Excel Roller Coaster Update #1

By popular demand I am coming back to Excel after a long hiatus. This is an update of an older model previously presented on this blog.

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I added a few features to the roller coaster model as follows:
1) Performance log
2) All sorts of colors and color scheme selection
3) Speed control
4) Coaster length adjustment
3) Ground plane (mesh) size adjustment
This whole model will be re-built from ground up with far better speed (in the new Excel) and a variety of tracks. I would also lie to make it adjustable, so that the users can create their own custom tracks.
Thanks for your support!!!

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hello my friends
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and welcome back
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my name is george
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i’m uh george lungo from
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excellentual.com
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and some people wanted to see my face i
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don’t like to show my face in general i
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just make
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no show videos
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and but this time it’s different i want
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to introduce myself
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and thank you very much for the
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tremendous support and tremendous
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interest you showed for my
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models
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and uh
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because i see all these uh
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gigantic interest i’m going to come back
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and start doing more excel
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because i’ve been in a
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in a break i’ve been doing other things
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i haven’t touched excel seriously in
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probably three years now
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i’m a very um i’m a very how do you say
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a very occasional user okay
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and this is good i mean it should
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encourage you because it means you don’t
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need to be an expert you don’t need to
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memorize you don’t need to remember
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anything
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when i start excel so i didn’t use it
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say for a few weeks or a few months
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i usually use google i use my old models
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and in time
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you always forget the syntax i know some
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people will
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[Music]
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contradict me
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but
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i always forget the syntax i have all
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projects i open them and copy paste
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again the more i work in excel or in any
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other program
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the more i develop a sense a smell
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you know best practices
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but the syntax in particular
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don’t load your mind
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use your mind for creativity
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so um
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right now i’m upgrading the roller
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coaster
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i made some very good improvements it’s
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still kind of slow in the new xl 2007
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and newer
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but this will be fixed i know how to do
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it
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i just need to avoid charts and build
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everything using lines
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so
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line segments
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i think polygon polyline polygonal lines
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you can use a command in vba
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a statement to generate lines using the
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coordinates of the vertices
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so
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this being said uh let’s go ahead
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oh another thing after this i’m gonna
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i’m gonna
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do procedural procedural terrain
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generation
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which means
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using very little computer resources
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there are methods to produce infinite
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landscape
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and different landscape like very
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with a lot of variation
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you can navigate on this infinite
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landscape and
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even though in your computer you have
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very little
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storage memory
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and the landscape is always the same
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which means
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if you navigate say for a day for a year
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and you want to come back
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you don’t don’t need to memorize a lot
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of information with very little
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in the memory of the computer you can
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come back to a certain coordinate in
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your infinite landscape which is very
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nice so this is called procedural
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landscape or terrain generation
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so right now
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let’s dive into the
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modifications i did to the roller
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coaster so you know how to use it
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and this being said here is the model
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uh we can start it from here
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and this is this is still the old excel
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i
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i like to
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always show this for a while
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because
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it’s very fast and very fluent
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and it’s even more fluent at one than
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what you see now on the screen because
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the screen is only i don’t know
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it’s 30 frames a second i’m not sure how
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they interfere with the frames a second
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of this
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excel thing okay so you have a few
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things here first
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you see there’s something called uh
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record area so you re record or you
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record the performance of the
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coaster
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you have the for each run
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you spit out
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program speeds out
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six
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different parameters performance
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indicators
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one is the excel version 11 is 2003
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16 is um
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the new one the newest one
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coaster scale and again coastal scale
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you get it from here
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you see you can
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have a hundred percent see the whole
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coaster
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or
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go less and less and less and less
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and down to
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zero point uh
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is very little here let me see format
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cells
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let’s put the
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percentage decimal units
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one
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so
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so when you have a short coaster in
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front of you you delete it
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most of it you just
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display what is in front of you let’s
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run it
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and you see how it’s moving
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it’s like a snake in front of you and
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you can make it even shorter you can go
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down to
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i believe one percent this is one
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percent of the hole
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or you can go like 10 percent
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so this is coaster scale okay
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let me stop this so scores the scale
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ground scale
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the ground plane you see this uh ground
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mesh you can do the same thing
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let’s put 100 coaster back
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ground scale now is 100 you can make it
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70 50
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30 20
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10 and zero
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so i started with the premise that the
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program is so slow because
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there’s too many segments to display
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uh the reality is it doesn’t matter so
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much it does matter when the segments
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become
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many like 5000 or something
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but right now even if i cut the ground’s
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ground to zero and this coaster to like
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two percent
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is still slow in the new excel so i’m
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gonna remedy that
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so ground scale speed scale again
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check this out it’s running
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i can reduce the speed to
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10 percent
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let me see
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20 you see how slow it is
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10 percent or i can increase it to
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300
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okay
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so
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there’s several uh
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preset values here
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i believe like 15 or 20 preset values
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from 10 to 300 percent
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so it will display it here for each run
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and then it will display the
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lap time how many seconds it took to do
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the the whole lap
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to cover the whole app and
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the number of frames a second
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for a pleasant uh
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visual experience you need about 30
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frames a second okay
