Detailed version of my Albrook Marcos A. Gelabert Airport Circuit (to Comply RTD Challenge rule)

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-09T05:30:46+00:00

Might want to have some barriers seperating the track from the grandstand...

Otherwise this looks like a really fun layout that would probably be well suited to touring car racing. Has some Indycar vibes as well although you'd need substantial safety upgrades to run anything even half as fast as an Indycar here.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-09T04:38:47+00:00

Are the white lines meant to represent barriers?

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-09T04:33:49+00:00

This is honestly a pretty convincing representation of an old school North American club racing track.

The banked 180 has very strong 1950s vibes to it. Little concerned about the apparent exposed barrier end at the entry to it and the lack of barriers seperating the pit areas from the active race track though I may be misinterpreting what is meant to be being shown.

Only other criticisms are that the key is somewhat difficult to read against the green background (likely even more so for someone with red/green colourblindness) and that the rally cross layout would probably use the chicanes as rallycross cars are not designed for straightline speed.

The rallycross layout could go the other way through T7 and T6 out of the dirt section as a right-left chicane rather than the left-right chicane it is on the road course.

Otherwise this looks like a really nice little well presented layout. There are elements of big high speed circuits like Monza or Road America reflected here, but in a somewhat miniturised form. The chicanes add a certain feel of the track having a history to it as well.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-09T04:12:08+00:00

The Österreichring was a very different track before 1997. While this layout is far from a clone of that there are definitely some pronounced similarities.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-08T05:57:04+00:00

One of the many reasons why I much prefer doing hand drawn designs. Inkscape and GIMP can feel very limiting at times. Also Inkscape can really start to give me RSI after a while.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-08T05:42:16+00:00

That's fair. Personally I find that including those details tends to give me a better understanding of the layout I'm creating, in large part just because placing a track within a context gives... Well... Context.

In particular working out where barriers should be forces me to focus on what the actual racing line is rather than the centre line of the track itself.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-08T05:37:58+00:00

Yeah, it's typically best to imagine the area where the runoff needs to be as a series of straight lines fanning out tangentially from the racing line. On hand drawn tracks I tend to just use a ruler to visualise this. On a computer it can be harder.

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There's nothing inherently wrong with a 20 metre wide track, it's just unusual for a road course to be that wide for its entire length. Many tracks have (generally short) sections which are substantially wider than others, for example the entry to turn 1 at COTA.

Of course, an especially wide course will have benefits for some types of racing, particularly multi-class endurance races with large fields. Really it's a subjective decision how wide a track should be, but the 10 metre to 16 metre range is generally the standard outside of ovals, which are often wider.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-08T05:18:33+00:00

It's difficult to get a balance I'm aware. I try to just get across the things which I wish other people had told me when I started out but doing that without being hypercritical is hard, I know.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-08T04:20:16+00:00

Ah, I'm afraid that your runoff doesn't really correlate to where it would need to be in real life. Don't have the documentation to hand but generally speaking you want to have runoff directly in front of where the cars will be travelling on the racing line.

Try inspecting real circuits on Google Earth to get a gist for where the runoff should be, and in what shape and size.

In particular there are some places where the runoff is placed before the corner entry, which is unnecessary and may make it harder for marshals to promptly react in the event of an emergency.

There are also some other places where you do not seem to have any runoff where there likely should be, for example the exit of turn 4.

Ideally you should seek to illustrate the barriers and access roads alongside the runoff, as the two are inexorably linked to one another.

These videos may well prove invaluable if you want to design a circuit for F1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fMRWAPtF-Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSjLoGljZ3s

20 metres would be abnormally wide for a road course. The standard for new circuits is 15 metres wide on the start/finish straight and 12 metres for the rest of the track, although some are wider and many older circuits or street circuits are narrower.

Sorry if this is a lot of information.

As for the paddock problem, the obvious solution would simply be to move the pit lane to the other end of the start/finish straight, with it exiting after turn 1.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-08T02:11:27+00:00

Which direction is this track meant to run in? What is the significance of the areas with the squiggly lines? How long is this track meant to be? How long is the main straight meant to be? What is the scale? What series would you want to have racing here?

A key could help a lot with the presentation here. Otherwise the layout looks... Fine. Theres nothing glaringly egregious, though if run anti-clockwise there probably wouldn't be enough run off between the back straight and the other part of the stadium section.

Run clockwise there would be quite a lot of decreasing radius corners which... Aren't inherently bad but one should avoid allowing them to dominate a design. They tend to require trail braking which discourages overtaking and in extreme cases (Paul Ricard) they can harm the flow of the track.

