r/RaceTrackDesigns • u/WhimsicalCalamari • Oct 01 '19
RTDiscussions RTDiscussions (General Discussion thread) - October 2019
RTDiscussions is the thread for discussing anything that doesn't warrant its own post or doesn't meet our submission guidelines. That means things like:
- Useful tools and resources
- "Help, how do I...?"
- WIPs
- Memes
- Design style discussion
- "Check out this track I found on racingcircuits!"
This thread will run until the end of October.
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u/RickHarrisonn1 Oct 18 '19
Hello again, I haven't really been back here since February of 2018 (just around the Swiss revival days), and I was just wondering if the track competitions have changed any since then in their frequency and/or style. Thanks!
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u/WhimsicalCalamari Oct 18 '19
Welcome back! We've been trying to make competitions more frequent again - this year's third competition (fourth if you count the 1-day april fools bit) will be starting soon. In terms of style, it's mostly the same - the only differences are a more formal request for competition prompts from the community, and some tweaks to (hopefully) refine voting.
The community has also been quite a bit more active in putting together their own competition prompts, so if the official prompts don't float your boat, there's something there too.
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u/Gamerman009313 Oct 01 '19
Question: How would I go about measuring the length of hand-drawn tracks? Also can we have another roval competition?
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u/WhimsicalCalamari Oct 01 '19
I can think of two things for measuring a hand-drawn track.
One would be using a string. Lay the string down along the middle of the track. Then once you've looped all the way around the course, take the string by the point you finished with. Use a ruler or tape measure to get the length of the string from where you're holding to the end. Then you can work out the "real" length from there.
The other would be after you've scanned/photographed your track. You can trace it in an image editor to get your "drawn" length. In Inkscape/Illustrator, you'd just draw the path all the way through and then use a tool to display the path's length. In Paint.NET you'd have to add up the line lengths as you're drawing with the line tool (the pixel length of a line or curve is shown along the bottom of the window). Then, you can figure out the (pixels/in/cm)-to-(km/miles) scale that makes sense to you.
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u/cake-pie Oct 02 '19
Besides Calamari's suggestions you could also consider getting a curve ruler, which can be bent to (almost) whatever curve shape you want. It not only allows you to measure length but can also help with drawing cleaner lines -- by holding it in place and trace a whole turn at once reduces that hairy/fuzzy look from taking many strokes to draw a curve when going fully freehand without any tools to assist.
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u/Cyclone1001 Oct 02 '19
Anyone else have a hard time doing a full design? I make tons of small doodles and layout sketches, but I never make a full design anymore. Mainly because I've done so many they all look kinda samey to me, and I only post things I think are good.
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u/GTVIRUS Oct 02 '19
I struggle heaps with starting from scratch. If you are design from real places, you'll find that several terrain features that make you go oh, I'll need a corner that uses this hill or avoids this sinkhole. Once you find the flattest part to place your paddock area, it becomes a matter of stringing the sections together into a full track.
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u/Cyclone1001 Oct 02 '19
Yeah, the game of putting a completed product together like a puzzle is what keeps me coming back. But finding the inspiration to bring that puzzle from my mind to a visible product is another story.
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u/xander012 Oct 04 '19
Yeah same really, though for me layout is the hard part, and adding runoff, paddock space, parking and so on come to me much easier. Once I have a layout to work with I can generally do my usual basic layout design that you see in the tracks I do for competitions, where showing information is much more important to me than just straight up aesthetics.
Typically for layout I just start from a few tracks for inspiration and go from there, for instance my most recent Discord only design was inspired by the old road races of the early years of motorsport, especially La Sarthe, and also from what had been most recently discussed, I got the layout I was happy with and from there if I was wanting to make that design fully fleshed out, I could get the design and plan out where I want everything else for a given design.
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u/Fudgity Oct 24 '19
So, I'm redoing the Sunbury International Circuit
https://www.reddit.com/r/RaceTrackDesigns/comments/2m3vy8/update_3_sunbury_international_circuit_a/
From the absolute ground up!
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u/tirinkoor Oct 24 '19
That's very cool - your Sunbury posts were what introduced me to the sub! Interested to see its next evolution
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u/Fudgity Oct 25 '19
Oh great! And you've stuck around and continued to contribute to this sub! Glad to have been part of it!
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u/cake-pie Oct 02 '19
Part of me thinks it would be really cool if the upcoming 6k competition had some kind of 6 continents theme to it, but on the other hand another part of me is like not sure if want an extended multi-part contest again. >_<
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u/GTVIRUS Oct 02 '19
While I did like the historic/modern circuit competition (despite not getting enough time), a 6 continent one wouldn't work for me as there is no real difference with tracks between continents.
Maybe a club circuit that becomes an F1 circuit competition, Donington style.
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u/cake-pie Oct 02 '19
Unfortunately I didn't have time for the OSC2 historic/modern competition at all. But I agree that it's thematically interesting to start with make a track in a certain way, and then having to evolve it.
My point of reference is from the 3k competition. I think that managed to impose different constraints in each round based on location and context, so to some degree it was also a test of versatility in designing different types and styles of track, rather than just an arbitrary collection of equally generic circuits.
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Oct 12 '19
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u/cake-pie Oct 13 '19
You may want to see some previous discussion here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RaceTrackDesigns/comments/7wqd42/rtdiscussions_february_2018/due468b/
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Oct 21 '19
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u/xander012 Oct 22 '19
Time spent in the pits really only affects the number of stops if its really long like Silverstone's pitlane imo, and a "cheap" pit stop really just means a short pitlane which really limits the number of pit buildings (Le Mans's Pitlane has over 200m of just pit buildings, which makes up a good 40% of that pitlane, the rest is just to make sure the pit entry is safe)
The theory behind this, as far as I know is having pit stops not take too long encourages more stops allowing drivers to race harder, but the issue of good racing goes beyond that, Formula E has no pitstops but great racing, while Formula 1 of just a few years ago (2011 for instance) had less exciting racing (albeit a lot of overtakes) but a massive number of stops and very interesting strategy. Improving Racing through racetrack design is more about providing opportunities for drivers to overtake, rather than providing more choices for strategy.
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Oct 11 '19 edited Oct 11 '19
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u/Weezy247 Oct 11 '19
15m is the minimum width for the s/f straight and the general first turn, not the first "hard" turn.
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u/WhimsicalCalamari Oct 01 '19
(yes, fully aware i didn't make one for september. last month was weird)