Tanks4me05

My pipe dream of a list for this season is six parks, though I might have to cross that list down in half. You must have lots of money. Sending some my way would be cool.

I haven't gone to SFNE since 2007, and I'm planning on finally going back between the last week of July and the first week of August. I remember that operations were quite slow (1 train on S:RoS/Bizarro with 5+ minute dispatches) but I don't know how much that has changed in the past seven years. I plan on getting there about a half hour before the park opens in order to get a good parking spot and to beat the crowds. Is it recommended to get a flash pass? If not, what route through the park is best recommended to avoid the crowds? I'm considering doing the water park as although I rarely do water rides, this will be the first master blaster type slide that I have encountered in person so I'm reconsidering. I was originally planning to do the trip during Cyclone's last week of operation, but my aunt and uncle (whose home I'm using as a base camp) are going to be away at that time, but I know I'm not missing much because I remember Cyclone not being that good anyway.

We don't need no stinking science. Blasphemy! You always need science! Two trains of different weights but the same surface area perpendicular to the direction of travel going down the same drop will achieve the same speed. However, the train that is heavier will slow down more gradually, because the formula for drag force (the primary force that slows down coaster trains in warm weather*) is f = (0.5)(C_v)(rho)(A)(V^2), where C_v is the lumped drag coefficient and is determined by various atmospheric conditions, rho is the density of the air, A is the cross sectional area that is perpendicular to the air flow, and V is the velocity of the object; the value of an object's drag force is independent of its mass, so the same force attempting to slow down a larger mass will take longer to stop it. *The viscosity of the lubricants typically used on roller coaster wheels are highly sensitive to temperature changes; the higher the temperature, the less viscous the fluid, and the less friction is experienced by the wheels. It's like the difference between using mineral oil and peanut butter as wheel grease, so that's why most coasters don't operate under 40 degrees or so, as the likelihood of stalling somewhere on the course increases dramatically.

^I actually figured out how to solve my issue; I simply constrained my entire Inventor assembly to the assembly file's origin planes, which are default hidden as opposed to Creo which default shown (the CAD program I use at school.) That being said, I have another question: Can someone provide additional detail as to what the "Follow in Full Orientation" button does when inserting elements? I'm making a coaster that requires much more exact geometry than any of my previous designs, so I never really paid attention to that feature, but now I'm basically getting confused and I have to start over and subsequently wasted probably 8 - 12 hours of work, as the shaping of the elements changes slightly, but just enough for this particular project to totally screw over what I'm trying to do. At first I thought it was some sort of smoother tool, but I couldn't tell much of a difference; sometimes the track transitions when importing from Newton without the Full Orientation selected seem to appear more discretized and not as smooth, but not always.

Nothing about it (retracking and "new" trains) had made a difference in the ride experience on Predator, it's just old and rough. Darien Lake needs to demolish Predator and build a new wooden coaster in its place, that's what Six Flags Magic Mountain did with Psyclone! I simply do not understand what you guys are talking about. It's not that rough, and I've been on bad coasters. It's on par, both in smoothness and intensity, with HP's Comet.

^I fail to understand how to change the coordinate system origin in either Inventor or 3DS Max (and I don't know which one is causing the problem.) Might you be able to provide step by step instructions? (Because I never recreated entire amusement parks before, I never encountered this problem.) EDIT: I figured out how to rotate the object, but how do I constrain it to an origin plane?

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to activate the new post alert for this thread, and I never figured out if it did for edited posts. I'm making a park, and the static non-coaster objects are made in Autodesk Inventor. I then import it into 3DSMax and I export as a .3ds file. The problem is that in NL2, when I try to place the object, the globe used to rotate the .3DS object is literally over a mile and a half separated from the arrows that move the object in linear displacements. How do I move the rotation globe so that it is coincident with the linear displacement arrows?

Are you going to upload the Paratrooper? I want to use it for a personal project of mine.

^You are correct, it will affect the bolts. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the actual swaying of the track would cause the support to move and deflect, and all this would more likely strip the threads of the nuts and bolts, and instead the vibrations that the track encounters would actually loosen them; this can be mitigated by using certain kinds of nuts (jam nuts, etc.) or using two or more nuts right next to each other (this is how coaster supports tend to be constructed) and cars and aviation vehicles often use bolts with very fine threading to minimize this as well, because they encounter lots of vibrations. The possibility also exists that the construction crews didn't tighten the bolts enough, and that the mechanics didn't inspect the track of those rides properly.

I just finished my junior year in Mechanical Engineering, (take a wild guess as to why) so the nerd in me is unable to resist piggybacking on what you said and must educate the uninformed. Every solid material acts like a spring; when a force is applied to the object, it will deflect to some degree. Objects don't technically rupture from forces, but rather pressures or stresses (a force divided by the area over which it acts.) Under a certain range of forces, called the elastic range, the object will just bounce back from its original shape. Beyond this range is called the plastic range, where once an object is stressed enough, it will permanently deform, either only partially returning to its original shape or not returning to its original shape by any amount. Then, after a certain point, it physically ruptures. Note that not all materials undergo significant deformation before rupturing; Those that do are considered ductile (copper) and those that don't are considered brittle (concrete.) Also, there is the concept of fatigue, where after a force is repeated a certain number of times, the part will actually rupture at forces well below the elastic limit (the highest stress in the elastic range.) Some materials, (mostly steels) have what is known as an "endurance limit," where if a repeated stress is applied at or below this value, the stress can be applied an infinite number of times. The exact causes of fatigue are not known (which surprised me when I learned about this last semester) but what I've been able to gather is that one of the main causes is that defects in the material's microscopic structure concentrate the stresses and produce cracks, which propagate until the part breaks. Since I'm not employed by Chance-Morgan, I can't say exactly whether or not they designed the supports and track to withstand stresses below their endurance limits or not, but my guess is that they actually didn't, and probably designed them to last several million cycles instead, as that those stress limits are quite a bit higher, meaning they can use a lot less material.

