Feasibility of Apricot Hill Raceway

[Mr. CoolFiat]

A+, Gold Star & 10/10! Go to the top of the class!


👍

Don't we all think the same?

 

[White & Nerdy]

Wow!

Were there any other places in the US with reasonably similar terrain?

 

[Madman Apex]

love it!!! aboslutely great. just u dont recall at the end of the main straight before the first "easy-flat out" turn, that bottoming out. i love apricot hill only second to midfiled. but i mean everything else is perfect. would be great if you used Bob's track builder to port it over to the Simbin series of games, nudge nudge wink wink. GTR-2, GTR-EVO/Race-07. It would be great to race those cars at Midfiled and Apricot gHill.

What car did you guys drive around in??

 

[stpatty]

Get this man a job designing tracks!

And get Bernie on the phone, less Tilke in new circuits, more GT tracks brought to life

 

[Mr P]

Gotta say you guys went into some detail! and what an Awesome write up 👍
Well done guys and all the best for future projects

 

[shirakawaa]

That's an awesome idea. A bit overboard? Maybe. But this, in my humble opinion, is what I would have loved to see in GT5: old tracks in new shine and with variants. PD can do awesome fantasy tracks, but they rarely use that talent anymore it seems.

Sorry again if it's (maybe not too much though) offtopic here, but I have improved those layouts and wanted to share them:

Full layout

Apricot Hill D-Oval

Apricot Hill Club D-Oval

Apricot Hill E-Oval

Apricot Hill Raceway

Apricot Hill Raceway Short

Apricot Hill East

Apricot Hill West

Apricot Hill 24h Layout

 

[CodeRedR51]

You did all that yet PD in 6 years couldnt just about sums up GT5

This doesn't make any sense.

 

['85fierogt]

You did all that? Yet PD, in 6 years, couldn't. Just about sums up GT5.

This doesn't make any sense.

Does this help?

I'm loving the Apricot Hill layouts! I might dig out the old GT games now. The scale track setup was awesome. What car did you have on the simulator?

 

[CarreraGT]

Good stuff, looks like an awesome project. It boggles me how PD managed to include so many layouts of Cape Ring (which sucks) and couldn't even include Apricot Hill, one of my favourite GT tracks of all time

 

[Northstar]

Awesome work!!!👍

This track was easily my favorite GT track.

 

[W3H5]

Kaz should see this thread. Someone should send him the link somehow. I bet he'd make a remark about it on his Japanese twitter. Maybe it would inspire him to bring this classic track back to GT.

Agree^. One of my fav's for 2 player action. I love the hairpin.

 

[dhandeh]

For every 100 whinging, whining, moaning threads, we then get a thread like this.
It's threads like this that keep me coming back. Nice work.

 

[Fender0122]

Thanks guys for all the kind words. I really would love to make a career out of doing stuff like this, but racetracks just aren't built that often, nor are they even repaved that often. I agree that the location is not truly the best, but because of the little time we had we needed to settle on something to get the ball rolling on the rest of the project. I really would love for Polyphony to hear about this bc it would be awesome to make this, or any other original track, a reality. As for the other locations we researched in the south, it was hard to find the topography with enough elevation change that wasn't located within a state park or too close to neighborhoods.

The car I used in the simulator was the Amuse S2000. It was an overall easy car to drive and fast enough to not get bored. It was funny because the Formula SAE team at UT was constantly coming back to do hot laps and trying to beat each other. A lot of people were afraid to jump in if no one was currently driving, but people lined up when the SAE guys were driving.

I did make a blog ( http://feasibilityofapricothillraceway.blogspot.com/ ) with some more information than what I put in here and I will update it if anything else come up, but I don't think there will be any more progress on the project since I am currently on the job hunt having just graduated.

 

[SlyckTires]

This thread is seriously a great read.

Top marks for the grade work, fender.

Plus kudos to Shirakawa for the variation work.

 

[tankuroded]

Interesting. I hope this be in on a DLC - since it's gone.

 

[Rico_S]

What an amazing work you've done there!

Apricot Hill is my most favorite track since GT3; can't stop grieving for it when it leaves GT5...but you refreshed my memories and giving me hope of the track's rebuilding. Again, thank you very much!

 

[uMadson?]

You, sir, are a genius.

 

[TurboProp]

Fantastic job! I hope you got an A+++!

 

[Pezzarinho17]

That is incredible work, lots of research and effort has gone into every aspect of its creation!

Only positive criticism / question I have is over the choice of Apricot Hill, in that it is 1 thing to recreate a track in this way from someone elses design, but what of actually doing the track design itself too? For that I would mean being given an area of land and then sculpting a track around the available landscape (as with your project, trying to ensure that the numbers add so that not much landfill is required from elsewhere / needing to be removed). Then designing a racetrack which would bring close racing, a challenge for the drivers / engineers and good vantage points for viewers.

Good luck in your job hunt!

 

[Lambob]

Thank you Fender0122 for your talent.

I don't use twitter, but this needs to be tweeted to Kaz.

 

[WhitePhoenix]

nice work! very interesting.
I seems car nuts frequently find ways to integrate passion into studies, well done!

 

[Mach5_F1]

Fender0122, what an awesome and interesting project! I would really like to read more about it.

I also find SHIRAKAWA Akira's variants really cool.


I think you'll find this very interesting. It is an excerpt from GTP's GamesCon interview with Kazunori Yamauchi last year.

• "... Kazunori continued, “A construction company in Japan [Maeda] investigated the possibility of building Grand Valley. They wrote a book about it!”. We weren’t able to get an accurate title from Kazunori or Translator-san – it didn’t seem to translate well, but “Fantasy Business Scheme” was the final answer. ..."

KY also states that given the money, time, space and resources the fantasy GT track he would build is Deep Forest.

You can read the full interview here: https://www.gtplanet.net/gamescom-the-yamauchi-interview/


In the comments someone named Doctor_No added:

• "... The company’s name is “Maeda”, not ‘Maede’. They are well-known for building the Tokyo Bay Aqualine, which is the underground tunnel traveling beneath Tokyo Bay.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeda_Corporation
  
  In the interview he is likely referring to this:
  
  http://www.maeda.co.jp/fantasy/
  
  The project goes over several theoretical scenarios and discusses how they would be made in the real world. For instance, they would investigate how much it would cost to make a Gundam in the real world.
  
  Grand Valley circuit was Project 03 in investigated in 2005, there is a discussion of the Maeda page here:
  
  http://www.maeda.co.jp/fantasy/project03/01.html ..."

I would love to read Maeda's book, at least the part about Grand Valley, but I doubt it will ever be translated into English.

 

[Midnight Snacks]

That is goddamned incredible.

 

[Ovreagr]

Absolutely friggin brilliant! Awesome work Fender!
They should have had you working on the "country club" track they were trying to build north of Charlotte a few years back. Maybe it would have actually gotten done!

 

[culturalsnow]

U of T alum. here. Very cool!

 

[BadLt]

That was pretty sweet. That track is missed in GT5. Many great battles.

 

[Tvensky]

ohh cool.. I did work with Bentley Microstation V8i for some 4 years in my last work... you did great job out there

 

[Mac K]

That's awesome! I miss apricot hill, was in if my favourites In GT3 and GT4!

 

[dhandeh]

Some signs of incompetentce......

Fail.

 

[VRracingfan]

That's awesome, wish it was actually being built!