[Denney]

Heya guys. After another hiatus, I'm back with another track. This time in digital! I've only ever built wooden routed tracks and they've never survived being moved to well so this time I wanted something that I could pull down if we move and put back up in a new configuration to fit a given space.

I have the track up until this schematic:

My final design, after many revisions (and possibly more) is this:

The track is designed primarily for 6 car racing with up to 5 pace cars. I tried to include R1 curves in my original design but, unfortunately, pace cars were not very good at getting through them. My worry with the design is that it might be to quick to really bunch cars up for passing.

The pit lane is the main feature of this track. Each of the 6 cars will have they're own pit box, fully decked out with individual sensing.

In saying that, it's plastic track this time so I can change it as I see fit. I put up a video on YouTube of an old design while testing out the new digital features:

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/kSZLfRk-y6w?rel=0

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome! A few more photos can be found on my website (I'll post more here once I start to actually build the track rather than have it on the garage floor!): http://mantrasoftwar...ital-test-track

 

[MrFlippant]

Even if you race mostly with magnets in, it's not uncommon for a car to tail out after a turn. When a lane changer is immediately following, it can often miss the sensor and cause either a missed change, or an unintended change. That goes for your pit entry as well.

I can see that you've already eliminated the racing curve crossovers.

I think 6 dedicated pits is a bit overkill. 3 that are shared or simply chosen at will is more than enough, especially since a car could fill anywhere in there. You can put those XLC to better use out in the circuit.

Other than that, it looks like a great layout. Very reminiscent of Catalunya.

 

[Denney]

QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 3 Jul 2012, 02:15) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Even if you race mostly with magnets in, it's not uncommon for a car to tail out after a turn. When a lane changer is immediately following, it can often miss the sensor and cause either a missed change, or an unintended change. That goes for your pit entry as well.
Which lane changers are you referring to? I've added a half-straight before each lane changer and have had no issues while tailing out. The pit entry is on the right, pit exit on the left BTW, track running clockwise. The pit lane is speed limit as well. I think you're thinking the pit lane entry is on the main straight. It's actually the first lane changer on the right hand side. This is so we can have drive through and stop / go penalties with speed limited.

QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 3 Jul 2012, 02:15) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I can see that you've already eliminated the racing curve crossovers.

They came in the Thundering V8's kit I grabbed as a starter. Pain in the arse they were... First things to go!

QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 3 Jul 2012, 02:15) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I think 6 dedicated pits is a bit overkill. 3 that are shared or simply chosen at will is more than enough, especially since a car could fill anywhere in there. You can put those XLC to better use out in the circuit.

The pit lane will probably change once I see how long it's going to be in real life.

I had plans for an expansive pit lane with pit crews, multiple pit garages, each decked out, etc, etc. I will agree though, 6 probably is overkill. Also as a place to display cars. Basically the focal point of the track (and something scenic wise that I can easily move without destroying if the track gets taken down for some reason).

QUOTE (MrFlippant @ 3 Jul 2012, 02:15) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Other than that, it looks like a great layout. Very reminiscent of Catalunya.

It's seems very hard to get away from the Catalunya look of a circuit. It's just suited so well to a slot car track. I was trying to get away from it but, apparently, not hard enough. Lol.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I should probably add a 3 lane section somewhere along the track. Didn't even think of that until now.

 

[MrFlippant]

Yes, I see that you have your pit entry much like mine. I'll be changing it, actually. The pit-in sensor being just after the pit entry LC has caused misses due to people coming in fast enough to wiggle enough to miss the sensor. I'll be moving the entry LC right to the corner, then the entry SENSOR one full straight AFTER the corner.
Also, your second pit LC for the two lane expansion, being right after that corner, is still in a place where a sliding car can miss it. Now, if you install a pit wall somehow, to keep cars from sliding, that might not be a problem, but the current design puts the seam between track pieces in the race line, not between the pits and the race line, so that's not possible without gluing a wall to the track, or changing the design.

