Airport Surroundings and SC4

KoV Liberty · August 31, 2011, 10:06:46 AM

Hello everybody, as most of you know, I'm KoV Liberty from the SCAG Team. Before he passed on, Adrian Smith (adroman) published this guide on how to create a realisticly sized and laid out airport in Sim City 4. Frankly, very helpful to the community. It even helped me out a bit with realism. But what we as a community don't see very often is the subtle differences in the airports from signage to exactly where to put those parking garages or parking lots. How the RHW can connect realistically to your airport, and whether that really matters to you or not, you will find yourself here in this thread.

Starting off is the location, you don't really want a large airport in the mountains. It doesn't work. Large planes vs. Mountains equals the mountain will win. So you want to pick a spot that is on relatively flat ground. Not all airports are on flat ground actually. Atlanta International is an array of different level. With the runways being 20 feet high on an embankment above hangars. But you want a maximum height difference of 10m at the most. Then we start with the natural beginning. Well, a way to get there for starters!

Since I do not have any of my own pics of major airports, and I assume mst of you do not go to this length anyways. Google Maps is you absolute and wholly true, best friend. Which is pretty much the staple of all the other tutorials actually. But, this is no different.

We will be making, not a absolutely huge international but a smaller International styled airport. For this, I've picked the Frankfurt airport in Germany. For part one we will go over the terminals and parking lot layouts.

Part One - Signage and Initial Layout

An important factor in designing an airport is to make it easy to understand. If you cannot understand it, and you made it after all, who would understand it? For this tutorial I will be following Frankfurt International Airport. The area I'm in has two perpendicular highways running through it. So, I have to create an 4 way interchange by using the RHW Interchange Guide.

I will not be recreating this exactly but this area will be modelled around Frankfurt. But first we start off with the Cloverleaf to connect the two highways. For anything interchange related including a full tutorial on how to build this first one, please resort to the RHW Interchange Guide. There is some really cool stuff in there that everyone should check out. But for this interchange I referred to 4.3, the Partially Unraveled Cloverleaf Interchange. This is compact-er compared to the standard cloverleaf and for a city, easier to live with. Although, none of this type that I could find exist in RL, this one is cool to make.

Basically took me about thirty minutes. Seems long but the end result looks pretty good.

Now we head along the northern highway to build the entrance to the airport. This will be a fly-by airport, or rather drive-by I guess. Meaning that you can just drive past it instead of the highway ending at the airport. With Frankfurts, it took me a while to figure it out in game, but I reckoned that it was a loop around a RHW. Which would allow you to keep driving in circles. Since my land isn't low enough, I ha to do some careful terraforming to have 15m crossings instead of ramps, because everyone likes a sunken highway better. Right? Anyways, I started with this:

Put some offramps in...

And loop it around for the terminal.

Now, fill in the parking garages or parking lots, for these I used the Modular Parking Garages - 2 level by mike. At this point, there are four lots. Long terms 1, 2, and 3, and short term parking (bottom left).

You put the signs in subsequently, before each exit of the highway. One right before and one around 500ft back from the exit. Here are some pics to show you the idea:

A more close in shot...

This is 500ft before the next exit to the airport. Sometimes right in front of an entrance.

However some signs are not for exits, rather to direct you across the airport, such as for parking lots.

These can go a few tile before the turn off point, mostly because you are travelling at a reduced speed anyway.

Since the main signage is filled in along with a path layed out to the terminals you can now fill in the surrounding area.

Thats the end of section one. Hope you liked this first part. The next section will deal with the cargo area, followed by a short section on fuel depots, and airport clutter.

BEFORE YOU POST, READ THIS:

Please remember that this guide isn't done.

KoV Liberty · August 31, 2011, 10:07:50 AM

Part Two - Cargo Center

(unfinished)

KoV Liberty · August 31, 2011, 10:08:49 AM

Part Three - Airport Fuel Depot, ATCT (Air Traffic Control Tower)

KoV Liberty · August 31, 2011, 10:09:23 AM

*Reserved*

**Done Reserving**

apeguy · September 09, 2011, 03:47:59 PM

Very helpful and informative so far. I look forward to seeing the rest of the finished tutorial.

This will be a big help for airport builders everywhere.

MandelSoft · September 10, 2011, 02:35:42 AM

Well, I have one critical point:

Quote

From an traffic engineer's standpoint of view such short weaving sections are really, really bad for traffic flow, causing congestion. You also miss a accelleration lane on the first picture, and the weaving section can be longer if you make the ramp less straight. On the second one, the weaving section can be easily made way longer and even if you let traffic merge from the left side instead of the right, you may completly get rid of one overpass and weaving section.

Also, where did you get your signage models from? To be honest, I know there are better packs out there, since these look amateuristic.

Best,
Maarten

KoV Liberty · September 23, 2011, 12:11:45 PM

I got the signage from the STEX just to show what to use though, also thanks for your input. I was focusing more on the signs than the actual layout for a while. Also the RL airport is better designed than this because it has more room than SC4 gives and a second highway to tie in with the loop. Now that I look at it, it is poorly designed around there. But then again, most airports are.

WC_EEND · October 03, 2011, 08:50:00 AM

Great idea to continue on with Adrian's legacy Alex

That said, FRA isn't really what I'd call a smallish international airport

I'd call it a huge German-built maze

I think BRU would fit your description much better actually.

Anyway, I'm quite curious to see the next part.

Xander

Scrooge · October 03, 2011, 09:14:26 AM

Fascinating tutorial - thank you for taking the time to show us how these particular areas are made.