#HTE

Low-Tech and Hi-Tech Ways to Make Roller Coasters More Fun

When roller coaster designers want to one-up themselves, they’ll typically amp up the inversions, G-forces, or orientation of the riders. But here are two alternate designs, one low-tech and one high-tech, that amplify the user experience in non-kinetic ways.

While the roller coaster at Japan’s Washuzan Highland Amusement Park lacks the dramatic level changes that characterize most, they’ve managed to make it scary as hell by doing away with most of the car. Including the chain drive/launching mechanism. Instead, riders pedal themselves along in open air, atop what are essentially Siamese bicycles:

Japan is certainly a more hi-tech country than the U.S., so it’s interesting that it’s America’s Six Flags amusement park that’s taken the more hi-tech route with their Daredevil Dive coaster. Riders wear VR helmets, and their vision mimics the POV of a flying vehicle pursuit through a ruined city, synchronized to the motions of the coaster:

As someone who’s terrified of heights, I can’t decide which coaster would make me vomit first.

http://www.core77.com/posts/53789/Low-Tech-and-Hi-Tech-Ways-to-Make-Roller-Coasters-More-Fun