Epic Journey

[CptBeeble]

I wanted to see how big a coaster I could make before my computer threw up its metaphorical hands and said, "aw HALE naw."

The answer is "Epic Journey" - which was going to be a wood coaster, but clicking the "auto supports" caused it to grind away for nearly ten minutes! I needed to make a change, and clicking "clear supports" took almost as long. Oy. Then I tried riding it and unless it was inside a tunnel, the frame rate dropped down to ONE. Okie dokie.

Changed it to a B&M speed coaster (far, far fewer supports to render), added some over banked turns and a few other design tweaks, and voila! This is about as much as I can build and still get a decent frame rate on the ride (using a 2013 iMac, Intel i7 @3.5GHz, 16GB memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 with 4G on board.... running Win 8.1 through Parallels Virtual Machine).

Behold... Epic Journey!
5.5 miles long
1000+ft elevation change
Ten tunnels, some very long
Gentle trip through the trees followed by crazy, twisted middle section, ending with huge drops and airtime.

Video: http://youtu.be/lLNw8pYBglU

968ft lift hill, anyone?

EpicTop.jpg (391.76 KiB) Viewed 4237 times

Overbanked turn into a surprise tunnel? Sure!

EpicTunnel.jpg (185.97 KiB) Viewed 4237 times

Airtime at unusual angles? Check.

EpicReverseBanking.jpg (225.92 KiB) Viewed 4237 times

Finishes with island-hopping banked camels

EpicRainbow.jpg (223.72 KiB) Viewed 4237 times

[Sora]

I admit I did this from your Youtube video (there's no way my laptop could pump out a frame rate that nice with such a monster coaster) but I found your ride boring. Sorry. There's a lot of good ideas in the layout but about five minutes into the video it seemed like you'd run out of inspiration and it just felt too long and repetitive. That said, I like the big drops and that twisty stuff in the middle was really good. I loved the outside banked turn near the end. I think where your ride fell down was in pacing, and this would be fine on a real coaster because you get a lot of vibrations, g-forces and other sensations which aren't present via a computer screen. Here, however, it felt like the last two sections were simply put in to add length to the ride.

[Paul Drabek]

Upload a copy here so we can check it out.

[bratman]

youtube link is above

[Paul Drabek]

I know Paul but as I have NL2 I'd love to be able to open it up, look at it from all vantage points and then ride it. It is also fun seeing how he did it.

[TimothyVek]

Beautiful
But i think the vertical scale is exeggerated -I see this on the sand dunes-end of the animation. It was made intentionally?