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the new xl in the new xl this model and
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most of my models run much slower
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about 10 frames a second sometimes 11
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some people have better computers i have
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a really crappy computer
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so
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i usually do i usually clock between 10
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to 11 frames a second which is okay it’s
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not great
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but i’m gonna work on this and fix it
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and make it 30 frames a second in a new
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excel i need to
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rebuild the whole thing from ground up
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and not use charts
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so
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another thing you can do here is uh
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change the weight of the lines make its
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the lines you see the ground plane here
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ground weight
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i can make it zero one two
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all the way to three and make them thick
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or thin
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i like to keep it at two
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same for the coaster roller coaster it
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from zero
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one you don’t see any difference two
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thicker line
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three even fatter line
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i like to keep it on too another thing
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you can do the background color
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the chart this is adjusted to the
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scatter chart so you can change the
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background color to all these i believe
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54 you see the microsoft color palette
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so you can change it to anything you
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want you can change the
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the ground color
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again there are 64 options here
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8 by 7. you can change the
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coaster color
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these are solid colors i mean
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uniform colors for the roller coaster or
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this is i’m very proud of this
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introduce color schemes okay
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change all these five elements which
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means uh wait actually not
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there’s seven colors the coaster has
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five colors interlacing
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why because if you go to calculation and
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click on this
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on the coaster
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you see is highlighting this six
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different colors
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uh it’s like a snake with the various
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segments of different colors on it
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and you can choose here you can bring in
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this table type in numbers and choose
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different color schemes i did this for
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you and i uh carefully
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loaded this table the table is i believe
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20
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columns long
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and it adjusts all the colors the
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background the ground plane and the five
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the six colors in the coaster
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so check this out look at this
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part here color schemes you have 20
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color schemes and you can click on this
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button and change them to various
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options
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and then when you get to the end 20 it
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rolls back it comes back look at this
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highlighted in white
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column here
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or you can go back
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and
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again when you run you can change all
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these things while it’s running you can
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run it and change the color scheme while
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it’s running you can change the scale
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you see
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you can change
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the speed while it’s running against
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again
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you see now it’s 10
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20 percent 30 percent
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and
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300
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this is too fast i mean still looks good
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and
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i want to show you
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another thing
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so let’s not save this
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i can open this in the new excel
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and again i have an old machine a very
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old is 11 years old and it was a very
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cheap machine when i bought it it was
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the cheapest actually that’s why i
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bought it was the
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it was some deal and i got this it was
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already obsolete when i bought it
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okay
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so i opened it in the new excel this is
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three three six uh 365
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and i can run it at the 100 scale
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is not uh it’s kind of jittery because
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the number of frames a second is only
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you will see here
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it’s going to push this data down and
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bring the new updated measurements
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right here
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okay so it all it’s only 8.9 frames a
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second if i shut down this uh
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screen recording it’s going to be 11 so
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it’s going to be better because the
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screen recorder takes a lot of computer
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power
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let’s run it again
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see maybe we are more lucky this time
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yeah
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so we got 10 frames a second
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another thing that i did
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i went inside the guts of the program i
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mean of my model
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and
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multiply the
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speed by 3 a factor of 3
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because the new xl is 3 times lower so
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whenever
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so the speed of the model
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the lap time is about the same
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regardless of the version of excel
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of excel you use
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so this being said
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oh another thing i want to show you
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something
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here um
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this is my uh
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generator the
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landscape generator
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right now is a very
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preliminary version it doesn’t look that
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good and it’s just done on a standard
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chart the 2d or 3ds chart
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if i hit the f9
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i can generate
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random terrain
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you see some mountains some water
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high mountains
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islands
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it does look great but
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this will be great after i
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refine it and refine it over and over
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again it’s going to look really good
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it’s going to be fast
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and we’re going to build it with
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wireframe and then we can also fill it
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which means uh
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we can do something called shading which
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means each polygon there’s going to be
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little triangles
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it’s going to fill with the surface
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and for water it’s going to be blue for
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a mountain it’s going to be let’s say
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dark blue for grass it’s going to be
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green for top of the mountain it’s going
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to be white you know the snow something
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like this it’s going to look good and
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then we can fly an airplane through the
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landscape and as we fly
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again very close to the landscape not
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like this this is just to
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prove the concept but flying through it
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the landscape would extend in the
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direction of the plane the plane flies
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so if the plane goes forward
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in the back you will delete the
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automatically the scene will delete
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slices and will add slices in the front
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if the plane takes a right
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which means you can pilot this plane
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using the
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a joystick a virtual joystick or your
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mouse
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so if a plane takes a right
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you will start as the plane advances you
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will start deleting slices from the left
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and adding slices to the right
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and again this is a procedural
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procedural generation with very little
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resources you can
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memorize
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large
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practically infinite
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number of
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scenes okay
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so this being said thank you for all
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your support and the great comments and
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the likes and i will see you in the next
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video thank you