As for the LCs that might be problematic, two CLCs are in bad places, especially the first one in the top left corner of the layout. The one in the middle-right-ish isn't BAD, but also isn't good, especially for drivers that really push the car's limits, or magless racing. That preceeding R4 is enough to get a car to wiggle, which can make it miss that sensor.
A half straight before a LC sensor is a bare minimum. In high speed areas, I've had magnet cars coming out of an R4 turn, and manage to wiggle enough to miss the sensor of a straight lane changer one FULL standard straight AFTER the turn. It's rare, but it happens, and even more when magless cars are wiggling all around.

I assume you're sticking to floor racing for the time being? If not, you'll want to compact that a bit so that things are easier to reach, even if you use grabbers.

 

[Denney]

I've taken you're notes along with some other thoughts and redesigned the layout a bit. Now it stands at this:

In it's current state we haven't managed to miss the pit sensor on the PitPro yet. One of the sensor tracks is a little picky about speed so we moved that to the end of the pits. The other one works fine. As soon as the car hits that sensor, speed is limited and it tends to slow the car down quick enough that you don't miss the lane change after the corner in the pits.

I've reduced the pit lane to a more reasonable 3 pits and added space between the pit lane and the race track for some track-side team management boxes (I have no idea what they're actually called). I've also removed some of the XLC's for the moment due to cost restraints. The troublesome CLC in the top left I've moved to the next corner and swapped it with the one from the top middle as we have had plenty of cars coming off there. Don't know what to do about the one in the middle but I doubt it would get much use anyway due to the XLC right in front of it.

The track is currently set up on the garage floor so yeah, space isn't a big issue at the moment. Once it's on the table top I hope to keep the same sort of layout but make it a little more accessible. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[MrFlippant]

That looks better.

I still might shift those two chicanes away from the following XLCs a bit, but that's because we waggle quite a bit when we race.

As for putting it on a table, I think if you open up the infield a bit, you can make that a "walk in" area to make it much easier to get crashed cars.

 

[Denney]

I was actually working on the infield as you posted that. I've also moved the chicanes just to be on the safe side.

 

[Denney]

Another design revision today. I've been working on the temporary track in the garage for the last week. I have almost all the track and about half of the borders. I'm a little undecided on having full width borders all the way around or having the thin strip + fence with the track clips on the parts without the borders.

Anyway, here's the new revision:

The temporary track in the garage currently looks like this:

 

[MrFlippant]

Looks good to me.

You'll definitely want to put something on either side of where the XLCs are. I can easily drop a wheel off the edge when I take one of those fast, even with a magnet car.

 

[JL-F1]

that garage was made for a table that slides up and down those posts

Nice layout!

I usually put a right end and left end border around the x in the XLC, following on Greg's comment.

 

[Denney]

@MrFlippant: Yeah, not sure why I don't have borders there. I did, but I must have removed them at some point. The borders will be there on the final track.

@JL-F1: The track will be moving once our house mate moves out. It's going into the 4 bays to the left of the track. We also rent so making something to use those posts could be tricky. Where it's going to end up there isn't any posts around except in the centre.

BTW, does anyone know why I don't receive email notifications for this topic even though I'm marked as "watching it", I've checked "enable email notifications" and my email is correct (and they're not in my spam folder either)?

 

[diegu]

ZITAT(Denney @ 16 Jul 2012, 21:04) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>BTW, does anyone know why I don't receive email notifications for this topic even though I'm marked as "watching it", I've checked "enable email notifications" and my email is correct (and they're not in my spam folder either)?

There was a thread about that in the pit section. To me it seems that some providers block mails from slotforum and not even put them into your spam folder.
Since I use googlemail I did not have any more issues. I set googlemail to receive slotforum news and forward to my original provider. Everything works fine since then.

Diegu

 

[MrFlippant]

YAY! Diegu! That's the only thing I had yet to try in getting email notifications to work. I already had a gmail account forwarding to my main account, so it only took me a second. Now I should be able to get notifications again! WOOT! Thanks a billion for that idea, Diegu!

 

[Denney]

That's weird. I post up about not getting notifications and suddenly, I get notifications...

I'm already using Gmail.

 

[raikkonen_webber fan]

mate my computer wont load the images, but the video looks great