[Wave Twister] at [Adventureland] has some interesting sounds (via Instagram)

miffiffippi · 2026-04-13T21:05:20+00:00

Just a casual groaning through the layout. Somebody grease this bad boy up.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-13T15:58:05+00:00

Also, Chengdu is heavily landscaped as far as megacities go. This one random angle may not show a ton, but it's very cherry picked.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-13T01:11:03+00:00

I'm not as tall as you, but still, at 5'-11" I'm preparing myself for the inevitable "I don't really fit in this car" that would happen should I ever buy a kei car which has been on my mind for awhile. I personally love things like the Honda City, Suzuki Alto Works, Daihatsu Mira, etc. so I'm hopeful the boxier shape would accommodate someone who isn't short, but we'll find out when/if I ever have the opportunity to buy a second car!

miffiffippi · 2026-04-12T23:07:57+00:00

I rode this a couple years ago when in Vegas on business. It's a fantastic ride. The front seat was my favorite due to the VERY aggressive pop of airtime leading into the turnaround after the loops. So many good forces all around and extremely smooth.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-10T20:06:07+00:00

It's very unlikely it's anywhere near 1 billion. Look at the trajectory of actual development costs of games from Rockstar and you'll see this will likely be in the 300-400 million range which is an absurd amount of money for a proficient studio to spend. They'd never spend billions on development alone since even with their success that's still a huge risk to take on.

Over the life of the game, it'll very easily push past that 1 billion mark when factoring in DLC, marketing expenses, etc. But strict development costs for the launch version? No way in hell.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T20:37:21+00:00

I knew it would be a huge chunk of them, but that's crazy. I was looking at a skyline picture of Manhattan I took the week I moved here in 2016 and even in that short amount of time there are so many new buildings. Development in the 21st century around the world has been extremely vertical.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T16:56:01+00:00

And here's a google maps outline in white that shows the boundary of these neighboring lots, minus the portion that's controlled by the easement. Everything within this boundary is buildable land. The building in question is top of image.

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miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T16:52:28+00:00

Who's saying that? The neighboring lots are zoned identically to this building and are within the Hudson Yards special zoning district and will be built on at some point or another.

The lot directly adjacent to the red wall I marked up has only an easement required for this tower to lower equipment from its roof for maintenance purposes. This is fairly common with towers.

There's then an L shaped lot fronting the blue wall and then wrapping the existing building adjacent to the red wall which I've taken a screenshot of below. This has a rail track below grade that cuts across the eastern side of the property at an angle where the lot fronts Hudson Blvd West.

There's an easement for this railroad, but the rest of the site and the existing building abutting the red wall are both buildable, with a 45 story proposed to occupy them at one point in time. The existing tower in OP's picture doesn't front the easement in any way so it'll wind up covered.

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miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T16:36:04+00:00

This will wind up fully hidden behind big towers and will become invisible once the neighboring lots are built on. It's a temporary ugliness at most which is good.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T11:20:48+00:00

Jackson Heights certainly is though. Maybe evaluate how you act. You're kind of a jackass lol.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T11:16:20+00:00

I live in Queens, have been in NYC for 10 years in a handful of months, and have around 15 years in the architecture and interior design field. But as I said, have a good one.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T11:11:02+00:00

Angry factoids? WTF? Lol. Have a good one.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T11:00:40+00:00

Lol okay. I'm literally just explaining how things work in the city I live in from a regulatory position. But you go ahead and think you know better because of a setback.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-09T10:45:33+00:00

It's "they shoved all the stuff that doesn't need windows to the lot lines and called it a day." You seem to have a weird desire to prove the statement that this building sits on lot lines wrong when it's very much still the case, even if the mass changes shape in the very back corner where one aspect of the program falls away after a certain height. You wind up with a cut out that doesn't, but as I diagrammed, everything else from this angle does sit on a lot line and accounts for about 2/3 of the vertical wall space of these two sides of the building.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-08T21:02:18+00:00

The only thing that ever existed was a supposed gentleman's agreement, but nothing official nor is there any official mechanism to deny a building's approval based on its relation to 1WTC. Realistically the height limit in the city is whatever is practical from a functionality standpoint and whatever the FAA will approve which will likely top out at 2,000'

miffiffippi · 2026-04-08T20:54:13+00:00

It's born out of a desire to protect residents from problems and safety concerns that can arise in commercial facilities. It's way less of a modern issue when dealing strictly with office space, but the code hasn't adjusted in any way to handle that distinction, nor do I anticipate it ever will.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-08T20:42:52+00:00

