NWM (Network Widening Mod) - Development and Support

[GDO29Anagram]

So my question is, how come one tile road in simcity has 2 lanes, when in real life the same tile(16 meters) has 6 lanes. I mean, unless 1 tiles is NOT equal to 16 meters, then it is impossible. Think about, in order to make 2 lanes out of 16 meters then each lanes at least should 5 or 6 meters, which would be also wrong since in average a lane has 2 1/2 meters*.

Keep in mind that an entire tile is NOT being used for lane space. The rest of the tile is being used for the grass area and the sidewalks.

The average lane width for most of the road networks in SC4 and most real-world highways is a little over 4 meters (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 13 feet and it's that big to accommodate bigger vehicles), and an OWR-5's full width is five times that, about 20 meters. But you have to take note of this: The two tiles that the OWR-5 takes up is NOT ALL ASPHALT. The blank space left over is for sidewalks.

With the exception of most RHW networks, if ANY network exceeds 16 meters in width, it becomes a two-tile network, simply because it has to occupy not only the additional asphalt, it has to occupy adjacent sidewalks. The fact that it's a two-tiler also means that it has more capacity than that of a one-tiler.

A theoretical OWR-6 would be about over 24 meters in width, but it would take up two tiles, hence 32 meters. 24 meters of width for asphalt, and the other 8 for sidewalks. Don't like having four meters of sidewalks on the sides? Compensate with grass.

Even if the lane measurements just so happen to be exactly 16 meters, it would still be a two-tiler. Not all Sims drive to work, you know; Some of them walk, and by making a road network whose lanes occupy exactly 16 meters, you will have no room for sidewalks, no way for your walking Sims to get to work, and a lot of complaints from NAM users who use the Park-n-Ride option saying there's pandemic unemployment.

* - 8.2 feet is nowhere near wide enough for trucks to drive on a road safely. How do I know that? Twyla. (This would also apply to non-highway roads, since trucks use those, too.)

Just some US dimensional info, in case anyone is interested:

A typical highway represented by RHW-6C is comprised of:

• Six Travel Lanes: 12-foot Minimum Width (each)
• Two Shoulders (aka Break-Down Lanes): 14-foot Minimum Width (each)
• Median Divider (w/Inner Shoulders): 6 to 14 feet in Total Width

This puts the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM allowable total width for common stretches of such a highway at 106 feet (32.31 meters or 2 SC4 Tiles).  Due to safety reasons, very few areas (apart from dense urban areas) use these minimal widths.  The default Maxis Highways (Ground an Elevated) conform to this, and you'll also notice that the speed limits on such roadways are usual around 70% normal (or feature strict lane regulations).

A more common arrangement uses 16-foot Travel Lanes, 20-foot Shoulders, and a 16-foot Median; total of 152 feet (46.33 meters or 3 SC4 Tiles) - making the existing RHW-6C pretty much balls-on accurate.

I know some people are surprised by these dimensions, but they fail to consider that trucks also have to be taken into consideration.  A typical truck is 50% wider and 400% longer (8.5 feet wide and 85 feet long) than a typical car - and these are the everyday run-of-the-mill Common Carriers.  Specialty carriers (including Doubles, Triples, and Crawlers) typically run 100% wider and more that 60% longer (11 feet wide and 120+ feet long) than a car.  And let's not forget the Shanty Shakers with their 16-foot wide loads which can bring the total length to 170 feet or more!

[njdevil995]

Not only have we noticed it, we've fixed it already with the Version 2.0.2 patch.

-Alex

Wow....I really should look around next time. Im such a newb

[jdenm8]

@Ganaram, @cmdp123789

Not to mention that the scale you're using is BAT scale. The Transit Network scale is much larger at around one tile = 8m. That's the reason why scale-correct garages for LD-R are too small to fit Automata into them and why the streetlights are about three stories high.

One thing to remember is that Maxis had a lose grip on their scaling. Half of the time their buildings don't follow the 1 Tile = 16m rule and the intended height of overpasses is probably closer to 16 feet than 16 metres.

[Wiimeiser]

It wasn't meant to be realistic, just look at how it was in SC2K

[Tarkus]

We already covered this the last time this was asked in the RHW thread about 3 months ago.  I'm going to settle it once and for all.

Here's 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) near W 18th Street in NYC.  Keep in mind that 16m = about 52.48 ft., so the 50 ft. scale marker on Google Maps should be fairly close.  Rotating the marker by to align it with the road, this is what you get.



Two 50ft. markers covers the full roadway and extrudes just a tad into the buildings.  The road consists of 4 travel lanes, a bike lane, a strip of on-street parallel parking (which looks to be just a tiny bit narrower than the travel lanes in width) and sidewalks on either side.  In other words, it's essentially an OWR-5 on which one of the car travel lanes has been set aside for bikes and parking. 



