As anyone who's been there knows, the sector 45 racing tubes are a maze, and a really confusing one at that. I took a couple of hours and figured out a way through them. This is the fastest way I know, but there could be faster ones (it's so convulted it's hard to tell).

Refer to http://www.watzmanassociates.com/josh/images/turnnames.jpg for a visual description of what the different instructions mean.

Enter
Straight
Straight
Backbranch
Straight
Backbranch
Branch
Branch*
Branch*
Backbranch
Exit

(* - These are the key turns. From the outside, it looks like the first leads into a loop back around to the original path, but if you fly to that loop you'll see the second branch hidden, which leads to the exit.)

An easier-to-memorize version (thanks to SiliconGold2!):

Enter
Go straight until you find and take 2 backbranches
Take 3 normal branches
Take the backbranch (should be the very next turn)
Exit

And an easier way to memorize that is up-up-curve-up-up-up.

The "up"s referring to those very sharp turns. Curve of a normal one. You won't be skipping anything so you just follow them in order.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say: "Damn good maze, Devs!" It's not one of those things that you can solve in 2 minutes and is forever easy afterwards. I still get lost in there sometimes.

Agreed. Took me well over an hour, and I was *outside* the maze.

(BTW, my solution and SiliconX's are similar but not the same. His goes the other way around the key loop; both are very close to the same length.)

I think of it as turn, no turn (straight)

Straight
Straight
Turn
Straight
Turn
Turn
Turn
Turn
Turn


(got me a 00:52.864 time)

By the way, this thread shouldn't really be here... let everyone find out on their own.

Without using this thread, I got through. I don't know how, I followed the same loop for about 4 minutes before deciding to actually try to make it. My time was 09:03.167.