RHW (RealHighway) - Development and Support

[deathtopumpkins]

Which brings up a question of interest.  I have seen it asked but haven't seen it answered.  What is the scaling for SC4?  That is, how many meters (or feet) square is a tile?  I recognize that the scaling almost depends on what object one is talking about.  It seems like some things, such as the professional sports arena are a bit off scale.   Perhaps it's my eyes as it's a birds eye view and I am not a bird.  Never the less, what do you use?

The official scale for SC4 is one tile = 16x16 meters.

[itfitzme]

I was looking for a "Show us your interchanges"  Found "Show us your intersections".

So here are a series of RHW-2/MIS and RHW-MIS/MIS interchanges.  Due to tile size and capacity setting of the TSCT, the MIS/MIS interchanges actually have greater capacity, being one tile wide per direction.  My sense of it is that they are also easier to construct as 1)  the MIS is happy, though occasionally finicky, with dragging  connectors 2) there are fewer things to go clicking after when dragging just won't do.

For BW purposes, I've re-sized them to just on the edge of getting too pixellated.

Now, the final pic, RHW-MIS-002 is RHW-MIS-001 with one clover changed.  It's the lower left corner.  I was trying to see if an alternate method might make it a bit more compact.  It didn't seem to help.  There may be a couple of tiles to be squeezed out of them, not sure, they were plenty of work as it was.

For the sake of compactness, I cheat and use the on slope piece instead of the ramp.

I have DLed the interchange guide, it's good.  I still have a few references to go as BW is limited.  If these aren't duplicated, perhaps they might go there.

[MandelSoft]

The fact is that the RHW is a highspeed network, and therefore requires bigger curve radii. It's meant to be realistic as possible, and size is one thing. Have you seen how big interchanges are in real life? Usually they can take up a space of 1 x 1 km! That about one SC4 small city! The Maxis cloverleafs only take up 224x224m. That's shorter than a common dutch acelleration/decelleration lane, which is about 400m in length. So it might look bulky, it's more realistic than the drasticly underscaled Maxis interchanges.

If you want a small but realisic 4-way interchange, try this instead, a roundabout interchange:

My solution when it comes to tight spaces.

Best,
Maarten

[Tarkus]

I'm not sure if this has already been sorted, or if it's included in the patch as I haven't had a chance to check, but the original bridges included with the RHW itself have the same (smaller) textures as the RHW 3.0. I have removed all old files. It's nothing much, but I thought I'd mention it. Sorry if it was sorted in the patch, but I haven't checked yet and I thought I'd best say incase it wasn't included in the patch and I'd probably forget to mention if it wasn't. Is it just something wrong with my game? Thanks, Sam =)
Brilliant mod by the way, thanks guys for your hard work for our use. 

There were some texture issues with the bridges in LHD due to some changes in IIDs . . . those were fixed with the current patch, as I recall.

-Alex

[itfitzme]

Have you seen how big interchanges are in real life? Usually they can take up a space of 1 x 1 km!

Nice. Much to my preference, the intersections seem to be uncontrolled and therefore not a congestion point.  It does contain a few things that my plugins don't include.   Well, just about everything of significance.  The overpass is unfamiliar, the exit lane, even the multi lane highway surface doesn't seem familiar.  Perhaps when I'm all growed up (mayor-wize, that is).

In learning to put things together, the limit is at the lower end, how small can it be.  I can always make things larger, there is no limit on the upper  end. I'm basically going up the list of combinations to see what I can do.  I figured I'd start with the low numbers and work up (MISxMIS, EMIS x MIS, RWH-2 x MIS, etc.  Then there is the T and + styles.  This will take a while)  I pulled the tutorial which is where I learned "trumpet".  It is good on theory but seems missing a bit on examples.  Could be my DL speed.  I can justify dialup for email but not high speed just to play so I get bored after a while and give up.

I think some bare bones basics might be useful.  I got the stuff on dragging out an exit ramp.  That was a lot of help once I understood it.  There are some finicky points that might be useful to point out about the auto fix tendencies.  Like, I've found that there can be some utility in overdragging then bulldozing excess and watching it all just magically snap into place.

I have yet to get to the point that I start measuring.   Thanks for the 16x16 meter info, it's everything.  I did an RHW-8 x RHW-8 with RHW-4 clovers.  The sports stadium fit neatly in one leaf with room to spare.  This, of course, brings up the whole issue of what has been shrunk a bit much.  Now that it comes to mind, the arena is 7 x 7 or 112 x 112 meters on an edge or 12544 sq meters.  The Oakland Colosseum is 10 033 square meters in the fair territory for the baseball field.  My initial sense of things had me considering that Maxis would have under scaled some things for effect.  I am a bit surprised that it is this close.

