i'm totally stumped

Originally posted by Kev

Originally posted by Elfman2519

2) Good question. I still don't get it. [;)] Kev might come back in here and talk about it. He's the master [:D] My advice is a tutorial. I'm pretty sure there are some out there.

-Elf [:p]

I'm hardly a master at it. I pretty much do what everybody else does with it: I point and click on stuff to see what happens. Most everything I do in the terraformer is trial and error until I get it the way I want. I do have one pointer though: Don't even think about terraforming until you've completed the track. Building a track on pre-built terrain can be tricky. You WILL want to terraform before adding supports though.

Egads, I'm glad you told me. I was planning to terriform before doing the track on my next coaster. I'll stick to designing the track first. Thanks dear. - Nyssa

[Kev]

No problemo. [:)]

I'm hardly a master at it. I pretty much do what everybody else does with it: I point and click on stuff to see what happens. Most everything I do in the terraformer is trial and error until I get it the way I want. I do have one pointer though: Don't even think about terraforming until you've completed the track. Building a track on pre-built terrain can be tricky. You WILL want to terraform before adding supports though.

Kev - Terraform before adding supports? Interesting - I usually add supports and then terraform because it's easier to do. When I get the supports in weird locations due to terrain, I just delete the ones that need to go & everything's cool...I suppose either way works.

Chet - just keep messing around until everything is OK - it's smooth, looks nice, terraforming in the right spots, etc... For supports - use the snap function - I dunno if you've used that yet or not, but ask around & peeps will tell you how to use it. Basically, have fun and don't hurt yourself creating coasters.

I prefer to do the terrain before making the track. When real designers design a terrain coaster they don't get to choose the terrain [:P]

edge oh man, i know exactly what you mean, i bought the game and tried it acutally gave it up for like a year or a little less, until i had my dad try to figure how to make the damn track go up! then i got it and now its all good.

lmao, i feel for ya.

Btw i also find it easier to build terrian after i built the track. With my Unforgiven track, i had a rough idea of how i wanted my terrian to go, so i built around how i thought the terrian would look. Then after completed the terrian i added all those custom supports. Imo its stupid building custom supports then terrian as many of te supports will turn out out of place

is 16 positive g's bad? what is the highest the g forces should go?

16 positive g forces, not bad??????????????
WTF?
Sorry chetcoasta, thats really ridiculous. 16 p. g forces are REALLY BAD!
anything in red is bad

i can fix it. dont get mad because i just got it and dont know these things. ok, anyways, i need one more question: is 6 lateral g's bad?

6 lateral g's are also bad.
anything in red is bad
and sorry, but I got out of control and I was in a bad mood.........

that's ok... i think i know what you mean right now. thanks alot. well, it looks like i need alot of work on muy coaster lol

Here are the general guidelines that your g-forces should fall into:

(Note that everyone has a different idea of what is OK and what is not as far as g-forces go; these are my opinions)

Positive g's = shouldn't exceed 5, and shouldn't exceed 4 for more than a couple of seconds

Negative g's = This one is probably the most controversial; No Limits doesn't show yellow or red until around -1.5 to -1.7, but I think -1 is pretty much the max you should have (just my opinion, remember [;)])

Lateral g's = shouldn't exceed 1.4 to 1.7.

I'm sure other people will have differing opinions[:D]

[GRIM.657]

if Posible, chetcoasta try reducing the speed on your coaster
that might take the g's down a little, maby your elements are to small i.e. a 10 ft. loop after a 70ft. drop......
16 g's i think -1 to 5.1 vert. g's are good and below 1.7 lat. g's, but thats my opinion. Can you feel your self on a coaster with 16 times normal gravity, if your arm weighted 5 lbs. it would fell like you were lifting 80 pounds[stupid]

Positive g's should never exceed 6, b/c that is about the threshold where people start to die. Um...they can go into the 5's if it's a gradual increase, but spikes are NOT ALLOWED!!! Lateral g's should be kept under 1.5. Everyone's opinion is different...lateral spikes, even if it's from green to yellow or even from 0 to still in the green are also bad.

[Kev]

Adding my two cents...

It all depends on the type of ride you are building. Using all of the opinions i've read at several different coaster gaming sites by coaster engineer wannabes (you know who you are ), I've made a list of what is generally considered acceptable g-forces:

Wooden
-------------
Positive: 4-4.5
Negative: 1-1.5
Lateral: 1-1.5

Steel (with lap bars)
-----------
Positive: 5-6
Negative: 1-1.5
Lateral: 1-1.5

Steel (with OTSR)
-----------------
Positive: 4-5
Negative: 1-1.5
Lateral: 1 MAX

.........................

With that said, you may ask: "Are these really legit numbers?" The answer is: "How the hell should I know??? I'm not a coaster engineer!" [:D] These are the numbers that many people use when rating coasters though. We'll just hope that maybe they know what they are talking about.

I don't really pay too much attention to what people say as far as their personal liking. The best way to go is Turn off the shocks (press "h" to find out the shortcut) and make sure that the g's stay in the green. If it goes into the yellow, try to make sure it's gradual and a brief stint. Red is a no no.

Here's my personal range of acceptable forces:
Vert pos: 6.7g for a short time, 4.7g if longer
Vert neg: 0g to -1g (O is perfect air, -1 is ejector air) For a brief moment up to -1.8g. [peakhill]
LatG : 0 to 0.5g for the most part. 1g for short times (Wild mice may go to 2g and woodies may go to 1.5)
Launch: 4g [launch]
Brake: 1-2g

There you have it. [:)]

Buster.

well, i work with CAD on a regular basis (the program NL was based on) so it wasnt that confusing for me, but yeah, the best bet is to hit buttons and see what happens. also, why did they send you a disk? my NL was emailed to me...?

