Levithian

I think if the company didnt make an absolute killing on pokemon, they just produced another device that would possibly bankrupt their console division. You know the biggest thing nintendo should do? raise an online store/network. Start making/producing/licencing games for adults. Start porting your old games across to the CURRENT/NEW console you are offering. Start selling old classic games for under $10 each. Allow your new console to save them to data storage (hard drive or memory card) which can be recovered/transferred to new systems. Sit back and rake in the nostalgia gamers market. When will people actually start to realise that the people you are trying to market to actually grew up with your products? I can't remember the exact year, but there are a bunch of studies that show the average gamer is now into their 30's. They aren't kids, so how about they shift their focus a little? Its untapped potential. Id buy one and spend a fortune just to play games like maniac mansion again. Yeah, I can just buy a cheap emulator that looks like a NES and fill it full of roms, but it's not the same and is still a bit buggy. Sell me a console I can settle arguments (and scores!) with and my credit card would go into melt down. I think they missed out with the NES classic reissue. The idea was almost there. No scope for upgrades and you are stuck with the games they offer you in a pack killed it though.

That reads a lot like you'll be in there until you get out, we aren't letting you out when you give up. That's certainly one way to ratchet up the terror.

You're a troll. Big hydraulic and electric motors don't stop when things get in the way. They run until they break something or someone switches them off. No more needs to be said about how 4 people lost their lives. No matter how much bait you throw out.

There is a large amount of rushing water that heads under the platform, but it the trough the rafts drop into to allow them to unload is pretty calm by comparison. The pumps look like they are positioned just to the side of the conveyor as you come towards the unload dock, as you start climbing the hill. If I remember though, the conveyor is clear out of the water at the top, so you were actually hoisted out of the water, everything drained off a bit, then on the other side it kinda dipped down a bit again before the end of the conveyor. So you kinda just plopped off the end of the conveyor and into the trough where a small current floated you along to the station. It didn't have really fast moving rapid type current, there must be a bypass or diversion from under the station as it seems pretty fast flowing when you look off the right hand side of the bridge. It's normally pretty well timed when you ride though, so at the worst you end up with a couple of rafts unloading just floating in the trough until they wedge the raft in place to unload. Such a sad loss of life. RIP.

Not sure if its just simply the difference between someone being injured/killed, and someone being injured/killed by equipment or machinery, etc. Like, someone having a heart attack or slipping and falling vs something like this. Industrial accident kinda made the tone sound like it was staff not the public? Do they have scheduled maintenance river rapids? It's a bit dark, but you can see in some of the aerial footage, one of the gondolas is on it's side.

It's not the fence line that I was thinking is the problem. Its the fact a big support would be right on the edge of the road, waiting for things like trucks or inattentive drivers to drive into it. Like you posted above is in pretty much no danger of traffic plowing into it.

They literally cut out the kerb channeling and into the road to place it though. Its not just close to the road.

Went this afternoon for a couple of hours and they had part of the entry road closed off and what looked like steel footings going right on the edge of the road. Wonder if they are changing the access road a bit if its a support, looks like it would be really difficult for the park fence to pass outside of the footing with the road right there. Might be unrelated though, could be maybe a big lamp post or a sign or something I guess.

That's where the dam is I was talking about. You can see it from the road driving in. See the one on the left? there is one equally as big on the right, it's just hidden by the trees in your photo. Isn't that where what looks like the grounds and gardening people are? I've only been to paradise country a couple of times recently, but aside from looking a bit like a dumping ground for stuff from the park, it looks like there are vehicles like trucks and loaders, plus stuff like soil and gravel the area? doesn't really look like it's not being used even if it is messy. Regardless, its AGES away from anything resembling kitchens and stuff. The people who cover the most ground around the park have got to have something at least resembling a central location for ease of access. Never mind what do you do with the staff parking now that everyone is up the back? thats a LONG way from the car park to walk. I could see maybe maintenance being up there, but not warehouse space for other departments too.

Theres a dam where you are talking about, isnt there? you can see it on the right just before you get to the start of the paradise country car park. Unless you meant where they are building the sets for thor?

yeah, it continues down in as much as it is a street, but once you turn towards kids WB, the building facades end. I was talking about more continuing the 2 or 3 story frontage, especially if you were to build a multi purpose area, so you'd want to maximise the space by building up. I don't think there is much space behind west at all anymore. not since those sheds for fright night went in. Walking around on frightnight, it looks like it runs pretty much right up towards fencing, with some containers and what looks like a road behind them. Not sure where you would build a big warehouse that incorporates maintenance, food and bev and storage. Those areas by themselves already take up a very large foot print, anything new would need to be an improvement providing bigger space, not just condense it into one.

Yeah, but as I said, its along way away from the park itself.

