RallyX Course Design

[ericaswgn]

What obstacles (other than jumps) and course lay out do you guys & gals like best?

We will not have a dirt surface for another few months so we have a pretty slide proof surface that we need to make fun :headbang:

[UP2MTNS]

cones....tall ones, bigger the better
buckets (like 10 gallon keg buckets)
rocks :shock:
cement bollards :shock:
k-rails :shock:
pedestrians on segways :eek:
traffic signs
small children

[ericaswgn]

lol, no joke we currently have about 20 cows as moving obstacles. And yes I almost typed mooving.

Do drivers like weaving through cones, tight turns, u turns.. what tech obstacles?

[UP2MTNS]

mix it up....big sweeping turns, tight slaloms, open/fast slaloms, key holes, 180 degree ebrake turns, paper clips (think 3 180's in a row), reversible courses (run it both directions, takes a bit of planning ahead), 2-way elements (driver decides to take it from the left, or the right side).

the hardest part is getting your scale right....walking/designing the course always looks different on your feet than it does from behind the wheel at 20+mph. I'm still learning myself.

[rollo]

Small cones for "edges" and pointers, big cones for gates.
Giant upturned buckets are good too, and you can spray-paint logos or websites on them (good for pics)
Sponsor banners can also mark the perimeter or be set away from the course itself - it all adds colour and reference points
Jumps, not so much. Not on purpose anyway!

As far as course design, I'd say keep it relatively simple to begin with. You don't want people getting lost on their first try, it'll discourage them. IMO you need to have a few properly challenging parts, but the best courses flow from one element to another, and reward commitment to one corner by setting you up nicely for the next - or lose time if you get the corner wrong.

For me - and I've done a lot of these now - rallycross should be about the driving, not the navigating. If I'm losing time I want it to be because I'm driving poorly, not because the course is so complicated that I can't figure out where to go next.

Mike Malsed (SoCalBoomer) recently wrote a nice article on course elements (http://www.rallyxportal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2:course-elements&catid=5:rallyx-info&Itemid=3) and how best to combine them. I think it's missing some images but you get the idea.

Here are a couple of in-car videos from a course we ran last year. I did a course map overlay so you can kinda follow along.
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This was one of Mr RallyOBXT's early course designs. It was a fun course, but probably too tight in the loopty cloverleaf bit. You can also see sweepers, an open slalom, a tight slalom, a keyhole and a box-90 at the end.

I also have a bunch of Google Earth tracks of courses somewhere that I'll try to find.

[ericaswgn]

looking at the actual course with the video helps a lot and I appreciate the descriptions.
We are going to be stuck with the same course for the first few events due to manpower, construction, and the farm animals so we need to make it interesting enough that people will pay ~ $75.

we will prob reverse it the second time we use it and maybe add a few more turns...

I did not know half of these tech terms when I posted so thank you very much & I will read Mikes write up.

[Rally OBXT]

This was one of Mr RallyOBXT's early course designs. It was a fun course, but probably too tight in the loopty cloverleaf bit. You can also see sweepers, an open slalom, a tight slalom, a keyhole and a box-90 at the end.

I also have a bunch of Google Earth tracks of courses somewhere that I'll try to find.

To be fair, 90% (all the good stuff) of that particular course was designed by Mike. I was the one who put the (bad) 10% and messed up the whole double loop thing. :cry: It was a good learning experience though. :D

My courses are now much more mature IMO.

[scootfd3s]

I'd take a bunch of Go-Kart tracks and slap them together side by side and connect them.. Go-kart tracks give you no time to breath!

[Draco-REX]

A good course designer will keep in mind that there are powerful fast cars, and nimble low-power cars, and try to give both a way to get an advantage on the other. If there's space, one course can have wide open places where the power cars can make up time, and tight sections where the nimble cars will get an advantage. Or, if space is limited, plan two courses, one fast, one technical, and run one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

But also keep in mind the surface. Unfortunately, our local field has been more muddy than grippy as of late. So lately we've been running courses that would normally favor the power cars, but because of the lack of grip, they've been fun for everyone. And in the last race which was one of the muddiest ever; we had big open sweepers and a loose slalom and the two fastest cars were FWD. So the looser the surface, the looser the course should be.

Now, some may disagree with me here, but I feel the MOST important aspect of any course (well, 2nd after safety obviously) is FUN. You can have a course that seems to have all the right bits, but if it's not fun and doesn't flow, people won't be happy.

I think this is important for two reasons.

1. RallyX is fun. Few cars guys have never had their cars in the dirt or snow and done donuts or drifts. This is a safe and legal way to do this. So the fun factor is important and we shouldn't let it become secondary to competition. AutoX has become rather stuffy and up-tight as of late, and I've talked to many RallyX drivers who have driven AutoX and they've remarked on how much more fun they are having and much more relaxed they are. I think this is a good thing that shouldn't be overlooked or put aside.

