Streets of Atlanta Gran Prix (WIP)

[07CobaltGirl]

Streets Of Atlanta Gran Prix

Length: 12.75km (7.92 miles)
Laps: 25
Race: 319km (198 miles)
Date: Mid-April (due to the blooming Dogwoods and Azaleas which make Atlanta one of the most beautiful cities in the US!)

I invented this track for an original, fictitious, Real-World based track. I am using my local city and some historic streets around well-known landmarks. The route will be outlined below, so for those of you familiar with Downtown Atlanta, Georgia, you will have an idea of what the track will look like from the car. For those who do not, it isn't hard to find, as Atlanta, the business hub of the SouthEast, is quite a large city in the USA, and pictures of the landmarks mentioned below will be easy to find. Of course, the track will be centered around Piedmont Park, Atlanta's version of Central Park in New York City.

The 9th largest city in the United States of America is found in Atlanta, Georgia. While the City of Atlanta has just under 500k population, the Metropolitan Area, which covers over 8,300 square miles (21.6 square km), has a massive population of 5.5 million. A major transportation hub and home to the "World's Busiest Airport", Hartsfield-Jackson International, 3 major Interstate highways intersect in the busy Downtown District. Atlanta has the highest elevation of any major city which is located on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States of America. Elevations in the city range from 305-335m (1000-1100 ft). Specifically it is situated on Peachtree Ridge, along the Appalachian Plateau, with the Blue Ridge Mountains to the north.

First, let's have a good look at the track. On the West side is Downtown Atlanta. At the North end is Piedmont Park. The race begins on Freedom Parkway at Boulevard near Atlanta Medical Center.


For reference, here is an arial shot of the area with streets marked.


The Route:

• Start is Boulevard and Freedom Parkway along the southern edge of the map heading East. Directly north of this location is Atlanta Medical Center, which will provide quick access in the need of medical attention during the event. Further along, the road turns to the North, where you will find the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum. It is highly recommended to visit this location while you are here to see the race! The road is sweeping left and right curves as it progresses North toward Ponce De Leon Avenue.
• There is a hard left at the intersection of Ponce De Leon Avenue taking the route West into Midtown past the historic City Hall East and on down to the intersection at Monroe Drive. This area is alive with restaurants and shopping for the off-beat aficionado.
• At Monroe Drive, the route takes a hard right speeding North through the Midtown and Virginia Highlands districts, and eventually along the East edge of Piedmont Park.
• There is a roundabout located at the intersection of Piedmont Avenue and Monroe Drive, which will have to be navigated with care as it is a 15 foot climb and decent down to the road below, which will give you a clear view of Smith's Old Bar and Ansley Mall, with a left turn onto Piedmont Avenue heading South. Piedmont Park is on the left now, with the Atlanta Botanical Gardens just before the next turn.
• 14th Street is the first short jog in the course, which carries the route to the 14th Street Playhouse at Juniper Street.
• A short 10 blocks down Juniper Street brings us back to Ponce De Leon Avenue again for another quick jog over to Peachtree Street.
• After a quick left onto Peachtree Street, behind you is the Atlanta High Museum and Arts Center Complex and ahead of you is the main corridor through Atlanta heading towards Downtown Atlanta. While there are many things to see along this part of the route, the road is quite treacherous with the hills and curves as it winds between the skyscrapers lining the corridor. Here you can find the historic Fox Theater, Bank of America Tower, Sun Trust Tower Plaza, Wells Fargo Tower, Westin Atlanta Hotel, and Hyatt Atlanta Hotel Tower, just to name a few. When Peachtree Center and Peachtree Tower appear on the left, you have arrived at Ellis Street.
• With a hard left at Ellis Street, the course enters its final leg. Speeding back across the Downtown Connector, it becomes Freedom Parkway again.

And there you have it! Only 24 more laps to go to complete the Streets of Atlanta Gran Prix.



Track to come...

[strop]

Now this, this is a grand project. Street circuit racing making your own routes is really exploring what one can do with the track editor. Looking forward to the result!

