So i''ve decided to try and build my own elements rather than use the premade stuff. on the first coaster I made, according to the fear heatmap the highest score I get anywhere on the track is 6.20, yet my average fear score is over seven. How can this be?
Coaster fear?
- Thread starter silverback1
- Start date
The numbers shown by heat maps are not necessarily the highest values. The numbers are displayed at regular intervals along the track and It's quite possible to have much higher values between the displayed numbers, but you don't know what those are because no number appears there. All you can see is a patch of color indicating a high value.
I've come to the conclusion that the displayed numbers are spot measurements showing the value at that specific location. They don't seem to be averages for the length of track between one number and the next. So what you should be looking at is the color of the map, using nearby numbers as guides to interpret the colors.
YEah I kind of knew all that. What I don't understand though, is according to my heat map, the only place that's not in the green for fear is the lift hill and final part of my brake run. From what I'm seeing it makes no sense at all the fear rating im getting [uhh]
i have noticed slight variations between reported "overall" EFNs and the local ones.
i am suspicious that the factors affect each other in the final assessment.
like, fear adds excitement along the track, and may also cause an adjustment in the final overall calculation.
when one rating is strong green/red, it seems to "add/subtract value" (push towards/away from ideal) to other ratings. but this is subtle so i am uncertain and haven't run careful trials.
perhaps your nausea is often red, and that's driving fear up? i have found if i follow the track and adjust E.. F.. N in rotation to get everything as green as possible, they do seem to stack and it gets easier and easier to hit the targets i have for the ride.
My nausea rating is 2.5 so it's nothing to do with the nausea [uhh]
I don't think ratings are a simple average over time or distance. I've seen lots of examples where this appears to be violated, and have no reason to believe why it should be true. Your coaster probably has an overall fear higher than the maximum fear on the track - it's just how the ratings work.
I've seen it when on the heat map there is a spike of say fear 13 where everywhere else is normal range and that bumps the total up a few points. Is that what you mean? On this heat map there is literally no spike/peak, fear is all green except for the low points which go red (lift hill & brake run).
I have built hundreds of coasters and what is happening here I have never seen happen before. /shrug
You could always post it up for people to check out. [up]
No I mean the coaster will never exceed say 7 fear in the layout, but the overall fear of the ride ends up over 7 - and from what I can tell seems to be the result of having the coaster contain lots of 6-7 fear areas . Although I've never seen a coaster that has all green fear (ie below 6), come out with too high (orange/red) overall fear ratings.
I've built coasters with Fear scores of over 20. Not on purpose, mind you, but obviously the final ride rating are not an average of the values you find along the heatmap as you might expect. Needless to say, no one dared ride that coaster. Nobody.
It has nothing to do with the fear being higher but not being "displayed" by the heatmap.
I suggest looking at the G forces. Smooth out any parts that are too high (around 7-8 for positive, around 5 for negative / lateral).
The fear rating is only the heatmap average if guests don't die riding it.
I suggest looking at the G forces. Smooth out any parts that are too high (around 7-8 for positive, around 5 for negative / lateral).
The fear rating is only the heatmap average if guests don't die riding it.
I couldn't find no excessive g forces anywhere but i fixed it any how. All i did was select the whole track and clicked smooth all twice, the fear immediately dropped down to 4.2. [woah]
Then you had a kink in the track that was causing excessive Gs, and thus excessive fear
. Like I said originally, the numbers aren't the highest values and it's easy to get higher values between the numbers.The heat maps could really be better IMHO. The ones for EFN are the best because they use 3 distinct colors so it's a lot easier to see what's going on. But with the G-forces, there's just a single color gradient with several bad features.
First, it uses white for 0 and dark for high G, but the "dark" is really a pastel lavender not much different from white, especially in the middle ranges. And because you only 0 Gs in airtime hills, the entire 1-G part of the track is a light lavender to begin with. The result is that from a viewing distance far enough back to see the whole track, the entire thing appears to be monochrome, unless you have a very obvious (essentially intentional) problem where a prolonged stretch of high G (such as an entire loop that's too small) causes a noticeable purple patch. You have to zoom in close and go around the track inch by inch to see any changes in the color.
Second, the G heatmaps use the same color for both positive and negative Gs, so you can't tell which is which without inferring from nearby numerical values. Problem is, those are far enough apart that the Gs can easily reverse between them, and you can't tell. The other problem is, the numerical values are in white, which is hard to read against the white-with-a-hint-of-lavender background of the heatmap.
So, I think it's worth suggesting some changes to the G heatmaps. However, it might be nice to get a consensus on how to improve it first. For starters, I recommend:
* Using non-pastel colors for the high values, so there's more visible variation in the gradient from white to dark.
* Using different colors for positive and negative values.
* Recalibrating the vertical G heatmap to have white at +1G instead of zero.
Thoughts?
Yeah obviously heat maps can improved and probably should be, but how? I'll leave that up to smarter people than myself [big grin][big grin]