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Roller Coaster Data Center
stienman writes "The Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point Amusement Park may have more technology than your data center. From the article: "The parameters within which the Dragster has to operate are so finely tuned that variable load weights from people, wind speed and out-side temperature affect its performance. ... After every third launch, the data are averaged and compared with historic launch data in an effort to create that perfect ride - the roller coaster must go fast enough to clear the top of the tower, but slow to between 7 and 15 mph in order to give riders the maximum lift effect at the top."
Explains why TTD always closes at the WORST possible times ;-)
FWIW, I actually know someone for whom the Dragster didn't launch QUITE quickly enough - it only hit 112MPH...
When I rode it the one time, it was DAMN smooth, DAMN fast, and that was one DAMN steep descent. However, it was over WAY too quickly, and WAS actually boring. Besides, I'm not going to wait 1.5 to 3 hours in line for something that boring. I'd rather have a 2 minute wait (the time it takes to get from the exit to onboard a coaster) for something like Gemini - more fun, BECAUSE it's less smooth, and runs for plenty of time.
It's fail safe. In the event of a system failure, it can only fail to launch. Once started, it can stop even if it loses power completely, according to this article.
Now that is a thrill ride!
Does it run 24/7 with automatic backups and rollbacks if the system is overloaded by users?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
KK is the copy cat (never been in NJ, FWIW). It was built a year after TTD.
;-)
TTD specs: 120 MPH, 420 ft.
KK specs: 130 MPH (IIRC), 450 ft., with a rise and fall on the return that TTD doesn't have, but otherwise identical layout
If you've ridden TTD, you've pretty much ridden KK, even if you've never been there. IMO, TTD is a waste of time - KK would be about as much of a waste.
FWIW, go here to see why (roller coaster) overclocking is bad
How am I supposed to enjoy a roller coaster if I know that sophisticated computers are monitoring the experience and ensuring my safety? That's just being fed stimulus. Now, the Cyclone in Coney Island... that's a roller coaster! You experience a genuine fear of death, not because the ride is particularly scary, but because the roller coaster is about a hundred years old and feels like it is going to collapse at any moment! Woo!
As a recent visitor to the park for the first time, I have to say it's *THE* most thrilling ride I've ever gone on. I don't think anything less of skydiving will give me a rush like I experienced on this ride. Fantastic.
As a side note, while my buddies and I were waiting in line, we saw a sign to the effect "This ride doesn't always make it over the hill the first time.". If it hadn't, I'm not sure I could have gotten on it again LOL.
I prefer the old wooden roller coasters. The artificial elation that accompanies the new ones just can't compete with the real fear that one of the old wooden ones will fall apart while I am riding it.
RTFA again for the best results.
I've been there 4 times since the ride has opened, and each time the ride is closed for most of the day due to computer glitches. It's interesting to note they have to tighten the bolts every few weeks as well. On a side note, you have the be very skinny to ride this ride. I don't know why they don't make it a little bigger. I had to take off my belt and suck in my stomack to get the chest bar down.
Free stuff without getting the referrals? http://referralaccelerated.com
Define 'fail'. The software is not perfect, the ride still occasionally fails to reach optimal velocity and the riders are shot to the top only to ride backwards down the ascent hill, a rather harrowing experience for riders and obervers who are not aware that its a perfectly normal mode of operation. More importantly, it spends a lot of the time completely disabled, hurting the parks reputation and incidentally costing them lots of money.
The acceleration and braking systems all contain many mechanical fail-safes, the sort that do NOT fail EVER, thanks to superb engineering. Its the same old story, hardware runs forever, if they could only get the dang software right.
Ok, so this is a home "datacenter" but at least its mine... :-)
For a moment I thought it was an article about my career.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
I really don't intend to go to that amusement park again though.
Got on the Saturday or Sunday before Labor Day. The park is nearly empty on the Saturday and only a little more crowded on the Sunday.
We would go every year on that weekend and not have any wait over 20 minutes.
Cedar Point, while being the best amusement park in the world, has ruined me for the rest of my life... I cannot go to any other amusement park and enjoy myself like I would at Cedar Point. I have been to several other Cedar Fair parks (Valleyfair, Dorney Park, Michigan's Adventure, etc) but none are even close.
I miss Cedar Point, lines or not. It's their ingenuity in rides that make it amazing. They don't worry about themes and characters and instead worry about thrilling you!