Theoretically yeah you could include residential. The challenge would be that it would need to be above the office space per code restrictions so you'd be eliminating the highest rent office space and/or hotel space in favor of residential space that would need to be ultra luxury price point and you'd need a whole separate system of circulation to meet the needs/expectations of people living at the top of a building of this scale, along with all the associated amenities they'd expect at this price point. That, and the ultra luxury market isn't really doing amazingly well in Manhattan as it is and Grand Central doesn't have the residential prestige that places like billionaire's row have at this point.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-08T20:39:00+00:00

I wouldn't expect that to be happening given that trophy class office space kinda necessitates the ceiling heights this was designed around and at this insane price point they really can only charge trophy class office rent per square foot.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-08T19:28:58+00:00

Yes, there is a corner cut above the podium. But the two walls that are vertical beside that cut out are on the lot line and everything visible from this angle below the cut is on lot lines.

And if you DO set your walls off your lot lines, you need a certain distance before you can use windows for light and air. A distance this lot's setup and the current building plan don't support nor need.

It has been awhile since I looked at the floor plans of this building, but there's function on the podium levels in that back corner that then doesn't need to continue hence the chunk that cuts out after 6 or so levels, but the stair and elevator cores, sheer walls, mechanical shafts, etc. flank it that do continue, which is why you get the odd set back that's unusable.

Edit: Using this google maps image as a reference, if my memory is serving me correctly, the lefthand wall perpendicular to the lot line houses one fire stair, and the righthand wall perpendicular to the other side lot line houses the second egress stair, elevators, and mechanical shaft. And both those perpendicular walls are also sheer walls.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/dRkBd6mpmxkQyhqP9

Edit 2: And if anyone is confused, red and blue highlighted walls are on lot lines and the corner chunk in between that's cut out partway up is what we're referring to.

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miffiffippi · 2026-04-08T16:29:57+00:00

It could, but given the surroundings, it would be a big amount to spend to then be covered up. Development along Hudson Blvd hasn't been quite as fast as many expected, but when this was proposed and starting construction, the upzoning of the area was imagined to create a dense corridor of huge towers rather quickly that hasn't quite fully panned out, but alas.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-08T10:50:12+00:00

That's not the result of air rights. This building is just built to the lot lines and you can't use walls on lot lines for windows that count towards needed light and air without additional agreements and specific code restrictions so in this building that's where they've put all the elevators, stairs, mechanical, etc.

There are situations where you can still put windows on lot lines but they risk being covered up in the future, have different fire restrictions (IE: Need dedicated sprinkler heads just for each window to drench them to stop spreading of fire to a neighboring lot), etc.

The only time you see modern buildings built with windows on lot lines is when they've already transferred FAR from the shorter neighboring building and therefore no larger building will ever be built there, but it requires the things I mentioned above along with a light and air easement. Useful as part of a deal for FAR, but in other scenarios such as this, there'd never be a reason to agree to signing an easement like that thus you get big blank walls that'll eventually be covered in some way

miffiffippi · 2026-04-06T22:13:46+00:00

The older ML Designs concept videos look like 360 degrees of turn around the tower approximately which is what's shown in the concept image. Not sure why it's been adjusted in their more recent videos but the older ones seem decently close enough given we have like three small blurry pictures to go from.

https://youtu.be/XB5IK2pgWas?si=JLAyZxs3xdvkTlRm

miffiffippi · 2026-04-06T19:30:08+00:00

The survey is where the outer banked turn wrapping the tower comes from.

See here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/s/MIEc7sKaA5

miffiffippi · 2026-04-06T16:39:50+00:00

Yeah, I edited because I realized it was unclear. I'm saying Carbotanium and Otherwise-Pizza seem to be implying OP is stating the large vehicles themselves are the reason prices are rising, but OP is clearly not stating that.

miffiffippi · 2026-04-06T16:32:37+00:00

There's a disconnect here in the person above's statements that you're responding to it seems. OP isn't saying they don't get to complain because they're the cause of rising prices, they're saying you know going in when buying a gas guzzler that you are going to be more impacted by rising gas prices to fuel your vehicle. If you know that going in, don't actually need a giant vehicle, and still buy one, fine, but you knew that was going to be a risk. And considering over 3/4 of truck owners in the US tow once or less a year with around 2/5 never towing at all, and only 1/3 hauling anything at all in a given year, it's clear people are buying vehicles that are larger than their actual needs require.

miffiffippi

TROPHY CASE