| Valley Tech Map Day | 23 Aug, 2013 |
| pfm | (4 comments, 1789 views) |
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Hi all,
As Valley nears it 2nd month of life in the wild I'm starting to notice more and more excellent tech maps coming out. Today alone I had 3 new tech map releases in my notifications for the authors i follow, and guess what they were all excellent! "Easy recycling 5 by erikfzr "Solo Flow by Legolas "Full Rinse by RobertK So I thought I would share them here and encourage everyone to discuss what they think a tech map is in Valley because i've seen this question raised a lot in recent chats. In Canyon it used to be easy to classify a map as tech or fullspeed or speedtech: Fullspeed was a map where you never released the throttle and it could be slide or no-slide. Tech was a map that demanded use of the brake to take some slower speed corners. SpeedTech was a map that could be driven without releasing the throttle but that posed a special tech challenge in driving it, such as hard transitions or particularly challenging corners to take without applying the brakes. With Valley I think the categorization has become harder, because there are a lot of no-slide tracks that aren't fullspeed because the Valley car handling requires you to let go of the thorttle, and people start questioning should i call this a Tech map? To be honest I really don't know, but in my opinion I would call Tech to any map that requires you to let go of the throttle or apply the brakes... for the sake of consistency if nothing else... What do you think? |
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| erikfzr writes ... | 23, Aug, 2013 |
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I am quite new to TM, but I'd daresay that you both miss a crucial point. A lot of tracks have some points where you need to release the throttle and/or brake, but this doesn't mean that they can be called Tech maps.
Correct me, if I'm wrong: the expression Tech is short for technical / technique, i.e. the track requires some driving techniques to be able to make decent lap times. Obviously, this doesn't say much either  about how a Tech map should be.
In my very personal way of judging this, I would look at how many difficult points there are (even if I know the track by heart) and how important the timing of throttle, throttle release, braking and steering (in all possible combinations) is. As the concentration of difficult sections per track length gets higher, the nearer we move towards a tech map. If the average speed is very high I'd then call it a SpeedTech. Then we'll argue for hours about different shades of grey 
PS: thanks a lot for featuring my track, I really appreciate it 
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| pfm writes ... | 23, Aug, 2013 |
wormi says: Yeah, totally agree with you wormi. Tech is better defined like you put it :-) wormi says: I don't agree so much with your speedtech definition. I think a map that is possible to drive fullspeed (without releasing the throttle) can still be considered speedtech if it has enough hard corners or transitions that require great technique to take fullspeed. Like these examples: "Traction Control by pfm "Valley warm-up 2 [FS-Drift] by div "Smoking Rubber by s_a_m |
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| Legolas writes ... | 23, Aug, 2013 |
| Thank you for the featuring of my map and a coincidence that you have posted this. I have been longing to make a real tech map such as eyebo's Fuze for a long time as I feel that the difference between speedtech and tech was not clear enough for me. So ye, that map 'Solo Flow' is my idea of tech. Where you have to release the gas at least 2 or 3 times in the map to make corners. To be honest, I think it suites valley best and adds alot more places where hunting a map can take place, one reason why Fuze is so great. Or any decent tech map really. | |
| wormi writes ... | 23, Aug, 2013 |
| Tech is when there are several places in you need to slow down. Speed-tech when the map is very fast but not possible fullspeed. Fullspeed when no slowing down needed. Tech has never been related to drifting/sliding as only 2/8 environments had it before valley. Like on bay, tech is a map in which you release the throttle a lot. | |