Vekoma Motorbike Coaster

I am making a Vekoma Motorbike coaster, and I finished the track. However, the track is bumpy, and I would like help for it. Can you please give suggestions and comments on what I should do? But don't say things like redesign everything after the MCBR or something like that, I just want to have to change minor things. Also, this is the first time that I tried making a custom station, so can you please comment on that? Thanks. And you can give bad comments if want.

Download Attachment: [img]icon_disk.gif[/img] new.nltrack
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The station looks great for a first custom station.

Thanks cool5, but what about the track?

It had jerks before every turn at the end of each heartline.

Well, like cool5 said, the station is pretty sweet, but that's where it ends. You should study tracks made by more experienced members in order to discover how you should shape your turns and such. You will also dicover that motorbike coasters shouldn't have inversions (this doesn't mean they CAN'T, just that they normally DON'T), and that RCT's turns are pieces of $#!* and should never be used as a model in a realistic roller coaster simulation. Next, it looked like you overused the autosmoother, like just about everyone here has. Sure, use it to give you an idea of what shape the track needs to be in to be smooth, but don't leave it at that. You're normally going to have to go in after it and fix things it may have messed up, be it banking, or even some general trackwork issues it can create rather than fix! It does work wonders on flat turns, though...
Finally, your launch setup was rather....odd. It appeared to me as if your pre-launch was longer than your launch! even if it wasn't, it was still too long for the train length.
On a positive note, the layout pretty much kicked butt. It was fast-paced, and offered a good variety of forces. You just need to work on your turn shaping and such. Good luck with the ride!
Oh, just for good measure, you should change everything after the MCBR [;)]

^Ok thanks, but I don't get how to heartline those turns well. And after I fix some of that, I'm just too tired of this coaster, I'll do better next time. Also, the prelaunch was long because that was the only way that I thought that I could pass emergency stop testing. If I made the prelaunch shorter, and the train didn't make it past the first incline because of emergency stop, then it would not slow down during the brakes and hit the train in the station. Is there any way to fix that? And also, is there any way for the MCBR to activate only when emergency stop is on?

Well, heartlining turns perfectly takes a lot of practice, and some basic understanding of forces and physics. Basically, you want every single transition on your roller coaster to go from an infinitely large radius (straight) to your destination radius as smoothly as possible. This includes the physical geometry of the track, all the way down to the "infinity-ith" derivative of the banking transition function. Since I, nor anybody I know of, knows of a function whose "infinity-ith" derivative is a curve, it's impossible to make a perfectly smooth track. You can however get very close. A good way to help visualize smooth transitions and how to make them is to download NL Elementary from nolimitsdevcenter.net, and play around with the "deluxe helix" wizard. Study the shape of that track very carefully and see what you can do to mimic that in your handbuilding. You'll also notice that there is no "prebanking" as your turns have; the banking of the track increases as the radius of the curve decreases.
Next, on to your e-stop issues...
The best way to fix the launch issue is to make the entire launch segment a "brake" segment. You can set this segment to "complete stop" and move the slider to a point such that the back car is barely on the segment after it has stopped. This can be achieved with some guesswork. You'll then want to turn on transport device, and then "launch" and set the force that you want. Your MCBR...determine the speed at which the train enters the MCBR on your ride, and add 5-10 mph to that. This should be your "speed limit" on that segment. Your hysteresis should probably be about 1 mph. This means that if the speed of the train at the location of the trigger on the brake is within (hysteresis) mph of the speed limit, slow the train down to (speed limit - hysteresis), and if the speed is less than (speed limit - hysteresis), don't slow the train down at all, and if the speed is greater than (speed limit + hysteresis), I believe it stops the train, or slows it until the brake segment has ended. The point of doing this is so that you guarantee that the brake will not be activated unless the speed of the train is far too great or if e-stop is turned on.
Whew that took a lot longer than I expected it to! Hope this makes sense, and if it does, that it helps. Feel free to ask any more questions, I'll be glad to help!

Thanks a lot! That must have taken a while to write! So, I get the heartlining thing and how the curve gets greater, the track needs to bank more. I never did that because I thought that that was pumping. I thought the radius had to be constant throughout the whole curve to have a pump-free curve, but I guess not. I will try to fix that, but again, I know it's not good, but I am getting tired of this coaster and just want to get it finished.

And thanks about the emergency stop issues, that explains a lot! It was annoying how transport segments can't slow down the coaster, even though it has a deceleration option. I didn't know about hysteresis too, thanks for teaching me!

Again thanks for everything!

Yeah no problem, but I do think you may have misunderstood me a bit. The decrease in the radius is BEFORE and AFTER the actual turn. The turn (if it's flat) should be a constant radius. And pumping generally refers to sudden and jerky changes in radius, not a smooth decrease. The smooth decrease is called a lead-in, and the other end of the turn (where the radius goes from your turn radius to straight) is the lead-out.

Yeah, I think I get what you are saying now. So there is a lead-in, which goes from straight and increases the radius, then the radius is constant during the turn, then in the lead-out, the radius decreases until it's straight, right?