2. I've been to five different regions and I've noticed that some things are very similar. You'll have your front-runners that are highly competitive and are pretty much expected to win. Some classes will have one guy, others will have 2,3, maybe 4 if a region is lucky that can compete evenly. But the BULK of the cars out there aren't usually in the running for the win. From a driver's standpoint, they are there to have fun. If they aren't having fun, they won't show. From an organizer's standpoint, they bring the bulk of the money. If a region isn't profitable, it's days are numbered. So as an organizer, you'll want to keep these guys happy and paying to come back. So the fun factor is as important to a RallyX program as anything else, IMO.

So that's my 2 cents.

[SoCalBoomer]

Loops are fun - I've found that keeping them to 270 degrees gives you plenty of loopi-ness but keeps the entry/exit very explicit. Anything more starts to confuse the two.

Keyhole turns are hard, but get great reviews if you don't make them too tight. They basically combine three turns in one element and really test a driver's ability to maneuver his/her car.

Slaloms -you gotta have one, but they're not high on my list of favorites.

"bridges" - they're fun. These are restricted width areas. I like them - especially where you force the driver to re-align their car to go through.

You can do a LOT - and there is a lot of ways to do things. You can do like I do which is to take a Googlemap and draw on it very specifically and then go to the site. . . or you can do like Pete Otero does in NorCal - he gets a rough idea on a napkin and then uses the tractor to scratch out the course.

A couple of suggestions, though:

1. When you do something, build a "convention" for it so that in future events, people get familiar with what you mean. For instance, my loops always have the same entrance/exit - four cones in a square (since it's 270deg) with three pointers at each corner pointing in. Visibile from all four directions, so if we want to reverse the course, it's plain and people now know that when they approach that formation of cones, a loop is coming - and it's plain enough that if you've never run one of my courses, you hardly have to think to realize what to do. . .

2. Limit your outside cones - use them deliberately and sparingly. For instance, if you don't need to limit how far out people go on a loop, why have an outside cone? going way outside is slower anyway, so let people penalize themselves! :D I mean, heck, if they want to drive a mile extra, let them! On the other hand, I did a "Jack in teh box" loop, where I deliberately boxed in the loop and made people drive it square - too hard but hey, it was something. :D But it was deliberate.

3. Last suggestion - make the course "fast out, slow in" - that was the philosophy behind the course that Phil showed. (one of my favorites, btw - I was 2nd overall in my Neon) - I figured that with people around, it would be good to go fast AWAY from the pits and people and slow them down on the way back in. . .


go conventional for your first several events and start throwing in curve-balls once you get the hang of things!


Hope that helps

btw - I wrote up an article about various course elements. It's on www.rallyxportal.com - click on RallyX Articles and Course Elements is there. The images are gone (DOH) but I'll get them back on there today, hopefully.

[noisycricket]

A really technical course in soupy bog will suck to drive. Conversely, an open fast course when conditions are grippy is like a dragstrip without the fun of dealing with the Christmas Tree. So, the course needs to be laid out with prevailing conditions in mind.

Additionally, if the ground is soft due to mud or just being that kind of material, tight gates are a really bad idea. Forcing everyone to drive in the same spot is a recipe for massive ruts.

I have been noted, in my course designs, for my use of hairpins after a series of linked corners. For some reason people find these entertaining... essentially though the courses I have done consist of mid-speed corners, slaloms to break up straight areas where corners cannot be put, and a deliberately tight section or two.

Tight in this case doesn't necessarily mean gates, either. Merely positioning the apex cone, or the entry and/or exit cone, a couple feet one way or the other can have DRASTIC effects on the course. (Key to this is noting how most people turn in too early... so if the apex cone or exit cone is "later", this slows down the corner a LOT) There are ways like this to keep a course slow and safe without making the area look like a cone farm. WOR, being perpetually short of cones, makes one good at this.

Key is thinking about where corner workers can stand. You don't ever want a situation where a car is aimed directly at a worker area, or where workers must be watching in a direction other than where the next car is coming from. Not a huge problem on the huge field OVR plays on, but a bigger issue at S&M where WOR typically runs, which is much, much smaller.

[SoCalBoomer]

One reason why I like loops - worker can stand in the middle and the car is always pointed away - rarely (if ever) does a car jump INTO the loop. . . centrifugal/centripetal forces push the car out, not in! :D

Great post, Crick!

[pcowan]

I'm pretty sure there was a another thread on some forum that had some good info too... the aptly names rallyxportal.com maybe? dunno.

Anyways, I've got to give a big +1 to Draco with "keep it fun", As a course designer, your job is to create the playground for everyone to enjoy for the next 12 to 36 hours. Make sure newbies won't get too lost and the power mongers can get totally sidewise, but also reward the people who can find the right line and know how to drive their car.

btw, who's this Pete Otero guy?