Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'

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Spinning HD3D Coaster
This is a little complicated, I will try to explain good.
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Remember those big horizontal spinning wheels at the theme park? The ones where you climb into and they spin allowing you to climb up the walls and stuff. Take out the padded walls, and add large sphereical capsules, say ten of them all around the inside of the wheel. Inside these capsules are seats (maybe a row of 2/3, or even two rows of 2) and several High Definition TV screens. All the capsules can rotate/spin on all three axis easily under the control of electric motors and mandatory fail-safe devices.

So at this point we have three variables: Rotation of capsules to give any orientation neccesary, speed of rotation of entire wheel, and the TV screen.

Now pretend the TV is projecting a 3D roller coaster from the perspective of the rider. Now say, to the viewer inside the capsule, the "roller coaster" is going around a corner. When change in direction of motion is in effect (going around a corner), the resulting force is an outward, and tilting force (banked curve). Now pretend the other variables come into effect. So the capsule tilts as neccesary and the wheel speeds up to match the g-forces of the turn accordingly. Note that the actual force of gravity will probably have to be taken into effect with the calculated tilt/speed. Giving an overall feeling or realism that dorky little pneumatic chairs that tilt 10 degrees can't.

This can be applied to any part of the roller coaster, loops, rolls, and any other feat not possible to human engineers...(triple corkscrew upwards helix constant inverting twist)

Now why do you ask would a person build something so complicated when a real roller coaster can be ridden? Well, how many people can design their own roller coaster and ride it in the same day? How many people can ride a roller coaster on the top of mt. Everest, or on the moon?

Other possibilities: Now, everyone won't be able to design their own coaster and ride them all at once, besides good 3D rendering takes some time to do. Solution: have a stand where for a largish fee, users can design their own coasters, choose settings and paint the whole thing whatever they want. Then, the computor runs a simulation to see if the g-forces and other circumstances are possible for the ride. When the rides is finished, the designer is given a slip of paper, with a time on it, and a serial/barcode thing. The designer waits around until or past the time on the ticket. They head to the ride, and wait in line. They hand the slip of paper to the attendant (its good for 1 free ride) and the attandant takes it, scans it, then throws it away. The newly rendered HD3D roller coaster simulation is uploaded and everyone there gets to ride it. (the time on the ticket indictes when the 3D rendering and computor directions for all mechanical movements are finished)

If no-one is there to "buy" a roller coaster, then a good one is chosen at random by the attandant.

If anything is a little hazy, just ask for clarification.


swimr, Jun 03 2004



Annotation:







       I just realized that the wheel probably won't be able to accelerate fast enough, so I quickly thought up a solution.   

       Imagine a 100g mass on a one metre piece of string, imagine the weight spinning around. Shorten the piece of string, what happens? The speed increses, greatly. Loosen the string back, the speed decreases. Have all the capsules attached to large steel cables, have the cables attached to a large pneumatic piston. Need for quick speed? Piston shortens all strings. Need for slow acceleration? Wheel accelerates.

swimr, Jun 03 2004
  

       Makes sense. There is the issue that people might be able to feel the rotation of the "bubbles", however--this is something that can be detected without visual cues, as it is itself an acceleration. This would distort the sensation.

5th Earth, Jun 03 2004
  

       No, as the rotation of the "bubble" would be coupled by an increse (or decrease) in G-force. Its exactly the same as an ordinary roller coaster (they turn too)

swimr, Jun 04 2004
  


 
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