TESTERS *Needed* - NAM Traffic Simulator

[jplumbley]

Hello all,

I am looking for a test group to test some new Transit Simulators based on the work Mott and I have done in this [Linkie] thread.  What I am asking is for a diverse group of differing cities in size, type and function to test these new Simulators on and tweak/tune them to be better.  Those who would like to be testers may respond in this thread and I will require reports of how the Simulators worked in your test city or cities.

The goal is to complete these new Simulator files for the next version of NAM and allow them to be released on a mass scale.  The old NAM Simulators will be phased out due to the potential issues that have been found.  The changes are quite drastic in some cases and will need some fine tuning.

These new Simulator files are intended to keep the balance within the Simulator and allow for it to be smarter and work more realistic.  There will be changes to many things such as:

Maximum Commute Time
Network Capacity
Pathfinding Heurstic (Heart of the Engine)
Congestion vs Speed
Commute Time Graph Display
And more...

All of the values have been calculated to keep the original balance of the game and in some cases will extend the limits of the original Simulator.  I have devised one Simulator to allow for travel across an entire Large City Tile, whereas Mott's work was designed to keep the same vanilla travel distances but improve the basic function of the simulator.  These will be the 2 main Simulators that will be tested and both will have multiple versions of the Network Capacities.  There will not be a "radical" Simulator because it has been determined that it was more harmful than good to the Simulation of your game and could cause extra abandonment.

I am hoping to get a wide variety of city sizes and styles for this test.  The more information I recieve about this, the better we can tune these to properly work in game.  We need to work together.

Thanks in advance! 

[BigSlark]

Jason,

As a huge NAM fan and overall transit nerd I'd be honored to Beta test the new plugin.

My current region has 1.2m sims or so, on a very large region that has a large metro area made up of 5 large cities, a few 15-20,000 cities, and many, many smaller towns. The entire region is made up of large city tiles.

If you have any further questions, I'll be around.

Cheers,
Kevin

[bigdope404]

jplumbley

I would also like to help with the testing of the Transit Simulator Mod.

I have a large region, made of all large city tiles, that is relatively undeveloped (around 5000 sims).

Currently, I use the 10X Speed, Commute, and Capacity plugin and I think it would be interesting to see

how the differently the region develops.

Feel free to pm me with any  questions and thank you for the work you have done so far with the NAM and SAM

Thanks,

Nolan Welsh

[Pat]

Hey Jason,

   Im willing to help in anyway needed with testing and would love to help out...

[Starmanw402007]

I can assist with this project as a tester. I have plenty of free time on hand. Since I'm retired at age 43 LOL. I had to rebuild Steven's Point's after getting a New PC Complete with Vista Windows. Just need to know what my mission is that all LOL. Will read the thread you made too ok.

Your Friend;
Mayor Of Steven's Point & Maxiston
(Proud To Be Cities Of Sim Nation!)

[xxdita]

I can have a go with it to see how it works with CAM if you'd like.

[Palpatine001]

I'll put my hand up for testing this on Solaria.

3 million sims spread over a continuing interlinked urban sprawl over 10 tiles varying on size from 989,000 to 6,000 sims per tile, and with different styles as the region evolves.

-Palpatine-

[beskhu3epnm]

Some testing results to share with the community.

I installed this mod in a region with almost 2 million people, in a city with merely 400,000. I did so on a large tile, anxious to see the results. I'm running the CAM, and some extra stage 8's (the ones I couldn't let go of). The city itself is fairly well balanced as far as RCI goes.

The transportation network that I have designed is somewhat grid happy, with emphasis on subway transportation. This is supposed to be the region's commercial and residential epicentre. It was formerly a city with 1.5 million sims, however it was razed to make room for CAM. I since lost interest (briefly - tonight I'm back in it) in the game.

Leave me alone regarding my city's money situation. Taxes rule, okay!

Anyways, I've got some before shots of some of the graphs, city, and data views.

Showing my decent job at managing traffic


Showing my traffic numbers

Now time to install the mod.

These are the inital effects the mod had on overall traffc volume, the red line indicating where i installed the mod.


Did the same with commute time. The initial impact is very noticeable.

5 or so years later.

Commute time remains steady after install.


Congestion has been relieved. The roadways appear all green. The subway lines also appear green. Subway usage has increased across the board. Where you see red/orange/yellow dots is on the actual station platforms themselves, as the subways are beyond 200% capacity.



Overall, the impact of the mod was immediate, and was sustained.

Thoughts on the mod:
Overall, I'm going to use this, whenever it is released, etc. The benefits allow you more freedom when planning your city to achieve a more realistic design. I no longer have to place subway stations every 50 ft.

Does it make the game too easy? No. I think it strikes a more realistic balance. Would you get on a congested road knowing it was the shortest *distance* route if it were completely clogged and other routes existed that were not clogged thus making it faster?

Seems logical to me!

[flame1396]

I may be useful, not big on testing but I use mostly streets. Different style for sure. Everything routes to rail or highway, and eventually maybe a bit of subways. Also a big emphasis on busses, stops every 4 tiles or so.

So, as I read from besk's post this makes people find detours to avoid clogged roads? If so, its exactly what I've always wanted.

EDIT: extra info, I don't use the CAM, and don't plan to. If this makes a difference.

[BigSlark]

So, it seems that Travis beat me to the punch!

First, a little about the test city: its the city of Tuskalusa, the commercial and governmental hub of a region of 1.8m or so sims. It also has a decent sized industrial area, its mainly IM with some IHT and limited ID. There are about 50,000 more jobs than residents in the city, give or take a few thousand.

