Vekoma Fan Boy

I've always viewed it as a masculine pet name. My mother calls my stepfather Luca all the time (seeing as his middle name is Lucassien).

VFB, actually DOING something?? NO WAY! Yep. This is a coaster I started about 2 weeks ago that I have decided is good enough to be shown to the public. (Or at least try to finish ) This coaster is designed by my own firm, Negative -G Coasters. This is a medium-to-large wooden roller coaster that was somewhat inspired by Ravine Flyer and Boulder Dash, the ride offers stomach-turning drops, a mixture of ejector and floater airtime, and more than enough laterals to go around! The ride is going to have an out-and-back/twister design, all set in a hilly terrain and crossing a creek multiple times. SUMMER CREEK FLYER Goals -Out-and-back/twister design -Custom wide supports and lateral bracing -Well-paced layout -Good mixture of floater and ejector air time -Custom support station and other details Progress Trackwork: |--------|------------| 40%/100% Supports: |--------------------| 0%/100% Terrain: |--------------------| 0%/100% Theming: |--------------------| 0%/100% Statistics Height: 135 feet Drop: 106 feet Speed at bottom of first drop: 55mph Top Speed: 60mph (achieved at the bottom of the 2nd drop) Length (estimated final): ~3500-4000 feet Pictures SCF1.bmp Train on the lift hill SCF2.bmp Coming down the first drop SCF3.bmp Looking down the first drop! SCF4.bmp Going up the turnaround SCF5.bmp You get an insane(!) pop of laterals and ejector air here! SCF6.bmp Headchopper over the second drop SCF7.bmp The insane turnaround! SCF8.bmp It doesn't look like it, but this DOES clear the tunnel test! SCF9.bmp Overview of progress thus far. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the weekend!

Spin Doctor!!

Children of Decadence by Children of Bodom

This is the third time in the past 5 minutes I have read everything of interest on TPR, and then habitually went from TPR to my home page (which is TPR), and straight back to the forums to find something interesting. EDIT: 4th time now.

Uhm, okay, why does he think this? Vekoma "My hard drive must be scratched to hell, because "End Now" doesn't END freaking NOW!!" Fan Boy

^You can't. You need software more along the lines of Google SketchUp or 3DSMax for those types of modeling. Inventor is used in the industry for digital prototyping. While I would LOVE(!!!) to be able to export the .ipt files to .3DS format for use in games, the process to do so is, uhm, interesting in the least. And quite a bitch to do.

Much better! Keep up the good work. What you have is very impressive, and its making me want to go attempt to design a roller coaster train in Inventor. I just have to ask though, how exactly did you make your seats? I'm guessing you lofted four or five sketches together to make the contour of the seats. (Its the actual seat part I'm wondering about, not the backs.)

Better, but that system would cause too much wear on the wheels and guide rails, (which are more like slots than rails). What I would recommend is a set of cylindrical rails where you have the slots, and wheels contoured to the rail, like a roller coaster wheel. A very crude 5 minute example, but it gets the point across.

You still need guide wheels to guide the car along the track, there cannot be any contact between the LIM stators and their receptive blocks on the vehicle. If you wish, you can send me the .ipt and .iam files and I could try to whip up a set of guide wheels for you. I will warn you though, I have the free student edition of Inventor, making files I make for you unsuitable for professional purposes. (I don't think that should be a problem, but I figured I should let you know.)

Uhh, dude. Its for RCT3. Of course its going to be blocky.

Not a bad ride! It did have its flaws though. I'm going to give you the 'compliment sandwich' review. Good: Great pacing Very nice flow Insane(!) helix Not so good: Fails tunnel test, (track and supports come too close to the riders and could harm them) Track was slightly bumpy and misshapen, but this will improve with time You used LIMs on the curve into a the station. Not good. In real life the fin that goes into the LIM would scrape against and damage them. Try splitting the curve up and placing 1 small tire drive section every 20 feet or so. More good: G forces Stayed in check Fun layout! Lift hills were not too slow/long (a typical problem with mine train coasters) Overall Score: 7.5/10. Keep working at it and the problems will fade. Don't give up!

35 degrees, really? LMAO! It was somewhere around 27-30 degrees this morning and everyone was moving just as fast. If not a little faster actually!

I wish I could use AutoCAD like that! I used to have it (Yay for free student licenses!) But I could never figure out how to use it. I'm much better with Inventor. But sadly, Inventor is more along the lines of digital prototyping than design. If I were to download AutoCAD again, would you be wiling to give me a few pointers?

I'm in. Also, would you consider stacking to be 1 or 2 empty trains sitting in a layover section between the load and unload stations?

I noticed that too. I'm pretty sure that it's just an error in the computer rendering. Otherwise, the front car would tilt forward and scrape along the track, which would definitely add to the thrill factor in a dying/severe injury sort of way. Either that, or there's a really strong beam underneath the car holding up the front of it. I think the PTC cars may look better, but these cars look like they'll be very comfortable. It'll also be interesting to see a 14 car train. I wish I could get out to Holiday World and ride this thing! My bet is that its done like B&M Floorless trains. The first and second car can only roll in relation to each other, and all the other cars in the train can pitch, yaw, and and roll in relation to each other. So the first car effectively becomes the zero car. This is the same thing that is done with a zero car on Flyers and most B&M trains, but they just plopped a pair of seats on the zero car in this case.

Good job with the Styrene! This model looks a lot better than the wood and wire models! (Not saying they were bad though )

Catwalks don't get supported by the track supports. They are suspended from I beam frames from the top of the track. (Hence the OP's use of them)

Its up to you, but if you ask me, the chapel setting is the worst looking of them all. None of them are really THAT accurate, but at least the steeple setting is a good representation of most wooden roller coaster supports. Plus I think it would be a good exercise for you to do some custom supporting on a wooden roller coaster. Even if it is just the wide supports.

^That happens. With terraformed wooden coasters you are just about forced to build the lateral supports. But then again, the modelers adage says that something you do yourself almost always is better than something out of a box. (Or in this case, an OLD piece of software!) EDIT: And if you really are that opposed to it, I wouldn't mind giving it a crack for you. I've wanted to for a long time, I just haven't been able to finish a track to actually support.

Its because paint cant do clear layers in an paint. NL car textures are colorless for the most part, and the color you pick in the editor gets put in where there is no color assigned. A good (free!) program that I use for creating car textures is Serif PhotoPlus. Its easy to work with, and won't turn the clear layers white. (Watch, open up your modified texture and an unmodified NL texture, yours will have a white background and the default will have a checkered white and grey background)

Did you all really just have a 3 page discussion on the speed of a Coaster Dynamix Model? Jack and I may have gotten heated at eachother in the past, but even I can vouch for him as to the speed of the Coasterdynamix models. It is an O scale model, proportioned to 1/48 of the real thing. The trains travel at 1/48 the speed, over 1/48 the distance, in 1/48 of the time. So what do we get? 48 Laps on the Coaster Dynamix model in the same amount of time it takes for its full scale counterpart to make 1 lap. Simple stuff. Does it suck that you can't really see the train clearly as travels its course? Kinda. But its the way it all works.

^Unfortunately no. We are hoping that we will get a larger or resizeable/reshapeable building area in NL2, but there is no word on that that I have heard.

Its not a station flyby. The blueprints show the track going up and over the station.

http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29233