I started building my own track a while back too. When you showed me yours it kinda blew my mind though, so I'm totally on board with the whole thing now. I know first hand that the amount of effort involved in making something like that, and for anyone curious, it's considerably bigger and more time consuming than most of the huge org projects you see out there, like mini cities, space elevators or stations.
Warlander - I think you're just describing what Burble has already done mate, seriously - go check out his place and have a fly around it. It's seriously good fun already. I've crashed my racer enough times there to know the level of risk is about perfect too. You can safely get round the track no problem, but when you start pushing yourself it's dangerous enough that high speed collisions are a constant threat you need to be thinking about: A threat that needs evaluating against going faster. If you crash constantly, have a track that hits you with squashers, or have PvP damage enabled then wins and losses would start to feel a bit random, or at least would be less a consequence of skill. In Mario games your racer is back on the track in a few seconds following hurling yourself off a cliff or being blown up, so a crash isn't nearly as punishing as it is in DU, so ensuring that crashes are always due to the pilot pushing things too far in order to get more speed out of it is good game design. I also wouldn't bother with drag racing - can't see the point seeing as the meta for going fast is just max skills with expensive engines and lots of them. No player skill involved (even in designing them), unlike in the bendy, technical style of race Burble's got nailed down. If the game mechanics around engine use and aerodynamics were more nuanced then it could be really cool though of course.
CptLoRes - The smallest thing you're likely to get flying around will still weigh about a ton in DU, which is of course not going to handle like an IRL FPV racing drone which as you know are measured in grams, but even still it's absolutely possible to do what you're talking about. There's even at least one group that already does it in fact. Besides, considering the level of collision detection in DU (being an MMO after all) and the increased inertia from ships just being bigger than in reality, I don't really think the high resolution analog sticks are going to make much difference to ship performance, and certainly aren't a hard barrier for entry. Just a barrier for making it feel exactly like its real life counterpart. After all, it's not like we're pitting a real life drone against a DU one here.
Anyhoo, once I've got my game working properly again I'll be setting up shop over there for sure. Cheap engines for all so nobody feels bad ploughing into walls whilst learning XD