The city has decent rail and GLR coverage with pretty good bus coverage. Congestion has always been a problem in this city due to the lack of a subway system. I am a huge CAM fan and after using it for the past few months I wouldn't have it any other way.

I missed that Jason wanted congestion map pictures, so I'll have to describe them at the relevant places.




These two are the base line graphs just to know how things started out.




After ten years, traffic volume and commute time have leveled out. Some of the rail stations are still red as are some GLR stations. Several streets were upgraded to roads after abandonment of a few R$$ and R$$$ stage 12-14 towers that were connected only by streets and bus stops. After I did this no more abandonment problems were evident.




After 27 years its more of the same. Some rail stations and GLR stations are still maxed out, however, no abandonment issues and everyone seems to be getting to work just fine. I tweaked some of my GLR station locations, added some stations, and added some bus stops in an attempt to make the commute smoother.

Generally, I find that sims commute in a more logical fashion, instead of having thousands of people leave the city for jobs elsewhere, they stayed in town and I actually have commuters coming in to the city now!

I'm not entirely sure how Jason intends to tweak things further, but I look forward to what he comes up with.

Cheers,
Kevin

[RippleJet]

Let me remind any testers who are also running CAM, that you will need to remove anything found in the z_CAM folder.
Otherwise CAM's Promote Biking (or whichever pathfinding you installed with the CAM) will take precedence.

[Pat]

OK Tage thank you, I'm glad I saw that post before running 

[SC4BOY]

I have some time too.. I've got a couple of low-mid sized regions 1 with cam and 1 without.. be happy to help

edit: Hmm.. I don't see the test program.. am I the only one who can't read? lol

[Starmanw402007]

Hey Jp, I've tried to extract the files, so I can begin the testing. But vista windows wont allow me to open . I have no idea of how to work around this problem.

Your Friend;
Mayor Of Steven's Point & Maxiston
(Proud To Be Cities Of Sim Nation!)

[Haljackey]

jplumbley:

If you would like to try out the simulator in very large, dense cities, then I can help you out.  I have some large city tiles in excess of 2.5 million residents and 2 million jobs.  My road/transport network is well laid out in my opinion, so if you need a tester in this scenario, then I can offer my assistance.

You can have a quick look at what my cities and transport infrastructure look like by visiting my new MD here @ SC4D (The Greater Terran Region, link in my signature).  If you think that it is suitable for testing, then let me know. 

Best,
-Haljackey

[Jonathan]

Hey Jp, I've tried to extract the files, so I can begin the testing. But vista windows wont allow me to open . I have no idea of how to work around this problem.

Your Friend;
Mayor Of Steven's Point & Maxiston
(Proud To Be Cities Of Sim Nation!)

I have had this problem before with other zips on vista Try downloading WinRAR, there is a 40-day free trial that has so far lasted me 6 months the only limitation being when you run it is says youre trial has ended but you can just click OK and continue as normal

[LoneRanger]

@jplumbley:
I am using mott's a03 version and am very happy with it. 
Since I started using it I removed the "promote biking" plugin but don't know what my NAM settings are as to capacity and speed.
But after reading RJ's post I hardly think it mathers since mott's file loads last. 
My biggest town is almost 500K spreading medium density Residential on a large tile and still not using subways or monorail. 
Congestion is not to bad, some red , a little orange but mostly green. 
If I can be of any assistence just let me know, I love traffic and building a city on/around it. [comercial zones loves traffic]

[jplumbley]

Thank you for the reports BigSlark and Besk.  I will read them and include them in my interpretations.  If you guys have any more cities to test this on of varying sizes, please do so.  The more information the better my interpretations and expectations can be.

Thank you everyone else who has offered to help test.  I have contacted everyone so far and most of you have been sent the file.  I expect to see some more reports coming in soon.  Please, make the format of your reports similar to what you have seen already.  The more information you can provide the better, this does not only effect how traffic flows through your cities but due to the side effects of traffic it can help other things within your cities.

@Starman402007   The file I sent is not a zip file... It is the raw DAT file, you may save as and put it directly into your plugins.

[Haljackey]

Well, after running my city with this new plugin for 15 minutes, it crashed.    (and it took me an additional 15 minutes to start it up!  )

Oh well.  I don't think its a biggie, I will try it again sometime soon and see if it was actually something I did rather than IT.

In that time span, the traffic data/graphs did not update yet, and thus I have no information as to how it is working in my city Yet.



In the meantime, I did manage to capture some pics of my charts/graphs BEFORE I installed the plugin.  I am not using the CAM or any traffic modifier mod.  The pictures follow below:

Traffic data:


Traffic Data: (Chart cropped from the rest of the image, not compressed for better clarity)


Original image found here (PNG Image, unedited)


Traffic volumes (1 year)


Traffic volumes (100 years)


Commute time (1 year)


Commute time (100 years)


Jobs and pop (just for further reference, showing you the amount of each class of zone/wealth is in the city)


Anyways, I should be able to try it again sometime tonight, tomorrow by the latest.  I will post my findings here once again when some actual results come in.  I hope you found this info handy!

Best,
-Haljackey

[Starmanw402007]

Ok, thanks tarkus... I have some photos here of Steven's Point with the Nam Traffic Simulator. My ? is, what am I looking for with this simulator?

http://<center>
<a href="http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee307/Starmanw422007/StevensPoint-Sep26011200542907.png" target="_blank">
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</center>

http://



http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee307/Starmanw422007/StevensPoint-Sep26011200542907.png

This photo is with the NAM Traffic Simulator that I installed into Steven's Point ok.

Your Friend;
Mayor Of Steven's Point & Maxiston
(Proud To Be Cities Of Sim Nation!)