S:RoS at SFNE and Expedion GeForce have the most airtime on any coaster or close to it at least, and they do not exceed -1g. At -2gs your eyes explode, literally, because the blood vesseles in your eyes cannot handle the force. anything over -1g can be dangerous, and your blood vesseles in your eyes will start bursting at around -1.5 to -1.6g

For lateral gs, it depends on the restraint, and the manufacturer's style of it. On a PTC train, up to 1.8 lateral gs would not hurt, but be very very intense. On a B&M OSR even .7 lats could start to be a bit painful.

Positives are fine up to about 7gs (not sustained). tarzanman, people don't die at 6gs, but the average human supposedly dies at 14gs. 8gs is what everyone would black out at.

On most steel coasters, lateral G's should be kept at a bare minimum, about 1 g is as high as you ever want to go. Intamins and B&M's need to use the "perfect banking" philosophy to achieve this, where the banking increases as the turning radius gets tighter, and is slightly heartlined for a smooth transition into the banking. This strategy will lower the lateral G's. On a wood coaster, lateral G's are part of the thrill. In those cases, laterals of 1.5 or so are fair ground.
Vertical g's, for steel, should not exceed 4.5 in most cases. Only regular steel looping coasters and intamins can ever exceed this number, and even then only for a fraction of a second. For wood coasters, you really shouldn't go over 4. Wood is not as rigid as steel, and when you fut 4 g's of force into a wood structure, it will eventually break, and the amusement park will fire you, the designer, for giving them an expensive upkeep coaster.
Negative G's are not for looping varieties of B&M, or for any coaster with a shoulder harness. These rides should have as few negative vertical g's as possible, and in real life usually don't ever go negative. B&M hypers idealy have airtime for very extended periods of time at about -.1 or -.2, but they can go to about -.5 as long as it is brief. Intamin hyper/giga is pretty much the same way in the beginning of the ride, but once it gets into those final airtime hills, you can go to -.8 or -.9 to give the riders an awesome thrill. Still, it is not reccomended to go more than -1. The exception to this rule is Hypersonic XLC, which launches riders out of their seats with the force of -1.8 g's. Unless you are making a coaster with a vertical tophat like this, don't ever do that. And finally, the woodies. Ejector airtime on CCI's and old PTC coasters are half of the thrill. -1 vertical g's are highly logical on these, and even -1.2 is very realistic for those nice little hills where your legs fly up and hit the lap bar. Still, overall, you want to keep these g's down inside the limits if you want the coaster to be realistic, and not painful. However, as long as the g-forces stay in the green range, I do not take points off. I'm just speaking of what the g's on real coasters are.

Wood can do almost anything that steel can do. I know it can definitely handle over 4 gs, because The Beast @ PKI has 4.5 vertical gs, and the Crystal Beach Cyclone probably hit 6 or 7 gs coming out of the helix. Its so tight of an exit that it looks like it would never work.

I never heard of a woodie going to -1.2g either, and I know about MANY woodies. The ejector hills on CCIs that your talking about don't even hit -.9g. It just feels like more since you aren't stapled in like you are in most steelies. The most airtime on any woodie I have heard of are the hills on The Dallas State Fair Comet. The tops of them were almost flat, and the entrance and exit threw riders up to the buzzbars and they were just mercilessly hung there from what I have heard. Heres a pic of a few of the hills on it:

I was basing the statement about below 4 g's on "Hercules" at Dorney Park. The track in the big, flowing, 3 g turn at the bottom of the first hill needed to be re-tracked just about every single year. The Crystal Beach Cyclone had a steel superstructure, so it could have as many g's as it wanted. the Beast, when it hits 4 g's, is so low to the ground that the structure can easily absorb the g's. There are ways to get around the limits, it is just that they are not typical. By the way, IF397, that Dallas State Fair woodie looks like alot of fun... sign me up for tickets... [:)]

[Kev]

I'm almost positive that I read somewhere that SFMM's Colossus used to pull -2 Gs before it was reprofiled. I have no idea if it is true, but everything I've ever heard about this ride is that the airtime was ridiculous when it first opened.

On a similar subject, where do you guys get your information regarding g-forces on coasters? I've done several searches on the internet and haven't come up with anything useful. Is there websites or books out there that have this information?

I know somebody who e-mailed the Gravity Group to see what safe gs are, and they said that -2gs would make your eyes explode.

Although if Colossus had better trains before reprofiling, that didn't staple you in, -2g would be possible for an EXTREMELY short fraction of a second. Even though that -2g isn't red in NL,I don't base g limits by them being green, yellow, or red either, because NL has very unrealistic g limits.

For those that might not know:
You can change the colorcoding by making a simple textfile which will be named "nolimits.cfg". Inside this file put this:
sim.vertg.posyellowlimit = 4.7
sim.vertg.posredlimit = 6.6
sim.vertg.negyellowlimit = -0.5
sim.vertg.negredlimit = -1.8
sim.latg.yellowlimit = 0.6
sim.latg.redlimit = 1.8
sim.accg.yellowlimit = 1.5
sim.accg.redlimit = 4.5

Of course you can change the numbers as you like. The above is just my setting.

Buster.