Problem is where? plus you need offices, storage for food and drink stuff, and all your maintenance type stuff close by in the park somewhere because they are the ones doing the most running around. In the case of the food stuff, I imagine as close to the kitchens as possible. Same with the offices and admin building. Probably want it somewhere clean and fresh looking at the front of the park for when vip's, guests, etc arrive.

Yeah. I figured anything that even has a slight hope of being utilised is going to have to fix both the parking/access problems and provide more land for them to utilise for the park. I actually toyed with the idea of making a brand new entrance that splits green lantern and the new, unnamed coaster. You know the existing bridged access road and security building? take it in through there and position it right so you now walk in through the big gates that are between justice league and green lantern queue. That would be pretty cool, but I thought that, ultimately, the grand entrance and fountain wouldn't be grand enough and it would cut off another access way to the park which might still be used. Green area is good, you'd probably have to build over the creek like you would with a shopping center, so underneath is effectively left as a flood plain with the creek passing through. Only problem with building coasters along the front of your park is you want them for WOW factor, like when you are driving down them as you come in. So I reckon you would still have to make use of the alignment of those coasters in your entrance some how. If you still took my idea of moving the facilities into the car park, another idea I thought could have been pretty cool and MAY have worked was to use the same junior driving school building and road runner as the start of the kids area, then everything new for the kids area being built behind that where basically the maintenance buildings are already. Imagine drawing triangle shaped area starting with a line from the end of road runner, across junior driving school to the fence, then drawing another from road runner, through the admin/offices building to the fence line. Everything between those lines forms the new kids area. Everything else in the existing kids area, right up to those retail places opposite the chocolate factory, across to the back of roxy, and all the buildings across the fence line, the offices and right up to stars cafe is knocked down. This could be used as an in park location for your hotel/new entertainment precinct. Entrance of it spilling out into the new parking areas obviously. So you could have outside access next to your entrance to the park, your in park areas below the hotel itself and the park entrance spills out along a new facade that continues the height of the main street around to the kids area. Im not sure what you would put in an after hours precinct, I imagine new food and retail options would be a big start, a function space? I don't think they were planning a huge hotel though are they? maybe 3 or 4 floors? few hundred rooms at maximum? You could easily build it above the precinct and tie it into the park, but be able to close off the park entrance at night. Given the length, the precinct could follow the existing park wall, stretching from an entrance off main street near the fountain, all the way back to about where the existing kids WB arch is. Build your hotel on top out over into some of the reclaimed area and not have to worry about the creek.

Did something quickly while eating lunch. It's obviously a bit rough, and of course spaces can be moved around a bit to maximise things like parking spaces, roads, etc, but something like this is what I was talking about. It would probably still work if you were to build a hotel in front, but it would obviously require multi level parking to provide enough for the park and the hotel guests, etc. Black is the change in boundary/fence for actual park use, the white being addition of the new service areas (in hindsight, I should have done this in reverse).