Question for the devs since you guys seem to patrol this thread pretty frequently: Are you planning on adding a bobsled coaster or Flying Turns to the lineup for a future NL2 update?

^That is correct. With the looks of it, I probably won't do Kings Island because it roughly doubles the cost of that trip, and I want to try and do a separate, six day trip with a couple of friends as well. So, the question narrows down to whether or not it is possible to to all of CW in one day without a fast lane, because that will save about $50 something. Also, would there be a recommended route throughout the park to minimize wait times?

I'm considering a trip that will take me to Waldameer, Canada's Wonderland, and possibly Kings Island. My question (a quick one) is if Canada's Wonderland and Kings Island can both be done in one day, without a fast lane, and what time of the year would be best to do this?

Holy crap, that was fast. And what's great is that they have probably 80% of the original Thunderbolt's land left to expand even further, assuming they still own the entirety of it.

^^Don't worry, it's extremely difficult to insult me. You can be blunt.

Honestly, I figured a flaming bag of Eeyore would be better. But I don't get what people don't enjoy about Volares. I've been on two (Canada's Wonderland and Coney Island) and I actually thoroughly enjoyed both of them. Are they world class? No. But I enjoy going on them, and I love staring at all the exposed mechanisms for the ingenious spiral lift system. It's not like I don't have anything better to compare them to, I have almost 250 credits under my belt and I have gone on a big chunk of the top 5 Mitch Hawker steel and wood coasters. Either I'm insane, or most enthusiasts are overly picky about the smoothness of a ride. Oh well, less lines for me.

^The reason the counterweight is there is because if it wasn't the forces of the gondola on going down would totally wreck the motor, bearings, etc. In order to achieve this effect, I'd say just keep the counterweight and use a more powerful motor.

Actually, the idea is pretty ingenious. First off, I'm not entirely sure that the layouts they showed us in the animations are even real layouts (they could be; I have no idea.) Second off, it's very obvious that those animations don't have accurate physics engines if you look closely at how the trains move. Of course there isn't a big drop. The faster a coaster goes, the wider the turn has to be in order to keep the G's the same, so in order to have a 500+ foot drop have safe G's, the turn will be massive and will require space that not too many parks have. This ride is primarily intended to be at home in a downtown urban skyline, not necessarily a dedicated amusement park. Since space in those areas are at a premium, there's a guarantee that there probably won't be any huge drops. But just because the drops aren't big doesn't mean it's going to be weak, it just means that in order to create intense G's you can make the track curves of a tigher radius to achieve the same intensity. Take Nemesis, Maverick and Kawasemi for example; they are some of the top coasters on the planet, yet they barely have 100 foot drops.

^Changes have been made. I went to the "Dress Rehearsal" (friends and family of employees got into the park for free from 6 - 8 PM on May 1st; I'm friends with one of the guys in marketing) and what was pointed out were things like Viper's newly painted sign a couple of people have mentioned. Perry's Ice Cream Parlor got a fresh new paint job, and Jo's Eatery is in the process of being painted (IIRC it seemed about 50 - 75% done when I saw it.) RoS is also supposed to run its second train this year. I can't remember if it was already mentioned in this thread, but Beaver Bros. Cafe' is getting 9 new gourmet burgers added to the menu.

^Autodesk Inventor is an Engineering CAD program that can be downloaded by students for free (though there's a permanent watermark on any files you make that says it's a student version, so you can't use the files for professional designs.) Autodesk also makes .3DS Max, so I use .3DS Max (again, I can download it for free) primarily to import Inventor files and export them as .3DS files. EDIT: Again, since I don't have knowledge in Java yet, for displaying the custom HUD, would it be possible, using that script you pasted, to display the HUD in oh say the upper right hand corner of the screen so that it's relatively unobtrusive? Also, how would I be able to disable the HUD when I am done testing the G's? (I basically only use the accelerometers during design and turn them off when done with the ride and am just watching it for fun.) Is there some sort of easy way to add in a disable button for the custom HUD, or would it just be easier to go back into the script, highlight that section and turn that section into comments?

^Can I make the majority of the objects in Inventor, export them to a .3DS format via 3DS Max, and then animate them in the scripting program, or do I have to "make" the trains entirely while I am scripting? I'm very knowledgeable with Inventor, so if I can use it in any significant amount, that will save me a monstrous amount of time. (I won't take the Java course until the fall, so I'm not really sure as to how everything works.)

Y'allz got it all wrong. Volare. -Tanks "I've been on two, and I actually like them both" 4me05.

NL2 question: I'm going to take a Java Programming class at college in order to be able to do custom scripts. One of the things I want to do is to be able to make new trains that seat the riders in new positions, as well as making different track. Would it be possible to do the following, as I assume this would be how to pull it off: 1: Make the cars of an existing coaster invisible. 2A: Make custom scripted cars to follow the existing cars. 2B: Animate the train so that the restraints open and close when entering and exiting the station. 2C: Somehow make sure that the accelerometers can register the correct data from the new seating positions. 3: Make a custom scripted track profile to follow track that I checked off as invisible. I figured that 1 - 2B can be done, but can 2C and 3 be done with the current program?

Honestly, my favorite thing to eat there is probably the alligator bites in the International Food Court; they taste like a mix between chicken and scallops. (Get some white birch beer, too; I live in central NY and I only found one place up here that sells birch beer, which I'm not sure they do anymore.)

Those who have been on all three of what most people think to be Schwarzkopf's greatest (Galaxyland Mindbender, Montana Infinitum, Olympia Looping) which would you say is the most intense, or are they all pretty much the same?