Of course, the whole arena, including parking, is larger.  If i did my math right, that is reasonably close though.  My sense of it is that most clover's are not so big as to fit an entire sports arena.  The one down the street would fit a nice size family home, but not an arena.  The exit ramps (what you may be calling a deceleration lane, (not clovers) extend a few city blocks (a many few at 1.3 miles or 2.1 km) as the begin at the previous intersection, literally connecting one intersection to another. (you can go from intersection to intersection without actually entering highway traffic.   The clovers, on the other hand, can't be much more than 100 meters in diameter.  The Watt Ave-I50 intersection is, at best, 320 meters across both clovers.  That is, for sure, not an interchange but rather a major avenue and highway.  What I am use to are the interchanges and intersections in the SF Bay and Sacramento areas, major metropolitan areas where space is a premium.  320 meters seems fairly typical for avenue-highway intersections and this is on the order of the Maxis interchange at 224 x 224.  Of course, freeway speed is 60 to 70 mph.  Through out the US, 70 mph (112 kph) is about max before one gets arrested for reckless driving.  I had thought that European speeds were considerably higher but a google search turned up 140 kph max with typical metro areas within the same range as the US at 60-70. 

Hmmm.... so far, that all seems to be fairly consistent.  With a typical clover being 150 meters in diameter, that would be about 150/16 = 9. some odd grid squares in diameter for a realistic loop.  That MIS only clover that I did came in at about 5 tiles in diameter so about half.  The full RWH-2 is about 12 tiles on the long measure (it's a bit oval).  That is about right, though, perhaps, a bit oversized.

So, yeah, I agree.  Deceleration/accelleration ramps at a good 2 km or (good god!!!) 125 tiles in length from one intersection to the next.  Maybe 1000 meters if you consider that the accel ramp for one onramp becomes the decel for the next here in SAC.  400 meters doesn't seem odd at all, which is, what....     25 tiles...   And clovers at 150 meters or ten tiles in diameter seems about right.  I've been on some that were only about 100 meters with a much tighter radius, there is one in Concord, by the Weapons Station.  If your not prepared, you will darn near end up in the ditch.

Thanks for getting me started. 

[samerton]

There were some texture issues with the bridges in LHD due to some changes in IIDs . . . those were fixed with the current patch, as I recall.

-Alex

Thanks for the quick reply =)

[el_cozu]

why does this happen??

[canyonjumper]

Try running RHW under it again. Works for me.

[el_cozu]

Try running RHW under it again. Works for me.

nope... done that... doesn't work... and aparently is only when i place it in that direction.... the other ones are just fine... what i dont know yet is that if it has it's drawpaths intact...

[Blue Lightning]

Click around on different segments of the RHW on the ground at varying distances. And no, in that setup the EMIS is disabled.

v4.1's FLEXFly will not have this issue (well, aside from very rare cases, the code is extremely stable)

[el_cozu]

^^

actually... it's just like... random... sometimes it works perfectly fine on the first time... sometimes i have to bulldoze and plop again at different distances................... and other times, it wouldn't work at all... anyway... it appears that the cars kinda jump that hole on the pavement... lol...

[Aldini10]

I've noticed that there are no SPUI pieces with the avenue on top...

Will they ever be made?

[Tarkus]

I've noticed that there are no SPUI pieces with the avenue on top...

Will they ever be made?

Yes--however, they would require Elevated Avenue TuLEPs to be in place first.

-Alex

[teddyrised]

why does this happen??

I apologize for going off-topic for a moment, but the screenshot reminds me so much of Speed (1994) 

[Aldini10]

Uhh, sure!

[woodb3kmaster]

Let me just say that I am very grateful for the RHW filler pieces. They're so useful! One piece that I think would be especially useful, if it existed, would be a MIS orthogonal-diagonal elbow piece. I've used some of the ERHW-4 over diagonal MIS puzzle pieces to extend two of the ramps of my future stack, but I can't bend those ramps to be parallel and adjacent to my ERHW-4 (i.e. no empty cells between them) without the piece I've just described. Sure, I could simply extend the ramps so that they're one cell away from the ERHW, but I want this interchange to be as compact as possible. I hope you'll consider making such a filler piece for inclusion in an upcoming release

[MattyFo]

I don't know if this is the same thing your are talking about woodb3kmaster, but I am missing an elbow piece on the EMIS, any one know a how tyo fix this?

I could not pind any filler pieces, I even trie removing the Eastbound lanes to give it more room, but with no result.

[Rionescu]

Congrats, you found one of the things that annoys me most. When you're using El-MIS, you have to use two 45-degree turns to make a 90-degree turn. 

[jdenm8]

The absence of that piece is known and I think it was written a few posts back that that piece will be there in a later version. It is annoying, but I don't recall being able to do that in RHW V3.2

[Tarkus]

Let me just say that I am very grateful for the RHW filler pieces. They're so useful! One piece that I think would be especially useful, if it existed, would be a MIS orthogonal-diagonal elbow piece. I've used some of the ERHW-4 over diagonal MIS puzzle pieces to extend two of the ramps of my future stack, but I can't bend those ramps to be parallel and adjacent to my ERHW-4 (i.e. no empty cells between them) without the piece I've just described. Sure, I could simply extend the ramps so that they're one cell away from the ERHW, but I want this interchange to be as compact as possible. I hope you'll consider making such a filler piece for inclusion in an upcoming release

Thanks for the kind words on the fillers--I'm glad they've proven useful!   It wouldn't be too difficult to make what you've described, either.

As far as the 90-degree turn issue with the EMIS, the difficulty with any elevated anything is making the models.  Namely, the barriers--it takes awhile to get them just right.

MattyFo, I think in your situation, it actually looks like you might have enough room for a FLEXFly piece.

-Alex