Not really sure if it belongs in here, or in the general movieworld threads, but since space, car parks and locations are being talked about here, I might as well post it here. If it's not the site of the hotel, and If they are going to go ahead with the car park across the road, I reckon now would be the time to future proof the park to an extent by absorbing part of the existing car park and building out along the overflow grassed area. A few reasons, the grassed area is a lot bigger than it looks as there is more space to be cleared of scrub/trees before it reaches the creek. If they are required to upgrade the road (and most likely the roundabout), this would make sense. Access in and out of the park is horrendous. With things continuing to be built, it is in need of multi access points. If you happen to go during peak periods it can sometimes take 90mins or more to arrive and park or to leave. Having one way traffic through the access ways is terrible for the flow. The current main gates also spill out on to the road way when busy, creating havoc for public transport, taxis, coaches, etc, so the whole access needs to be changed. No doubt the existing facilities for staff could do with a major overhaul. Maintenance buildings, offices, storage, etc. These could easily be relocated and the fence line realigned, with services buildings now existing outside of the original park which could be freed up providing additional area for park usage and storage (which can easily be converted into ground space for new attractions, etc as the park continues to grow). People were talking about renovating kids wb area before? the whole area could be moved further back, bring over the intencity/dodgems arcade area and reposition it, freeing up more space around the villains hub. The creek is only a minor issue that wouldn't even require building over the top of. Even with previous flooding, I can't see why you would need to alter its course or build over it. Leave it where it is and have it running through the newly aligned park. It won't be in areas visible to the general public. Just have an additional access way in/out bridged over it to provide park access for staff. If some of the reclaimed land from the car parks was to be utilised for more building space, it wouldn't take much to redirect the creek further towards the highway. It would mean you could provide additional parking, fix the road access in and out of the park, provide additional space that could be utilised for expansion, and perhaps realign the main entrance gates to take advantage of the new park frontage. If they go ahead with their entertainment precinct thing there was talk about last year, if there were ever any plans for another access way into the park it would make a lot of sense, but it would require MONUMENTAL amounts of capital to see it happen, so I'll humour some people with it. If anyone that has access to a high quality image wants to throw a few lines down over the top, What I was thinking would be to take the existing gates, move them across into the first rows of the carpark, but turn them at 60 degrees so they now face back towards the existing main entrance arch. The position of the gates now establishes the new boundary line for the park. You loose maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the existing car park, but gain more spaces by building more parking out across the existing grassed area. The newly formed fence line and alignment of the car park forms the position of where to place park facilities. Move all the office buildings, storage and maintenance across using the wall much like it does now. Essentially it means you free up all these "back of house" areas for new possible development. A mixture of redevelopment and simply cleared area with no structures would be the result. Some of the reclaimed space would form the newly developed WB kids with the existing junior driving school building and road runner coaster essentially forming the start of a new entrance to the zone. Everything in front of these buildings would be demolished and the space allocated for future projects. Move the intencity and dodgems building into the new kids area, with the development of new attractions to be placed within what is now existing offices, storage and maintenance buildings/areas. You could utilise the existing kids area for new developments, or utilise some of the back of house areas and essentially continue main street down into the kids area. If you utilised as little of the back of house area for redeveloping kids WB, it means you could set aside this entire area for future developments;possibly provide a new access point to this area from the main street fountain? Keep the alignment of the existing entrance road, widen it to 3 lanes providing dual lanes of traffic turning left into the existing main entrance when entering from entertainment drive. The left turn is a serious bottle neck coming from the highway. The merge is terrible and it actually impacts on access to wet n wild. Upgrade the existing section of entertainment road and realign the current intersection (that provides north bound highway access) back towards kopps road, providing dual lane entry/exit essentially running right into the middle of the newly aligned/created car park. This means people coming from the north service road will not have to travel to the highway underpass intersection to access the park and would provide scope for better transport access for public bus services into and out of the park, but also provide provisions for connecting the newly aligned carpark with the overflow talked about being created on the other side of kopps road. A new service road entering across the creek on to kopps road could be created for park staff, deliveries, etc that no longer takes them past the main entrance, and when busy, could possibly be used as a 3rd exit from the car park to reduce congestion during events. It's something that could be done in stages across a 10-15 year period, but I reckon it would probably be too expensive anyway. You could start with the additional parking and realignment of the gates/entrance, effectively being able to build the new areas while still providing existing park access through the current one. Could then start building new park facilities in the newly formed area and provide access on to kopps road, so that when the alignment of entertainment road changes you still have continued access into and out of the park, limiting disturbance/congestion.

The problem with this is when a ride specific element comes into it, no matter what the sensors pickup, for the video to react the same way someone has to have spent hundreds or thousands of hours even creating that environment to perform maybe 3 seconds of video. That's a serious expensive excerise for people offering VR packages to have to accommodate for. It might be different if you had hundreds of implementations where you can splice segments together, but I can't see it being the case with so few number of rides in operation at the moment. I guess you could have a generic theme package or something with basically stock footage that people could buy that doesn't utilise any previously trademarked property. I think you would really see the difference though. You couldn't even begin to legally build an environment around copyrighted material without already having the rights or access to develop that IP. The characters on arkham effectively become the sets and form part of the backgrounds, so I reckon it would be difficult to build a 3d world around them that operates with how the train reacts to the track. It's not a narrow straight ahead view, it's pretty immersive. I think it would be cheaper to start with a model of your track, then start building the world around it. what source are you viewing on your tv at 60fps? 4k? you cant compare increases in frame rates AND increases in resolution. people are always going to fancy the more detailed image. Im talking about the point where the eye/brain actually notices the juddering. I guess its more optimisation? refresh rates play a massive part in this too, because you can have a 1000fps video that's crippled by a 50hz capable pal display.

