Vortex is a KMG Afterburner at Thorpe Park, an amusement park in Chertsey, Surrey, England. It was installed in the Lost City area of the park in 2001. It opened on 25 May, seven weeks after the opening of the 2001 season.
Riders sit in seats arranged in a circle facing inwards, there are eight gondolas with four seats on each. After the over-the-shoulder restraints have been lowered and checked, the platform lowers. The seats then begin to rotate, and after approximately one rotation the ride begins to swing. The ride swings back and forth, swinging up to a maximum height of 20 metres and angle of 120 degrees at 15rpm. After several full height swings, the ride then begins to slow before coming to a halt, the platform is then raised and riders fast track and single rider questions operate.
Vortex is a high-fidelity, realtime physics engine developed by CM Labs Simulations that simulates rigid body dynamics, collision detection, contact determination, and dynamic reactions. Vortex adds accurate physical motion and interactions to objects in visual-simulation applications for operator training, mission planning, product concept validation, vehicle and robotics testing, haptics devices, immersive and virtual reality (VR) environments.
The Vortex C++ SDK has several modules that simulate physics-based particles, sensors, floating bodies, cable systems, grasping, and wheeled and tracked vehicles. Developers integrate their projects into 3D visualization frameworks such as OpenSceneGraph (OSG) and Vega Prime, and deploy them in environments that contain software-in-the-loop (SIL), MATLAB, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), and motion platform components.
Vortex is developed by CM Labs Simulations Inc., a private company established in Montreal in 2001. CM Labs was created when the management of MathEngine Canada Inc. purchased a portion of the business from MathEngine PLC, the parent company in the UK. MathEngine Canada Inc. was originally the research and development team responsible for creating the Karma physics simulation engine for computer games.
Vortex may refer to any of these roller coasters:
Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a broad tip instrument, dip pen, or brush, among other writing instruments. A contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as, "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner".
Modern calligraphy ranges from functional inscriptions and designs to fine-art pieces where the letters may or may not be readable. Classical calligraphy differs from typography and non-classical hand-lettering, though a calligrapher may practice both.
Calligraphy continues to flourish in the forms of wedding and event invitations, font design and typography, original hand-lettered logo design, religious art, announcements, graphic design and commissioned calligraphic art, cut stone inscriptions, and memorial documents. It is also used for props and moving images for film and television, testimonials, birth and death certificates, maps, and other written works.
The principal tools for a calligrapher are the pen and the brush. Calligraphy pens write with nibs that may be flat, round, or pointed. For some decorative purposes, multi-nibbed pens—steel brushes—can be used. However, works have also been created with felt-tip and ballpoint pens, although these works do not employ angled lines.
The hand is a non-SI unit of measurement of length standardized to 4 inches (101.6 mm). It is used to measure the height of horses in some English-speaking countries, including Australia,Canada, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was originally based on the breadth of a human hand. The adoption of the international inch in 1959 allowed for a standardized imperial form and a metric conversion. It may be abbreviated to "h" or "hh". Although measurements between whole hands are usually expressed in what appears to be decimal format, the subdivision of the hand is not decimal but is in base 4, so subdivisions after the radix point are in quarters of a hand, which are inches. Thus, 62 inches is fifteen and a half hands, or 15.2 hh (normally said as "fifteen-two", or occasionally in full as "fifteen hands two inches")
"Hands" may be abbreviated to "h", or "hh". The "hh" form is sometimes interpreted as standing for "hands high." When spoken aloud, hands are stated by numbers, 15.0 is "fifteen hands", 15.2 is alternately "fifteen-two" or "fifteen hands, two inches," and so on.
In poker, players construct hands of playing cards according to predetermined rules, which vary according to which variant of poker is being played. These hands are compared using a hand ranking system that is standard across all variants of poker. The player with the highest-ranking hand wins that particular deal in most poker games. In some variants, the lowest-ranking hand can win or tie.
These hand rankings are also used in some other card games and in poker dice. The ranking of a particular hand is increased by including multiple cards of the same card rank, by all five cards being from the same suit, or by the five cards forming a consecutive series. The relative ranking of the various hand categories is based on the probability of being randomly dealt such a hand from a well-shuffled deck.
The following rules apply to the ranking of all poker hands unless specifically changed by game variant rules or house rules.