Hello! Reading through the forums lately, I noticed a LOT of people have been asking for height markers in the game for a long long time now.
So I got bored and decided to embark on a quest to estimate the height of the squares you get in the coaster builder in order to better understand how tall the coasters we all love to build actually are. Now I must tell you that my conclusion is a little off but it may give us a general idea.
So first of all I started by using paths and comparing them to track lengths since the game allows you to make paths of exact lengths. As you can see from this picture, this 7 meter path length is slightly longer than these 6 squares with roughly half a meter extra on each end - giving us approximately 1 meter per square or 3.28 feet. This is unfortunately nonsense and most likely a very inaccurate way of doing this so I decided to do it in a bit more of a complicated way...
My method
My measurements
My calculation
Checking the result:
At this point I decided to call it a night - maybe I'll come up with some other way to test the result but for now I'm gonna leave it. Please let me know if there any flaws in my math/logic or suggestions for ways to test the results further. No doubt I've messed at least one thing up - it was 2 am here after all.
TL
R - My calculations lead me to an exact figure of 4.262 meters or 13.98 feet per square however given the margin of error and the programmers propensity to use whole numbers I would say it's more likely to be either 4 meters or 14 feet per square. There are some signs that these figures could be pretty close but certainly nothing I've investigated yet can conclusively prove whether these are the correct length scales and the developers would have to be on something to base their base height measurements on a number ending in 4.
Of course now I've done all this work either the developers are gonna say I'm totally wrong or I'll be right and alpha 3 brings height markers in the next few days - either way I hope that was helpful or somewhat interesting for somebody out there anyway
So I got bored and decided to embark on a quest to estimate the height of the squares you get in the coaster builder in order to better understand how tall the coasters we all love to build actually are. Now I must tell you that my conclusion is a little off but it may give us a general idea.
So first of all I started by using paths and comparing them to track lengths since the game allows you to make paths of exact lengths. As you can see from this picture, this 7 meter path length is slightly longer than these 6 squares with roughly half a meter extra on each end - giving us approximately 1 meter per square or 3.28 feet. This is unfortunately nonsense and most likely a very inaccurate way of doing this so I decided to do it in a bit more of a complicated way...
My method
1. Build a roller coaster with a known angle of ascent (in this case it's exactly 45 degrees according to the game controls - I did this by setting the angle snap to 15 degrees and elevating/lowering the first and last parts of the lift 3 times) and chain speed (6 meters per second) and put a brake on either end of the straight section (see picture).
2. Measure the difference in the height (in number of squares) between the bottom of the first brake section and the top of the second brake section
3. Test the coaster to learn the timing of the brake sound (with 8 cars on a giga coaster there are precisely 5 brake sounds with the last one being a slightly different sound - the timing between these sounds was determined to be constant at a constant speed). It was also determined that the coaster does not speed up or slow down on the curved section of the track on either side and since they are symmetrical and we are only concerned about the difference in length between 2 points we can negate this entirely.
4. Use the timing of the sound of the brakes locking on either end of the track to time the coasters ascent (it doesn't matter which sound you use as long as you use the same one e.g. I used the 5th brake sound on both ends.
2. Measure the difference in the height (in number of squares) between the bottom of the first brake section and the top of the second brake section
3. Test the coaster to learn the timing of the brake sound (with 8 cars on a giga coaster there are precisely 5 brake sounds with the last one being a slightly different sound - the timing between these sounds was determined to be constant at a constant speed). It was also determined that the coaster does not speed up or slow down on the curved section of the track on either side and since they are symmetrical and we are only concerned about the difference in length between 2 points we can negate this entirely.
4. Use the timing of the sound of the brakes locking on either end of the track to time the coasters ascent (it doesn't matter which sound you use as long as you use the same one e.g. I used the 5th brake sound on both ends.
My measurements
The difference in the height of the 2 brake sections was measured to be between 15 and 15.5 squares. 5 individual measurements of the time taken for the rollercoaster train to travel between the 2 brake sections were recorded (15.29, 15.41, 15.24, 15.38, 15.30 - all recordings in seconds). This yielded a mean average of 15.32(4) seconds.