Im not talking about speed. Im talking about direction of movement in relation to the track. The image in the video matches turns with the footage. If you used the same video file for a ride that was basically similar, but was longer or shorter in length, or had a different section of track, you will end up noticing the difference in movement. The problem with motion sickness is normally because what you are seeing isn't always what you are feeling. So if you used a generic render without an accurate model of the track and had the image moving out of sync with what was happening on the train, then it'll be enough to notice the difference and it'll make some people feel sick. It'll occur if you feel you are traveling faster than what you perceive in your vision too. But that would be a bit of a moot point because you wouldn't expect more than a few km/h difference between runs anyway. I guess what i was saying is, I was surprised at how smooth the video is. I didn't feel any out of sync issues and ive ridden it in a few different spots. It was pleasantly surprising because there's so much going on in the video, I was kind of expecting to feel sick afterwards. You obviously have to start with some form of mapping of the track layout to be able to create the video, it's not something you can just swap between rides like might have been suggested. It feels like it would be developed/rendered based on your layout. It's also going to be one of those things that the more video frames you pay for, the more immersive and "free flowing" it's going to feel to ride. Gives you more scope for incorporating subtle changes in track layout across a larger number of frames so you don't notice the movement. Compare a game at 30fps vs one at 60fps. You apparently can't consciously notice much more than 30fps, but it certainly feels/looks better side by side, even if you shouldn't be able to equate the difference. It gets me wondering how much something like this really costs. I mean, what is the price of just the hardware alone? S7's have to be over $1000 each. Couple it with the VR headsets which retail for under $200 right? So thats $1200 just for a phone and something to plug it into. Throw in all the development stuff and the different restraint things movieworld look to have developed, if you said each phone cost you $1500+ it's quite a bit of money being thrown around. Even if you said the budget was a couple million dollars, id be even more surprised at how good the end result is. Yeah, bugs and little issues with getting it up and running smoothly (its still only the first week afterall), it's actually really good for a tight budget. I guess I don't know what I was expecting, given how average the first generation of VR stuff was in the 90's. I wonder how much similar installations have cost other parks? If people are saying it's as good, or better than six flags, certainly that's got to be a win for the park already.

Might be worth just having the people who won the tickets contact the park and see if they are transferable. I can't see the problem as long as they weren't seen to be profiteering by their sale. Would suck to turn up and be found out for being different people than the names on the list.

The only similarities I can see are they both use samsung VR gear and phones. Movieworld ride video is themed for arkham. The headset restraint things look different too. I dont think any of these VR installs would be a straight package that you can port to another ride. Even if the ride is the same type and you use the same theme for the video, slight differences in the install of the ride would probably make the video feel glitchy when riding because it wouldn't sync up with the track. That's the one thing I really noticed riding it, I was kind of afraid that the video was going to be out of time with what you are feeling on the ride, which I knew would instantly make me sick (get car sick bad enough as it is!), but this was actually pretty surprising. I don't know how they do it, but it would have to require some sort of mapping or something of the track to model your video off. It really is pretty cool how it all comes together even if the load times might be messed around or the VR units are sometimes glitchy. It's still only early days of VR development, let alone putting it all on a rollercoaster and getting it to work and survive in that sort of capacity. I mean, honestly, its personal consumer grade technology that's being used, its not something that has been purely developed to survive the constant punishment of 8-10 hr, 7 day a week operation. Can't wait to see how quickly the technology develops though.

Aside from anything that might be coming from the headset, I dont think there is on board audio. It sounded more like sound coming from a speaker near the station than from onboard the train. When youre leaving the exit ramp you can hear talking coming from a speaker somewhere. Ive ridden it a few times this weekend and i think the headsets arent that bad. Its just that when you hit the high force parts of the track its effectively heavier, making it feel like its going to move or fall off compared to when you started. I do have a fat head though, so it was pretty snug. I wonder how quick the technology advances. I reckon lots of the feeling issues with the headsets would vanish if they halved in size/weight. They are still pretty bulky compared to the size of the phone. Anyone get a ride photo with it on? Haha.

Im pretty sure i read it on here. Maybe when it was rc forums? Sparks and flashes, real ones are too dangerous to keep these days. Everybody wants them, but i would imagine it poses too much of a fire risk now. Basically have a lit match waiting for something flammable to stray in its path. Wind, guests dropping stuff, unit itself. Doesnt seem like an effect you can leave running to its own devices which is probably too much to maintain. Closest realistic sparks ive seen is that knocked over transformer in justice league. Its not bright enough to light a room though. Strobes might not be direct enough either.

Zero. Scooby is obvious. Why do you need vr on a themed ride. Makes everything else pointless. Wild west. Even if the phones are weatherproof, i dont think the VR units are. Plus you need something to track the position acurate enough for frame by frame sync of image. Thats kinda hard on a floating ride. Other thing is its very costly to produce. Given the long run time, even if everything could be overcome, it would probably cost triple what it would on arkham. Superman. I cant see them putting it on any ride with high numbers of guests. Arkham is slow too load already, but its not that busy anymore, so its not so bad if it takes a little longer. If you put vr on superman, two trains, it would mess up with the load/unload cycles and really blow out ride times. Its already pretty slow to load without making it worse. Edit. Think ill take a punt and get there early one day this weekend and go for a ride. Sounds great!

I thought i remember reading it ended up being tracked back to a welding unit that was used to create the sparks? There was worksafe report on it or something. Not just a news reporting quoting and unnamed source.

Werent those effects before the big drop what was responsible for basically burning the mountain back to a steel shell? As in, the sparking and stuff ended up setting off a real fire.