I’ve been researching curves and splines for a videogame project of mine.
I’m not 100% sure what it means to have a curve ‘banked’.
It seems to help vehicles with turns on curvy roads, but I don’t quite understand how exactly a curve is banked / what it means to bank a curve (visually) / how it helps with turns.
I have seen some formulas / math for it, but I’d like to understand the concept before exploring potential implementations.
In: Physics
Think of a velodrome (cycling track). The corners are higher at the outside than the inside which helps guide the bikes around the bend. If bikes take flat turns too quickly, they’ll topple. If they don’t topple, they’d slide out. The banking basically gives them something to push off to prevent this. Same goes for cars, though they’re less likely to topple!
The reason for this is that things that are moving tend to keep moving in a straight line (Newton’s first law). Changing the way they’re moving requires force (Newton’s second law). This includes turning. So, when you turn the steering wheel in a car, you are trying to use friction between the road and the wheels to change the direction.
If the car is going too fast for the angle of the turn, the wheels don’t provide enough friction. This means the car will continue to go straight on, and fly off the track.
The banking redirects some of the force. Because you can’t go *through* the road, the surface of the road forces you around. There’s a balance between the momentum keeping you going forwards (or outwards) and gravity pulling you towards the middle.
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