Designing a Ride from a Photo

Hello, I a guy who wants to try to make a realistic recreation of Renegade at Valleyfair. This is my reference picture:

http://www.valleyfair.com/public/images ... layout.gif

Now, I want to try to be as accurate as possible. Is there some way to accurately calculate all the specs of the ride via analysis of the picture? If it helps, I am knowledgeable of trigonometry, geometry, etc. Thanks for listening!

It'd be extremely hard to do from that picture...bad idea. Just find as many pictures and angles of Renegade as possible, and go from there.

Please, use this page for as much reference as you can get from it:

http://rcdb.com/3660.htm

It would be much easier with a direct overhead view. There is a tutorial on the Badnitrous Productions website for using reference photos that have a perspective view. The render you're using does not provide a very good angle, though. It's too bad this ride doesn't show up in Google Earth yet.

I guess you could divide the max height by the number of vertical support segments to find the height of each support box. For the horizontal spacing, find an existing GCI ride in Google earth, and measure the horizontal distance of the lift, dividing by the number of horizontal support sections. Or you could find a picture with an orthogonal view of the support structure and trace dimension lines over a section of the supports. AutoCAD and Inventor work well for this, but Google Sketchup is a good free alternative.

[hyyyper]

^the spacing between the bents is not uniform on the rides, so that might not work.

Thanks for all the help; you guys are awesome. Actually, I think I might take a break from Renegade...for now at least, until I can figure out some easier way to design it. Moving on, another potential project that caught my eye was Behemoth in Canada's Wonderland. Here is the picture I was planning on using:

http://behemoth.canadaswonderland.com/p ... ge&chip=23

It should be significantly easier to design than Renegade (at least from this rendering). The only problem I have here is calculating the height of the track as a whole, since I don't know how to take fading distance into account (where taller things appear smaller from a distance). Is there a way to correctly calculate all the height from this picture? Or am I just making it harder than it really is?

RCDB lists the hill heights I believe.

Originally posted by Jakizle

RCDB lists the hill heights I believe.

Yeah, I know that; I'm talking about everything else, though. It would be nice to know how tall the rest of the hills and bankings are.

Originally posted by hyyyper

^the spacing between the bents is not uniform on the rides, so that might not work.

It will be on things like the lift and long straights without crossovers....at least that's how CCI did it. If you get a few portions of the ride mapped out that should at least give you a start. That's how I've been going at recreations lately.

Getting back to Renegade, I found a new image. Is this more of a help? Maybe some insight regarding height?

http://www.valleyfair.com/_upload/photo ... 607_01.jpg