How can I get the company to pay for my summer vacation to Cedar Point?
One of my friends took two pictures of a roller coaster ride that had a loop. The first picture showed someone throwing up (actually down) from the top of the loop. The second picture showed someone being hit by the vomit at the bottom of the loop. We could never figured out if it was the same person who hurled was on the receiving end. This why I stay on the water rides.
A database failure at a financial instituion won't lead to the deaths of numerous people. The financial losses will be massive, of course. So you know what, write such software in C or Java. Don't mathematically verify it.
C is not a safe language to write mission critical software in. That's just a fact of the language. Look at many of the flaws in existing software, for instance. It is too inherently vulnerable to make mistakes that could, in systems such as this coaster, result in death and severe injury. Even a language like Ada, which was designed to be used in such circumstances, may not provide adequate protection. Not that C shouldn't be used, but it shouldn't be used when people can die.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Actually, there were several times when I was at Cedar Point where it did not clear the hill and (though they claim in such an event it will return slowly to the station) it rocketed back down the hill as fast as it went up, not slowing until it reached the magnetic brakes along the acceleration section. Those were only test launches though, it was temporarily closed.
We were lucky and managed to get at the queue entrance right as it opened again so the line was fairly short, most people having left the line. It closed again, even more people leaving, but only for 10 minutes. Total waiting time, 45 min. In the back of my mind I knew it was perfectly safe (if only to protect from lawsuits) but the wait in line (which goes right under the acceleration section) is very nervewracking. I'm not usually a nervous person when it comes to rides but I was really starting to get freaked out. The ride was incredible and not at all scary-it was all the suspense in line that was. 0-127 mph in 4 seconds, pause just long enough at the top to enjoy the view then zip back down to earth.
I look like a retard on the pictures.
The Jack Rabbit at Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh is quite rickety itself, jumping off the track and slamming back down, shaking all the supports very visibly. Now that gets your adrenaline running.
TMA (too many acronyms!)
I was trying to figure out wtf the ride is, and found this:
e _ttd_InOperation1_320_high_videofile.mov
http://70.85.70.32/cp_website_media/ttd/cp_websit
The half-size prototype for this ride was installed at Knott's Berry Farm a year or so before this ride was installed at Cedar Point. I got a tour of the Knott's ride and it uses Allen Bradley control equipment to operate the ride. Allen Bradley is one of the major Distributed Control System (DCS) manufacturers out there and their gear (and software) runs all sorts of potentially dangerous and life critical systems (such as nuclear power and other industrial systems) all over the world. My assumption is that the Cedar Point ride uses the same gear.
If you are not familiar with DCS systems (computers), they are highly redundant control systems that are specifically engineered to be robust from both a hardware and software point of view. They have their own (fairly) high-level programming language that is used to map the various sensor inputs to the appropriate mechanical outputs. The low level code (that executes the high level code) embedded into the DCS by the vendor and is heavily verified.
All modern (and most older) coasters use these types of industrial standard control systems.
I have ridden Top Thrill Dragster a dozen or so times and it definitely worth the trip out to Cedar Point.
The imperfections can help make a ride great. The Revolution at Great America in San Jose, a spinning boat ride that goes over the top, sometimes goes over forwards, and sometimes goes over backwards. You really don't know when it will, or why. Compare that to Superman, the Escape at Magic Mountain, which does exactly the same thing every time, and Superman just seems less interesting.
I must admit, my favorite rides skew to the less predictable. At the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk, there is (was) a ferris wheel which consisted of little egg-shaped cages. The rider was given a bar they could pull on to lock the cages in relationship to the wheel, so that they would very slowly spin over the top. No seat belt, mind you, or safety bar or anything, just a little egg-shaped cage with a small bench and a rider flipping around inside, holding their head off the metal with a well-placed, frequently panicked arm. Drop Zone at Great America has a random timer, to ensure that nobody will know when it is about to fall. It's surprisingly good at catching you when you're not expecting it, no matter how many times you ride it. Even The Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland has people concurrently going through lengthy looped scenes, so that certain boats see the beginning of the loop, others see the middle, and others the end. The rides at California Adventure seemed too controlled and soulless to be a lot of fun, even if they did do so with a bit of showmanship. The best ride there is the white water raft, because it combines the freeform risk of most raft rides with a lot of little technical controlling tricks (like artificially spinning you up).