My calculation
To calculate the length of the lift hill track between the 2 brake sections:
distance = speed x time
therefore distance = 6 m/s x 15.32 s = 91.92 meters (range: 91.44 meters to 92.46 meters or approximately -0.522% and +0.587%) margin of error).
Percentage error for square measurement |([15.25-15]/15.25)|*100% = |([15.25-15.5]/15.25)|*100% ----> +/-1.64% error.
From here use trigonometry to find the vertical height difference between the 2 brake sections.
Let x be the height of one square, n be the number of squares difference in the height of the brake sections, d be the calculated distance of the lift chain track and a be the angle of ascent.
sin (a) = (n*x) / d
(n*x)= sin (a) * d
x = [sin(a)*d]/n
x = [sin(45) * 91.92] / 15.25 = 4.262 meters (13.98 feet)
The lower bound of x is 4.17 meters (13.7 feet)
The upper bound of x is 4.4 meters (14.4 feet)
Therefore the approximate error is +3.23% and -2.00% not fantastic but not terrible - most of the error comes from the measurement of the number of squares in the brake section height difference. What is exciting about this I suppose is that the values are all roughly pointing towards it being 14 feet per square / 4 meters per square.
Anyway so let's look at the likelihood of this.
distance = speed x time
therefore distance = 6 m/s x 15.32 s = 91.92 meters (range: 91.44 meters to 92.46 meters or approximately -0.522% and +0.587%) margin of error).
Percentage error for square measurement |([15.25-15]/15.25)|*100% = |([15.25-15.5]/15.25)|*100% ----> +/-1.64% error.
From here use trigonometry to find the vertical height difference between the 2 brake sections.
Let x be the height of one square, n be the number of squares difference in the height of the brake sections, d be the calculated distance of the lift chain track and a be the angle of ascent.
sin (a) = (n*x) / d
(n*x)= sin (a) * d
x = [sin(a)*d]/n
x = [sin(45) * 91.92] / 15.25 = 4.262 meters (13.98 feet)
The lower bound of x is 4.17 meters (13.7 feet)
The upper bound of x is 4.4 meters (14.4 feet)
Therefore the approximate error is +3.23% and -2.00% not fantastic but not terrible - most of the error comes from the measurement of the number of squares in the brake section height difference. What is exciting about this I suppose is that the values are all roughly pointing towards it being 14 feet per square / 4 meters per square.
Anyway so let's look at the likelihood of this.
Checking the result:
All good scientists check the feasibility of their results. So let's take a look at the implications.
So for starters 14 feet or 4 meters is a really weird number for a developer to use. You would expect something more decimal oriented like 5 or 10 so it's not too encouraging from that POV but it's not impossible so let's try some stuff:
First of all let's look at the Screaminator drop tower in planet coaster. Using a dive machine with a vertical lift hill I measured the drop height (the maximum height the car is dropped from as judged by a passenger i.e. not the structure height) to be around 22 squares or somewhere between 91.74 meters (300.98 feet) and 96.8 meters (317.59 feet) which would rank it as either the 5th or 6th tallest drop tower in the world. This is a very rough measurement so take this with a massive pinch of salt but given the sheer size of the screaminator it wouldn't surprise me if this was plausible - that thing is huge.
Let's change tactic though. I discovered that Wikipedia lists the height (94 meters / 310 feet - though this doesn't factor in the station height), the angle of ascent(45 degrees) and cable lift speed (15 mph or 24 km/h or 6.7056 m/s) of the celebrated gigacoaster Millennium Force. I used the official pov of Millennium Force to estimate the time it takes to ascend the hill - roughly 26 seconds (between 0:07 and 0:33). This is super dodgy because it doesn't account for the fact that the lift hill isn't straight all the way up nor does it account for the cable lift speed not being constant. But hey it's the best we've got.