The actual NYC example is probably somewhere between 96-100 feet rather than 104.96 ft. (the actual width of 2 tiles that the OWR-5 above fits in).  But it's pretty darn close, especially considering that we have to do everything in 16m/52.48 ft. chunks due to game limitations. 

I feel confident in saying we got the scaling right there.

-Alex

[DAB_City]

And I presume that the single lane alongside a RHW carriageway is the hard shoulder, a.k.a. emergency lane? Thanks for explaining the scaling, this work that the NAM Team have been doing is amazing! 

[GDO29Anagram]

And I presume that the single lane alongside a RHW carriageway is the hard shoulder, a.k.a. emergency lane?

It is.

[Shark7]

You got it right Tarkus.

If you take your 5 lane plus sidewalks in the example above (the sidewalks are the same width as the lanes in your example) then essentially you have 104.96/7 which makes each lane and sidewalk 14.99 feet/~4.5m across. 

Under US federal guidelines, the maximum width for a tractor trailer (excluding mirrors) is 102.36 inches or ~8.5 feet/2.6m.

Also, minimum lane width for a US interstate highway is 12 feet/3.6m...NWM is 15 feet/4.5m (per your example road).

I can find no fault in your scaling.  In other words, the road scale in the NWM is spot on.

And well done NWM group! 

[Lowkee33]

Can someone give me help with a OWR-5 setup?  I've got something like this: Link.  It's nothing pretty 

I've got one direction on one side of the residents, and the other on the other side.  My issue is with the turnaround, I can't seem to make OWR-5 turn.  Thanks.

edit: nevermind 

[gn_leugim]

Can someone give me help with a OWR-5 setup?  I've got something like this: Link.  It's nothing pretty 

I've got one direction on one side of the residents, and the other on the other side.  My issue is with the turnaround, I can't seem to make OWR-5 turn.  Thanks.

edit: nevermind 

What numbers are those you see at the zones?

[Tarkus]

An FYI--for those of you wanting to restore the DIPs allowing proper capacity increase on the MAVE-6, just download my old patch from 2010, found here.  That should get things back to working order.

If you get the "Commute Arrow Cascade"/"Teleportation"/"Catapult" with the Route Query, ignore it--it means nothing and is just a visual glitch.

-Alex

[Ramona Brie]

This is an excerpt from the Denver Ridge Times, October 29, Year 67:

Westside drivers are having a hard time coming around to make a turn at one local intersection. For unexplained reasons, nobody seems to be able to make a left turn at the intersection of Santinello Road and 32nd St/Denver Ridge Boulevard. Drivers are instead heading further west to 30th St in an unbuilt subdivision and making the U-turn to head back southbound.

This diagram from the Denver Ridge Department of Streets illustrates the problem:



Engineers believe a short, perfunctory stub of 32nd Street north of Santinello will fix the problem.

(Excuse the VNC refresh rate.)

[jdenm8]

I can see the paths connect fine from that picture... Could you provide a larger picture taken in Zoom 6 and exactly from which direction they can't make a left turn?

[Ramona Brie]

Sadly, that city just crashed on me. It's from the right to the bottom of the picture. Everyone was going straight, turning onto a dead residential street, looping around, and coming back to make the turn off eastbound.

[shinkansen1]

While fixing traffic problems in Delanese with the NWM, a couple of questions popped into my head when I came to this segment...

• I noticed when trying to replace the central avenue with a MAVE6 that grass appears between the road surface itself and the white pavers. Is it possible to custom-mod the MAVE6 to contain full white pavers on the sides of the road surface to prevent clashing? (purely a matter of looks, not function )
• Can NWM network interactions with roundabouts be supported in future updates, if such things are planned for the NWM?

The networks that I showed above all have red traffic congestion, so I'm trying to keep Delanese's 400K population moving whatever way I can.

And one last question that has been in my head for several months: What is project 0E, and what is it meant to do? I'm very curious and I want to know more about what is being produced, but I cannot find any information on the mysterious project 0E.

[Will12]

Project 0E is explained here by Tarkus (Alex) Quoted by mrtnrln

I'll give you a little more specifics about what is being done with Project 0E.

The entire IID range is being migrated from the 0x5E range to the 0x0E range (hence the name). Also as part of the process, some items are being rotated from their current position. The reason for the rotation is simple--consistency and ease of overriding. The ultra-stabilization you've seen in the initial Project 0E pics I've shown are the result of the rotation of items.

As far as the IID scheme change, it's a longer story. The whole 0x5E range is a colossal mess and has been for a long time. If you've ever tried to produce a third-party texture or T21 mod for the RHW, you've probably come to the same conclusion quite quickly.