Personally, I would want to go on the ride when it fell back. That sounds like a lot more fun than just going forwards for 20 seconds. That sounds really, really thrilling. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was left in on purpose, and I'm sure it helps the ride's reputation.
The ______ Agenda
Just out of curiosity, what makes you think you "know" anything about embedded software engineering? Judging from your statements you clearly have no experience with the matter, and you have never spoken with anybody with any experience in the matter.
Most embedded systems are written in either C or assembler and they do just fine. Most real-time OSs are written in either C or assembler and they do just fine. For both of these statements I am including everything from the systems that run on space and planetary probes down to the processor running in the keyboard you were just typing on. I just saw a job posting today for a medical device software engineer requiring experience with WinCE, C++, and C#. Guess what language(s) WinCE was written in. It sure wasn't Pascal, PerfectScript, Perl, PHP, Pict, Pike, Pilot, PL/C, PL/I, Postscript, Prolog, or Python.
Embedded systems don't normally need the absurd amounts of error checking that user level programs do. Thermocouples aren't normally in the habit of randomly generating buffer overflows. Physics is sufficient to deal with most situations, and I'm not just talking about the physics of the real, such as the expected temperature variation over time that said thermocouple would be experiencing. The physics involved in a thermocouple wire breaking will also not overwrite the stack into the code space. I have never heard of a network buffer overflow problem in VxWorks, and that was written in C.
What language would you suggest for embedded systems? Something that will randomly shut down randomly for milliseconds at a time to do garbage collection? Something where the first pass through a section of code takes a radically different different amount of time than the second pass, or the third? Even ladder logic is unsuited to many tasks because the PLCs that are normally used to run it often have loop times dependent on the input states.
C was designed for system level work. It is predictable, which is the single greatest criterion for embedded and real-time systems. It is really quite adequate for the task as long as the people working with it are used to designing embedded systems. Or else they have their work reviewed by those who do have the experience. Any real engineering office would be run this way.
For those of you wondering how it doesn't crash, it is all pretty much logic control. Also, in the event of any kind of failure (on any roller coaster), all the brakes default to the on position (stopping the ride as fast as possible). The best part about TTD would be a rollback (I've never gotten one, in 30+ rides), or the ultimate (when a train got stuck at the top for 20 mins loaded). For more info check www.pointbuzz.com
Of course C is used for much embedded software, but most embedded software is not safety critical (e.g., potentially fatal). It has been shown that C (along with many other languages) is inherently unprovable - and many engineers on safety critical systems rely on being able to prove the correctness of a program using something like Z. From what I remember of classes on the subject, there are (very small) subsets of C which can be reasoned about, and those are often used. The kind of things they typically take out are pointers & address arithmetic.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Top Thrill Dragster isn't the tallest in the world anymore. At 456 feet, Kingda-Ka is:
s /KingdaKa.html
http://www.sixflags.com/parks/greatadventure/Ride
At 128 mph, it is also the fastest (though it has been shut down for the last couple of weeks.)
Talk to anyone who's done software on expensive medical devices, avionics, or military equipment, and you'll find plenty of examples of C being used in the most critical of situations. It just means the code and design has to be scrutinized much more than it would be at an average code house.
Right now, I'm writing some code which controls primary airplane functions - in C++ compiled with GCC 2.95. Don't worry - it's perfectly approved by the FAA bloodhounds. We just can't use things like STL or compiler-provided exception-handling, for instance.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Of course they're identical. They were both built by the same company.
Go figure it's the same company who does all of the accelerator coasters, including the Superman Great Escapes, Batman Escape...
The list just goes on.
How's that supposd to even begin to compare with a datacenter? Why, back in the day, our datacenters would go up and down several times at high speed, with a couple loops and corkscrews thrown in for good measure!
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
About the programming and hardware typcally used. Allen Bradley makes multiple types of controllers. There are basically 3 main platforms used: PLC-5, SLC500/micrologix, and Logix. A roller-coaster would most likely use a combination of SLC and Logix controllers. Each controller is designed for different levels of operation. The Logix platform controllers usually are the high end and are probably the controllers that would analyze the data from the remote sensors. The logix controllers use a 32 bit system, but performance is not meant to be comparable to a PC. Rather, they are designed to be basically bulletproof in operation.
With just 300 sensors, the SLC could easily handle the inputs, but since it is a newer coaster, it is likely that there is at least 1 Logix processor in the system.