So if the train is travelling at 6.7 meters per second (let's denote this as s) up a 45 degree incline (a) then using trigonometry we find the vertical component of the speed to be:
sin (a) = v / s
So v = s* sin (a) = 6.7 m/s * sin(45) = 4.74 m/s
Meaning the cable lift length is approximately 123.24 meters giving us an actual vertical height of sin(45) * 123.24 meters = 87.14 meters (thus the station is about 7 meters / 23 foot higher than the bottom of the lift hill/first drop).
So if we built a rollercoaster in planet coaster which was roughly 20.45 squares high and tested it with a chain speed of 6 and 7 m/s it SHOULD take around 26 seconds to reach the top. Here are the average results for each speed at a height of around 20.75 squares:
@ 6 m/s: 23.72 seconds (23.58, 23.64, 23.95)
@ 7 m/s: 20.73 seconds (20.37, 21.23, 20.60)
Considering how rough the calculations are and the fact we're negating the acceleration/friction of the cable lift (which would make the real coaster a fair bit slower) these results aren't bad but they certainly aren't conclusive proof either.
So for starters 14 feet or 4 meters is a really weird number for a developer to use. You would expect something more decimal oriented like 5 or 10 so it's not too encouraging from that POV but it's not impossible so let's try some stuff:
First of all let's look at the Screaminator drop tower in planet coaster. Using a dive machine with a vertical lift hill I measured the drop height (the maximum height the car is dropped from as judged by a passenger i.e. not the structure height) to be around 22 squares or somewhere between 91.74 meters (300.98 feet) and 96.8 meters (317.59 feet) which would rank it as either the 5th or 6th tallest drop tower in the world. This is a very rough measurement so take this with a massive pinch of salt but given the sheer size of the screaminator it wouldn't surprise me if this was plausible - that thing is huge.
Let's change tactic though. I discovered that Wikipedia lists the height (94 meters / 310 feet - though this doesn't factor in the station height), the angle of ascent(45 degrees) and cable lift speed (15 mph or 24 km/h or 6.7056 m/s) of the celebrated gigacoaster Millennium Force. I used the official pov of Millennium Force to estimate the time it takes to ascend the hill - roughly 26 seconds (between 0:07 and 0:33). This is super dodgy because it doesn't account for the fact that the lift hill isn't straight all the way up nor does it account for the cable lift speed not being constant. But hey it's the best we've got.
So if the train is travelling at 6.7 meters per second (let's denote this as s) up a 45 degree incline (a) then using trigonometry we find the vertical component of the speed to be:
sin (a) = v / s
So v = s* sin (a) = 6.7 m/s * sin(45) = 4.74 m/s
Meaning the cable lift length is approximately 123.24 meters giving us an actual vertical height of sin(45) * 123.24 meters = 87.14 meters (thus the station is about 7 meters / 23 foot higher than the bottom of the lift hill/first drop).
So if we built a rollercoaster in planet coaster which was roughly 20.45 squares high and tested it with a chain speed of 6 and 7 m/s it SHOULD take around 26 seconds to reach the top. Here are the average results for each speed at a height of around 20.75 squares:
@ 6 m/s: 23.72 seconds (23.58, 23.64, 23.95)
@ 7 m/s: 20.73 seconds (20.37, 21.23, 20.60)
Considering how rough the calculations are and the fact we're negating the acceleration/friction of the cable lift (which would make the real coaster a fair bit slower) these results aren't bad but they certainly aren't conclusive proof either.
At this point I decided to call it a night - maybe I'll come up with some other way to test the result but for now I'm gonna leave it. Please let me know if there any flaws in my math/logic or suggestions for ways to test the results further. No doubt I've messed at least one thing up - it was 2 am here after all.
TL
R - My calculations lead me to an exact figure of 4.262 meters or 13.98 feet per square however given the margin of error and the programmers propensity to use whole numbers I would say it's more likely to be either 4 meters or 14 feet per square. There are some signs that these figures could be pretty close but certainly nothing I've investigated yet can conclusively prove whether these are the correct length scales and the developers would have to be on something to base their base height measurements on a number ending in 4.Of course now I've done all this work either the developers are gonna say I'm totally wrong or I'll be right and alpha 3 brings height markers in the next few days - either way I hope that was helpful or somewhat interesting for somebody out there anyway
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