0x5E was initially used by the old "ANT Plugin" (predecessor of the modern-day RHW-2) by the original batch of modders involved with the NAM, albeit it was with scheme based on the One-Way Road IID scheme and actually violated the NAM IID conventions of that time period (conventions that simply wouldn't work nowadays as they don't take into consideration the "draggable revolution"). After the RHW continued the violation with Version 1.2, several other IID schemes popped up between 1.3 and 2.0--some of which already had content produced using them--and there wasn't a clear consensus. So RHW Version 2.0 from 2008, which some consider the first "modern" RHW release, actually used a haphazard mishmash of about 4 different schemes. And we're still using the RHW 2.0 IID system today.

When superhands and I rebooted the NWM in 2009, basically from scratch, we had a clearer idea of what things needed to look like to properly and logically support a complex system of override networks. The NWM IID scheme has been a massive success for the most part, and the Project 0E-era RHW IID scheme is derived from it.

The only real NWM-related project that will tie into Project 0E, however, is the ultra-stabilization of RHW/NWM crosslinks.

-Alex

[GDO29Anagram]

I noticed when trying to replace the central avenue with a MAVE6 that grass appears between the road surface itself and the white pavers. Is it possible to custom-mod the MAVE6 to contain full white pavers on the sides of the road surface to prevent clashing?

The problem is that you're dealing with a "landlocked" network that won't touch any zoning at all (and therefore will not show any sidewalks). It's theoretically possible to modify the MAVE/RD-6 so that it shows its sidewalks all the time; It would, however, require texture modification.

Zoning is dependent on up to four textures, whose IIDs end in 0#, 1#, 2#, and 3#. To make sidewalks show all the time, you only need to modify the 0# texture.

Can NWM network interactions with roundabouts be supported in future updates, if such things are planned for the NWM?

Only thing I can tell you that there's pretty much no concrete plans on NWM-RA interaction, especially with AVE-RAs.

What is project 0E, and what is it meant to do?

That only concerns RHW. To condense what Will (tried to) explain down to two sentences, it's supposed to make the RHW IID/RUL coding and structure more neat and more stable, as well as move the RHW to a new IID range. It doesn't have to do with the NWM at all other than the fact that 0E's structure is based off of the NWM's RUL/IID structure.

[areppon]

Are there plans to:

• Create elevated NWM puzzle pieces
• Create transition pieces for NMAVE-4
• Create intersection puzzle pieces for NMAVE-4 crossings
• Create rail/GLR crossings for NMAVE-4

While in other situations, using the road<-->NMAVE-4-auto-transition piece will be OK, in the situation depicted above, because of the lack of space it becomes unusable. For example:

• I really don't mind either having standard road or NMAVE-4 to cross over the highway there, but in the constricted area there, it would take up less space to be able to NMAVE-4 it across.
• Or to be able to plop a road <--> NMAVE-4 transition piece so I can widen (or narrow) the road in tight spaces.
• While (maybe) it's cosmetically important to have the road/NMAVE-4 intersection properly crosswalked, I'm more wondering about a plopable intersection that can accept NMAVE-4. I will probably ask about this more in depth in the TLEP forum, but it's in the picture and it's 4am and I'm still up and running on 4hrs sleep so I thought I'd mention it now in-case I forget.
• The NMAVE-4 is the only piece without transitions, intersections, and ground/EL rail/GLR/HSRP crossing plopers.

How much of this (if any) is in future plans? The NMAVE-4 is actually my favorite of all the 1x tile pieces in NWM. I had really been hoping to see them this time around so I could use it more

I just came back to the game yesterday and thus only yesterday did I learn of the Sep. NAM World updates. I'm truly speechless. Y'all are fracking

[jdenm8]

Planned
Not Planned, don't hold your breath
No, not happening
Already Implemented, you just have to use Draggable GLR

As far as I'm aware, creation of new puzzle pieces for NWM transitions has been discontinued except where they are necessary, change of tile widths for example.
There are no plans for a Ploppable version of any NWM/RHW X Puzzle Piece Based GLR intersection, convert to Draggable GLR, you have plenty of space there.

[Tarkus]

Also, there already is a Road-to-NMAVE-4 puzzle piece transition included.  Just TAB through the NWM Transitions ring--it's in there.

After seeing David's latest work with Triple-Track Rail work in 3RR, and wanting to take a change of pace from Project 0E, I was inspired to play around with a little something:



Textures are more or less done for S-Curves for all dual-tile NWM networks.  Started on 45-degree ones as well.  I don't anticipate the Wider OWR ones getting to the modding stage very quickly (mainly as there's some technical issues that need to be worked out there), but the rest are in the queue.

-Alex