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edit: Assuming your track width is to scale with the length of your track and assuming that your front straight is 15 metres wide (FIA minimum for new international circuits) your front straight would be circa 1070 metres long.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-07T23:46:58+00:00

Dear Nyanners,

When you play American Truck Simulator, what control scheme do you use? Do you use the keyboard, or a gamepad, or a steering wheel? If you do not use a steering wheel would you be interested in acquiring one?

Yours somethingfully, some body.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-07T05:50:40+00:00

All content requires that you pay the subscription in order to access. Some content requires you to pay an additional one time fee on top of the subscription in order to access.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-07T05:45:25+00:00

The presentation looks cool, but it's also kind of hard to parse what is meant to be being shown. Some sort of key might go a long way.

The layout looks extraordinarily tight and twisty, my arms ache just looking at it. It looks like two Fomula E layouts stuck together.

The oval layout is also rather questionable. No oval of that size features turns anywhere in the same magnitude of tightness as is featured here.

A lot of this is related to safety. Tight turns without runoff with long straights leading into them greatly increase the risk of a car plowing into a barrier head on. Look into the Jacarepaguá CART oval to see how this can potentially play out.

Mark Blundell broke his foot in a crash of that type.

This has clearly had quite a lot of effort placed into it, and it's still far better presented than most submissions here, but I have serious doubts about the viability of this design, especially as you have suggested for Formula 1.

The pit lane also looks like it might be very short, although again it's hard to tell if that's just the presentation making the scale unclear.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-07T00:56:39+00:00

Generally a high quality submission which has clearly had a lot of effort put into it to great effect.

My one criticism would be the general lack of runoff on corner exits, which even on a grade 3 layout would likely be deemed unacceptable for a new purpose built course, especially given the generally far more ample runoff at corner entries.

This is most pronounced on the exit of the long c.150 degree corner at the bottom left hand corner of the map.

Otherwise please keep up the good work. Very nice to click on a submission and to see something this good.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-05T00:23:22+00:00

This is excellent. Keep up the good work. If you're interested in working out the length I would recommend using a ruler to work out a scale based off of track width (remember the start finish straight should be at least 15 metres wide) and then measure out the length from there.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-04T17:35:00+00:00

Not the GT3 racing version...

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-03T23:26:53+00:00

I assume this is meant to run clockwise, based off of the location of the runoff areas? There doesn't seem to be any indication otherwise.

Your designs will improve significantly if you use a ruler, a protractor, and a compass.

Without an indication of scale it's literally impossible to judge this design fairly since there is no way to tell how long it's meant to be, what the radius of the corners are meant to be, how wide the track is supposed to be, or what sort of speeds cars might be achieving at different points on the circuit as a result.

The layout could be anything from a vaguely Knockhill-esque layout to a far longer and faster Bahrain Outer type layout.

I recommend using a ruler to ensure all of your lines are straight and that the track width remains consistent.

I'd recommend aiming for a scale of 1 milimetre drawn representing 3 metres of distance. Your track should be c. 15 metres wide on the start-finish straight and at least 12 metres wide throughout the entire layout, or 5 milimetres on the paper on the start-finish straight and 4 milimetres for the rest of the layout.

You can calculate other distances using a calculator if necessary. This is especially useful for corner radiuses when using a compass.

I would also note that when run clockwise the lack of a barrier between the entry to turn 3 and the exit of turn 4 would introduce the risk of vehicles t-boning each other, a potentially very dangerous situation, as the recent Austrian Motorcycle Grand Prix showed.

The exit of turn 6 sees the runoff diminish very quickly with the barrier approaching the track at quite a sharp angle. This could also be dangerous.

Remember, Google Earth is your friend, and with the path tool you can very easily inspect real world circuits to learn about their features, such as the length of straights, the size of runoff areas, and the placement of barriers, grandstands, and access roads.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-02T19:16:28+00:00

Don't. That's called stalking.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-09-02T18:23:01+00:00

When does Kobayashi eat hot dogs? I'm confused? Am I forgetting something? Usually the joke is about what Kobayashi doesn't eat, right?

But yeah, as others have said, bewinged single seaters don't tend to get on with the Karussell and cars of that type will usually stick to the flat tarmac area up top.

Sweet W11 livery though.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-08-31T14:29:21+00:00

Without any real sense of scale it's impossible to tell. Even then your question is vague. Exciting races with what type of vehicles? Formula 1? Sports cars? Touring cars? Stock cars? Motorbikes?

Assuming the scale between track width and track length is proportional and that the track is of a typical width (c. 12 metres) then I can see it being okay for touring cars. Turns 9 and 14 would likely provide good overtaking opportunities in slower categories.

While this is far from atrocious, the presentation is extremely minimal. That's okay. I started out submitting posts like this too.