[07CobaltGirl]

Glad you like it! Long courses, 7km+ are really trying on the patience, as the images are so very small and curves are so subtle. I have about 3km done so far.

[strop]

One thing that concerns me about all tracks, is that I assume that the cars strictly follow the path as programmed by the data, meaning that if we program the road directly into the trackbuilder, wouldn't that be like making the cars follow the middle of the road the whole way as opposed to the racing line?

For example, I checked out the Albert Park raceway, which, for the most part, is well representative because there are quite a few sharp corners you can't cut, either because you'll hit a wall or you'll get black flagged by the stewards. However the really fast leftward kinking S on the back half does allow for the cars to ride the kerbs and they go bloody fast through there (about 230km/h), but since the roads paint a rather different story on initial inspection (I noted this since I actually live nearby so can see the track physically), when I tried it in Automation, the cars had to slow right down to make it through there. I'm aware that the F1 cars are pushing about 4 lateral G going that fast, but even with my fastest craziest track tuned cars from b1386, they were slowing down all the way to 110-120 and that made me think, naaaah, so on my copy I modified it to simulate the cut kerbs

The question is, how hard would it be to model the racing line itself? I see the really subtle kinks and bends in the roads, how much turning and loss of speed do they necessitate if you took the fastest line through there?

[07CobaltGirl]

Well, I try to model the racing lines on each track. But it isn't really programming the line so much as drawing it with geometry/trigonometry. The map images are quite small, so it's more like eyeballing it with math. I can get pretty good lines, but it's unlikely they'll ever be "perfect". This is part of why I really want to be able to make tracks starting in any direction. Some maps would work best with compass orientation (north being up), while others have to be rotated. The track start position, however, must always start to the right. Not up, not down, not left. So the image for the track must be oriented accordingly. I "experimented" with a different direction on a few tracks, but it did not go over well. Good examples are Bathurst and Road Atlanta. I'd really like to learn more about Der Bayer's method for generating tracks to see if it works better. Also, if I could work on a full size image and then scale it down for Automation, that might be helpful. Otherwise, the best way to simulate a real track line would be to do the whole thing by hand, which takes FOREVER to do. I've done a few by hand and the Track Editor cuts the time down by 75% at least. I do make some tweaks by hand, but only if they are absolutely necessary because of the time consideration.

[Der Bayer]

Well, I usually take AI driving line data from rFactor tracks, plodt it with Matlab, use my selfmade Automation track plotting Matlab script (which basically is the same as the ingame driveline calculation) and align the track to the rFactor data by hand. It's not very different to your approach, just the plotting is a bit nicer, but track definition is done in a text editor and not in a GUI. And the "real" driving line template is very nice of course.

[Manche]

I see areas with lots is evenly spaced trees at places, Suburbia?

[07CobaltGirl]

I see areas with lots is evenly spaced trees at places, Suburbia?

Not exactly. They are neighborhood areas, but not Suburban. That is primarily downtown Atlanta. Lots of trees. Lots of parks. Lots of cars. This course is centered around the largest park in Atlanta, Piedmont Park, skirting its east and west borders. The course width (east to west) is about 2.5km. North to south is about 4km. The area at the lower left corner is the Downtown Skyline. The northernmost tip of the course is the north end of Piedmont Park. The park covers from this point south to 10th Street on the map. The furthest point west is Little 5 Points, Atlanta's version of NYC's Greenwich Village. Atlanta has a moratorium on high buildings, so everything is spread out. There are fewer than 30 skyscrapers in the Downtown area. There are another 15 or so in the Buckhead area to the north, and further to the north another 5 or so at Perimeter Mall. Officially, Suburbia does not exist inside the I-285 Perimeter, which is a 70 mile beltway around the Metro Area covering an area roughly 32km north to south and 25km east to west. Outside the Perimeter highway, Suburbia extends for another 25km in every direction!



FYI, Suburbia actually extends beyond this photo in some places!