My Custom-Designed Roller Coaster

[Phatage]

Hi, my name is Travis and although I've technically been a member of this site for quite a while, I haven't really introduced myself on these boards. I am a serious aspiring roller coaster designer and I'm currently getting my Master's in Mechanical Engineering for this reason.

 

To make a long (and on-going) story short, my college engineering senior project was to create a design process for creating roller coaster track based on g-force inputs, similar to the FVD system some of you may know from NoLimits but more flexible. I also designed, built, and tested a model track to test the method's accuracy. Since the project's completion, I've spent the last six months creating my first full design, a small, ~50 ft. tall wooden coaster named "David" (as opposed to "Goliath") that packs quite a punch! A picture of the layout and dots showing the location of the train every tenth of a second can be seen below, and while it may be hard to see, it does have a turn banked to 90 degrees

 

 

What I eventually want to do is create a portfolio of designs and present them to different roller coaster designers in hopes that they may offer me my dream job. Before doing so, I wanted to know if you, the Theme Park Review community, had any opinions and/or suggestions on what I was doing. For anybody interested, a detailed writeup of "David" along with my final project report (a bit lengthy and technical) are linked below, and I hope that you enjoy them.

 

http://wikis.swarthmore.edu/ECE90/images/4/42/David_Writeup.pdf

http://wikis.swarthmore.edu/ECE90/images/4/49/E90_Report.pdf

 

Thank you,

Travis

[Ace Of Spades]

Huh, this is...pretty cool, actually. Reminds me a fair bit of the new Texas Giant.

 

Although, a lot of those dips surrounding the helix seem to be a bit violent looking, but maybe it's just the angle of the photo.

 

Edit: I don't know for sure, but you might want to get a mod to move this to the models section, as that's what this is (more or less).

[imawesome1124]

This is pretty beast, I'd say this is a dream worth pursuing. Keep at this dude, I would love to see a member of this community in the design industry. I would love to see more of your designs.

[Phatage]

Thanks, just an update to this, I made a small scale model.

[cfc]

I moved the topic from "Random" to here, where it'll probably get a bit more attention.

[Gmaster562]

At first it looked like a Pinafari coaster. Now it looks like a wooden coaster that belongs in china, because its got a huge helix after the drop. It looks good.

[djbrcace1234]

Phantage, you really need to obtain this sort of career. After some of your RCT2 masterpieces, and your knowledge about coasters and theme parks, You would be great at it.

[Phatage]

Thanks for the comments, I've since started up a couple of other designs with the intention to mimic real designers' styles while incorporating my own. I'll try to update this thread every now and then.

[A.J.]

Thanks for the comments, I've since started up a couple of other designs with the intention to mimic real designers' styles while incorporating my own. I'll try to update this thread every now and then.

 

In my misguided opinion, you shouldn't even mimic real designers' styles at all. I don't know everything about the industry, but it seems as though firms would be more interested as to what you can do and not what they would do if they designed another ride.

[Karezza]

^

Good point. If you keep thinking outside the box and stay creative with your work and making it as unique as possible, then someday you'll have the next greatest roller coaster innovation and possibly change the roller coaster industry (It's a longshot, but hey, anything's possible).

 

I really love your admiration for this kind of stuff. If you stay persistent to your dream, then you'll most likely live it someday. Hope you make it.

[CommanderLock]

This is good stuff. I'm really digging the PDF's you posted (always a good first impression) and the professional-looking quality of the project. Major props on using MatLab+NoLimits+Excel to make it look great. If only I knew how to use MatLab...

[Phatage]

Hey guys, this is just a teaser of what's to come soon, hopefully the style is obvious .

[Gmaster562]

^ So you wanna work for rocky mountain?

[djbrcace1234]

Looks very early like GCI to me.

[paradisecoaster]

^ and if you hold your mouse over the picture it says GCI so yeah, it's obviously a good creation

[djbrcace1234]

I actually prefer the old GCI then the new ones, because honestley, the station flyby are such a gimmick now.

[Phatage]

What makes you say that they've stopped building in their older style? I personally see a lot of their older selves in their newer works, even in the Knight Valley coaster. I've yet to ride one of the station-fly-by coasters, but to clarify my coaster does have one but with a twist...

[djbrcace1234]

I understand the classic GCI elements are still being seen in modern creations, but I just never liked Station flybys. Just a personal choice on my end.

[Phatage]

Well I finally finished the report on this, you can view it below if you like. It goes into a lot of the design philosophy and technical details behind the ride. I spent quite a lot of time on it so I would appreciate if anybody had any comments to share, thanks!

 

http://www.travisrothbloom.com/#!roller-coaster-projects/vstc2=project-soar

[A.J.]

Holy thorough, Batman!

 

Sometime this weekend I'll have to sit down and read the whole blasted thing. Excellent work, from the minute I took to skim through it at this moment.

 

One logistical thing though - make sure you have your link approved by a Games Forum moderator before posting it. Unfortunately, as long as you've been a member, you still don't have 50 posts.

 

I'll give you an exception this time though, because you obviously have put a lot of work into this excellent piece of engineering.

 

EDIT: Or, if I'm being completely ignorant and you got it approved already, that's cool too!

Edited December 1, 2011 by A.J.

[imawesome1124]

That report is remarkably professional. It literally brought a smile to my face reading it, even though I don't understand some of the stuff your talking about because I'm not an expert on coaster forces. I think you need to submit this report to GCI, it seems like the perfect thing to replace Hurler at KD.

[Phatage]

Thanks for the comments. How strict is the link-posting policy? I remember way back when, I had either my first or second post removed/thread closed by Rob because of the policy and don't want that to happen again here.

[A.J.]

Fifty posts is the number. But, as long as you PM your link to any of the forum moderators (In this forum, they are myself, QueerRudie, djbrcace1234, and mcjaco), and we okay it, you don't have to have that number.

 

We know the links you post are to legitimate, well-made stuff (which OMG this definitely is), but the rules are the same for everyone.

Edited December 5, 2011 by A.J.

[Golfie]

Fantastic, I was just daydreaming about the possibility of a program designing roller coaster elements based on a train's speed and forces.

[A113]

^ Entropy's Newton is built on the same concept for making tracks for NoLimits.

 

This is some exceptional work, Phantage. I am personally inspired by your work and research to explore this subject-matter in college. Kind of makes me want to reprise my aspiration of becoming an actual roller coaster designer.