be talking about today). A demo is available on its website. It allows manipulation of the ride path through placement of nodes (using a 3 point bezier system (not important)), and has a simulator mode where g-force is calculated in real-time and everything is rendered all shiny and pretty. Today, I will make for you a small section of a rollercoaster attempting to apply our coursework along the way. This will be in three parts, ‘banked curves’, ‘airtime hills’, and ‘everything else’.
Let’s begin! Today I’ll be using a track and train type from Intamin, the good Swiss people responsible for such rides as Millennium Force and Top Thrill Dragster. I’ll use a simple 3 car train. Before we begin our curve, we need a station and something to make us go. Lift hills and launches are both options to get up to speed, but for control purposes we’ll have a flat launch limited to 80km/hr (about 50mi/hr and 22.22 m/s). The launch is set to have an acceleration of 1.6 gforces (1.6*9.81=15.696m/s^2), a pretty strong push. The length of launch track required can be calculated from our coursework, but to save time I’ll skip the simple calculation and move onto the main part of this post. Here we have our humble beginnings:
Let’s begin! Today I’ll be using a track and train type from Intamin, the good Swiss people responsible for such rides as Millennium Force and Top Thrill Dragster. I’ll use a simple 3 car train. Before we begin our curve, we need a station and something to make us go. Lift hills and launches are both options to get up to speed, but for control purposes we’ll have a flat launch limited to 80km/hr (about 50mi/hr and 22.22 m/s). The launch is set to have an acceleration of 1.6 gforces (1.6*9.81=15.696m/s^2), a pretty strong push. The length of launch track required can be calculated from our coursework, but to save time I’ll skip the simple calculation and move onto the main part of this post. Here we have our humble beginnings:
Before we move on, I'll give a brief discussion of the options available in launches and lift hills. First, there's the traditional chain lift. This engages a catch on the bottom of the train and imparts potential energy using an electric motor. The clicking noise heard when climbing a lift hill is due to a safety feature known as the anti-rollback dog. This device locks into a step arrangement mounted on teh lift hill and, in case of chain failure, will hold the entire train in place. Here's a better description of the process if you are interested. There's also a more modern version of the lifthill, using a cable and a catch-car which connects to the train, pulling it to the top with a strong motor mounted on the ground. Here's a view of the crest of Millennium Force's cable lift hill and you can see the catch car (the long gray thing in the middle of the track).
This system allows for a faster and steeper lift, which is also quiet (the silence is because the anti-rollback devices are electromagnetically disengaged by the passing train and automatically close after it passes, a really cool technology).
Launch systems are also a solid option. Many options exist, including electromagnets, pneumatics, hydraulics, flywheels. Electromagnetic propulsion involves using strong electrical impulses to attract magnetic fins attached to the trains. This type of system is fairly popular as it offers very precise control of speed and quite powerful acceleration. Pneumatic and hydraulic systems try to compress a gas using either mechanical work or hydraulic pressure (respectively), then release this pressure by spinning a drum attached to a launch cable (and subsequently the train). These systems are typically less reliable, but achieve the most powerful results (128 miles per hour plus). The final type of launch involves a strong engine spinning a wheel which is quickly engaged through a clutch system to pull the car by use of the same cable system as before. This system is the cheapest and is used on most of the slower launches.
Now that we're up to speed, let's begin our ride. First, we'll add our curve. Flat curves, although simple, can be extremely powerful elements if used properly. A high-speed, high-force flat curve just above the ground can be a tremendously exciting element, and one of the cheapest. First up, you may ask why a rollercoaster would have banked curves in the first place. Most chiefly, this is done because riders absorb vertical g-forces much more kindly than lateral ones. It feels much more natural to be compressed than to be forced to the side. Although most wooden coasters thrive on such sensations, their steel brethren push, as much as possible, to eliminate these forces. Additionally lateral forces put strain on weird places in the wheel assemblies, another bad point. So, as in problem 3-III, we seek to completely eliminate lateral g-forces from a flat turn. We’ll look at the banked track halfway through the curve, where the bank will be constant (at the sides of the curve there will be transitions from and to 0 degrees of bank). The radius of the curve we want will be 13.5 meters, small enough for some real force. The calculations become very easy as speed is known and we’ll ignore thrust and friction. What angle should we bank the turn so riders are squashed into their seats, not tossed painfully to the side? It’s pretty simple:
So we need a 75 degree bank. Well, this shan’t be too hard. Using an element generator I can make a flat curve of 13.5 meters. I’ll bank it to 75 degrees as calculated and simulate the result.
You can see for yourself that, although the car has slowed to 79 km/hr, we have eliminated almost all lateral g-force. Additionally, we have +3.6 gs vertically, a forceful but certainly safe number. Let’s see for a second what happens when we lower the banking to a measly 50 degrees.
Yikes, 1.4 lateral gs! Such a force would probably injure riders, as the restraints are not set up to handle that type of force. Well, this is why we do our calculations ahead of time. You may be wondering about the lateral g-force at the entrance to the turn. Right now, there is a dangerous spike as there is no transition between straight and unbanked to curved and banked. To help smooth this out, modern coasters are designed using what is called a ‘heartline.’ This refers to looking at the center of the rider’s path (through the ‘heart’ of the passengers), and rotating the ride path around this point. Here is a visualization (credit) :
To achieve this, I need to add a small section of straight track to serve as the transition. Here’s a view of the track from above with the heartline highlighted in yellow to further illustrate the point:
See how the heartline remains straight while the track banks in preparation for the turn? This creates a smooth, painless transition that is the basis for most of the complex elements in coasters today. Let’s see that in the simulator:
It looks weird, but works very well. All modern coasters begin turns this way. Here’s a picture of a real-world example of this, a transition on Hershey Park’s Storm Runner.
Alright that’s it for part one. Next time we’ll go vertical. If you enjoyed this or couldn’t understand anything, please leave some feedback so I can make part 2 better. Also you can vote for the color of the ride if you wish. Please make all comments on the 274 course blog.
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