Hey GraviTrax Fans! Here's an update to the GraviTrax App.
Version 2.1 was recently released. I'll give you the pros and the cons. Here's a summary.
It has a lot of new parts but not a lot of the updates that we were hoping for.
First of all, you can add a Spinner now, and the Spinner, when you add it, notice that it
grays out any further Spinners or the launch pads. So you can only have a launch pad or a Spinner.
Here's how you can manipulate it. You can move it around. You can raise its height. I don't know why
you'd want to spin it, because it doesn't make any difference; it's got six exits, so they're all the
same. Let's look around at the other updates. That's about the same. Oh here. Disappointing,
we can only have preset heights on the Spiral. We were hoping that Ravensburger would give us
the ability to make the Spiral any height, just like in real life. Disappointment.
Well, we also have the new tiles. Four new tiles which are in the Extreme Starter Set.
We do not have the other seven tiles which have been released in the Advent Calendar Set.
So I guess they're wanting to keep that a surprise for the Christmas season. So we just have the four
new ones. So here's the i call it a ribbon or loop curve tile. It's really kind of kind of a little
loop curve in one tile. I don't know what the GraviTrax RavensBurger names for these tiles are,
so I'm giving them my own names. But these four new tiles are in the Extreme Starter Set.
Here's what i call the dual merge tile. It has two curves and a straight across,
so you can merge from both directions. And you can see that you can manipulate these tiles just like
regular tiles. You can raise their height. You can rotate them. You can move them anywhere you want.
So let's hook that up. Then we have our left merge tile and our right merge tile. Let's
add those now. Those consist of a small curve along with a merge that has a large curve
plus a straight piece. So those are very versatile tiles. You can do two things with them. And those
are nice. So I'm gonna add one of each of those. You see they're mirror images of each other,
and they add some variety to your tracks, which is nice.
And you see how they work there. And there you see how the spinner launches. It just kind of gives
a little flick and launches the balls. All right, what else is new with this app besides these four
new tiles, which are in the Extreme Starter Set, but none of the new tiles, the additional ones
that are in the Advent Calendar. So what else can we find here to do? Well, looking through,
we see really no updates to any of the old pieces.
We were hoping for example, the trampoline, that we could use that green angle tile elsewhere as a
as a building block. No we can't do that, but hey, check this out. We have the new pieces here that
were released not too long ago. The Flex Tubes. And you see the Flex Tubes, you have to select
their orientation before you drag them onto the board. Now notice it's not letting me do
anything so I'm going to put a tile down low and see if it'll let me drag drag one on, and I guess
it's looking like... okay there at the bottom, it's showing some possibilities.
Okay, I can't drag it on here, so I need to adjust the height. I think I need to drag it down. There
we go. Yeah right there, that trace right there. That's showing you that you can put a Flex
Tube. There. okay, so that worked. Let's put a couple more down, um of Flex Tubes.
So again you have to select that Flex Tube orientation before you drag it onto the board.
It's not adjustable once you get on the board. So right yeah right there it's showing my two Flex
Tube potential potential tracks there. So let's drag these on. I'm going to select a a curve
there and the opposite curve that looks like it's at the end of the list here. There we go. Okay, so
that's the Flex Tube. Pretty straightforward. You just have to make sure you have the right height
differential between the top and bottom tile, and you have to make sure that you select
which orientation that Flex Tube is going to be in before you drag it on.
Okay, the other new part is this small clear base plate, the one that has the seven holes.
Small clear platform. Platform I should say. It's not really a base plate.
And you see I can put that down.
Now here is a limitation of the platforms below, is if I put it down to zero height,
and then I try to go into manual mode to show you how to build it, it would hang up. Oh
it's still hanging up. Yep, I can't do anything. Okay I'm gonna have to restart the program. So
Ravensburger did not fix that bug. Okay we're restarting here. Um yeah, that's a bug where
even though in real life you can put a platform, a clear platform,
directly on the base plate at zero height, if you go into manual mode...
yeah I'm trying to go into manual mode here, and uh let me add this just okay this is the world's
smallest marble run right here: a launch pad and a landing pad. And let's try to go into
manual mode. Nope. Yeah, see that? It just froze again. so Ravensburger has not fixed this issue.
Okay, so we know that issue still exists in version 2.1. So let's just put a small
clear plate here and this platform looks like you can just use it the way you did the big one. So
that's pretty straightforward. Not much explanation is needed there.
So another limitation. Okay here I have to select it. Another limitation was that you could not put
multiple of these uh double balconies on top of a pillar. It looks like that's still the case.
So let's look at the other two new expansions which have been added, which are the Turntable
and the Helix. So we're gonna look at those and add those. So there they are.
And so we'll just make a quick little track with with those.
Add ourselves a tile here. Okay, to add the tile you've got to select the
clear platform first, then add the tile on that clear platform. Add a piece of track there.
And should be able to run that. And there you go. So that's the Helix
and the Turntable. Now let's rotate that turntable so that we can see it actually operating.
And there you can see it actually turn turning. It resets when you restart the track.
Um, another problem that we that they did fix... this is the one problem that I see
that Ravensburger did fix, was when they originally put in the Splitter,
they had the entrances over the exits. And in real life, the Splitter...the exits are not below
any of the entrances, and there's no way to make them so. So it looks like they have fixed that.
So that is a really good thing. So the Splitter in the app now represents exactly what you see
in real life, because you know here the Mixer, you know that top you can put on
two different ways so that its entrances are over the exits or that they're offset from the exits.
How do I zoom in here? This is really hard. Okay how do I get it to where it's going to zoom in
on the Splitter, so you can see this? There we go. Yeah you see that the Splitter,
the exits are not under the entrances, so that is the actual configuration. So they did fix this. So
the app layouts will reflect true to life regarding the Splitter that you put into it, okay?
So a couple other things let's try here. First of all I'm going to add a few more
ground plates. Let's put in this platform. Let's do one of the small platforms instead.
So one problem was that the app couldn't handle something that you can do in real life,
which is put you can put a Gauss Cannon underneath a clear platform, and then you can use
a Vertical U-turn from the Tunnel Set to power that marble up onto the platform.
And the problem was, the app was saying "Hey, I don't have enough clearance over this
Gauss Cannon to do that." So it looks like the lowest I can put this platform...
I don't think this is gonna work. I think it still has that problem.
Let's see if we can put the Vertical U-turn up. No it doesn't work. So
yeah, it's not going to take. So the app thinks that there is interference.
It needs to be down, down. Yeah, I think it thinks it's interfering there, and it's not.
So we can still save our layouts, generate an app code... Nothing's changed there. Reload it.
So there you go. That's the summary of the updates to version 2.1.