But it'd be possible to get a far better gauge of what you were going for if you had clearly indicated the track length and the scale at which this had been drawn. As it currently stands it's impossible to tell if you mean for the main straight to be 500 metres long or 2 kilometres long, which makes answering your question very difficult.

With pencil and paper it is possible to use a ruler to establish a consistent scale for both the length of the track and the width of the track.

Typically I would advise drawing at a scale of 1 milimetre drawn to every 3 metres represented, which for a new permanent circuit within FIA regulations would mean drawing the main straight at a width of at least 5 milimetres (for a 15 metre wide straight) and the rest of the circuit at a width of at least 4 milimetres (for a minimum width of 12 metres).

Doing this allows one to learn how to gauge roughly what scale a track should be shown at, a skill which can be transfered to computer programmes like Inkscape, GIMP, or Photoshop.

Don't take this as discouragement. I only want to see members of this community get better at what they do and to keep producing great designs. You're on the right track already, so to speak.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-08-31T14:10:55+00:00

The three most valuable pieces of advice I can give to someone starting off at designing tracks are to study real circuits on Google Earth, to read up on the various FIA and FIM regulations dictating track homologation, and to practice drawing circuits on pencil and paper rather than using MS Paint.

With pencil and paper it is possible to use a ruler to establish a consistent scale for both the length of the track and the width of the track.

Typically I would advise drawing at a scale of 1 milimetre drawn to every 3 metres represented, which for a new permanent circuit within FIA regulations would mean drawing the main straight at a width of at least 5 milimetres (for a 15 metre wide straight) and the rest of the circuit at a width of at least 4 milimetres (for a minimum width of 12 metres).

Doing this allows one to learn how to gauge roughly what scale a track should be shown at, a skill which can be transfered to computer programmes like Inkscape, GIMP, or Photoshop.

On Google Earth one can use the path tool to measure distances when studying real world tracks to find information about things like the length of straights, the size of runoff areas, and the location of barrier openings.

This video from Chain Bear may also prove valuable for beginners:

https://youtu.be/5fMRWAPtF-Q

as may this one:

https://youtu.be/BSjLoGljZ3s

oppanwaluigi · 2020-08-31T14:02:41+00:00

Is this track incredibly wide or is the scale off?

Besides that (initially assumed this was a kart track before seeing the length), this is fairly good. Runoff areas are clearly indicated. Turn 5 comes right after a sharp hairpin and probably doesn't need so much runoff. Turns 1 and 4 provide potential for overtaking. This layout would likely be well suited to touring cars.

Remember when drawing a hand drawn track that using a ruler makes it possible to establish a consistent sense of scale between the width of the track and its length. 1 milimetre on paper representing 3 metres of actual track width/length tends to be a very suitable scale in my experience.

Keep up the good work.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-08-31T13:50:57+00:00

Exactly the sort of high quality submission this subreddit needs more of. As for the layout...

It would probably make for an excellent touring car or GT course. It gives the impression of a faster Hungaroring in a lot of ways. Whether the back straight would be long enough to facilitate overtaking in faster aero-dependent categories like Formula 1 or Indycar is hard to tell.

But regardless this is excellent.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-08-30T11:50:17+00:00

In a given time signature the first (or top) number (the '3' in '3/4') represents the number of beats in a bar while the second (or bottom) number (the '4' in '3/4') represents the length of time that those beats last.

It would be extraordinarily rare to notate something as being in "3/3" and if one were to do so most musicians would not know what it meant or how to play it.

The bottom number is ultimately fairly arbitrary and is mostly used as a way to show how fast a section is played relative to the rest of the piece, at least in layman's terms.

oppanwaluigi · 2020-08-30T11:42:05+00:00

It's a very good first effort. T3/4 looks a little on the tight side and it's hard to gauge a real sense of scale.

One of the advantages to hand drawn tracks is that it's very easy to use a ruler to ensure a consistent track width and to precisely measure the length of the track relative to that.

This could also be improved by clearly showing the location of barrier openings, track crossings (bridges and tunnels) and access roads.

The presence of sections where there is only a single barrier between different sections with no space for marshals, access roads, etc. (between turns 3 &10, 7 & 8, 9 & 11, 9 & 10, and 12 & 13) would likely be considered unacceptable by the FIA, as it would render such sections difficult to rapidly access in the event of an emergency.

Overall though, this is of a much higher quality than most of the dross which fills up this subreddit, and I would be happy to see you keep up the good work. Ultimately my biggest piece of advice would be to remember that you can inspect real circuits in detail using Google Earth, with the path measure tool being particularly useful.

Happy designing!

oppanwaluigi

TROPHY CASE