First rendering of a complete ride!!  Links:

http://www.sohcahtoa.net/videos/antigone.m1v
http://www.sohcahtoa.net/videos/antigone.avi

Both are 1.8 megs, the AVI is encoded in DivX 6.  M1V is obviously MPEG1.

Banking is working, track ties are transforming correctly now (Except 
that last couple segments), no disappearing objects.

I now precalculate the positions of all the points that make the track 
rails, as well as the locations of the track ties.  For that track, it 
takes about 2 1/2 minutes to calculate that data.  It saves it in an 
include file.  After that, it only takes about 3 seconds to parse.

I'm also no longer using sphere_sweeps, but rather, spheres connected by 
cylinders as suggested by scott on p.b.i.  This dramatically reduced 
rendering times.  When I first started rendering this specific track, it 
took over 2 minutes to render each frame without AA.  When I switched to 
spheres/cylinders, it now takes only 6 seconds even WITH AA.

The only other point to mention is that I haven't implemented any sort 
of friction or wind resistance, hence the reason why the ride is going 
so fast at the end.

(Oh...and about the filename...AntiGone is the name of the track.  I did 
not design the track, but rather I got it off of CoasterSims.com)

One more note...the way I'm calculating banking is completely wrong. 
The transitions are MUCH smoother in No Limits.  I'm just using some 
basic linear interpolation, which will cause problems when I make roller 
coasters with loops because at the bottom of the loop, banking is 0.  At 
the top, its 180.  With the way I'm doing banking, it'll turn into 90 
half way up, which is wrong.  This creates some distortion that can been 
seen at http://www.sohcahtoa.net/images/thriller.png .  Does anyone know 
how I could work around that?

-DJ

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