NAM Traffic Simulator Help

[Pharaon-Kheops]

one of the only thing, that is sure.... but one of the best..... 

the problem, there, is what happen if you forgot but one of these lots? My bet is.... something odd... 

I think we are condemned to use some unrealistic variables and then use some conversion to go back to realism....
the way Maxis has intended region play to be is definitely a big problem... most buildings have an accurate scale, but cities don't...

therefore, commute time should not be a matter for anysim living and working in the same map be it a big one..... nor should it be for somesim working on the immediate neighbor map.... but what about going 5 maps away? (that's "only" 20km... wich is about the mean distance a vast majority of parisian commuters cover every day morning)

[jplumbley]

one of the only thing, that is sure.... but one of the best..... 

the problem, there, is what happen if you forgot but one of these lots? My bet is.... something odd... 

I think we are condemned to use some unrealistic variables and then use some conversion to go back to realism....
the way Maxis has intended region play to be is definitely a big problem... most buildings have an accurate scale, but cities don't...

therefore, commute time should not be a matter for anysim living and working in the same map be it a big one..... nor should it be for somesim working on the immediate neighbor map.... but what about going 5 maps away? (that's "only" 20km... wich is about the mean distance a vast majority of parisian commuters cover every day morning)

Sim City was originally designed for a single city tile with some "neighbors" randomly generated in the original game in the Sim City line.  MAXIS has not changed this ideal in the Region, they just allowed you to create those "neighbors".  Each city is in itself an entity of itself.  It gets information from neighboring cities about what number of jobs it has, number of sims, etc.  But it doesnt go beyond the bordering cities.  This is where the problem comes into play that SC4 isnt a "regional" game.  It is still a "city" game.

When you try to get Sims to travel multiple tiles you are breaking the natural balance in the way the game plays...  Simply it just doesnt work and it will inevitably mess up your game play.  Here would be the most efficient structure for a 9 tile region:

R  C  R
I  R  I
R  C  R

By not "mixing" jobs with residents you create zones for travel between job and home.  If you were to "mix" this allows for Commute Circles to start messing with the Simulation of your game, depending on how you design your cities.  Essentially, the best things to do is to try and make sure all each city is sustainable in its own and not think of them as a collective whole, more like individuals fighting for a space.

[Pharaon-Kheops]

I do, of course, agree with you (I also have played all the SC "line"). But all the great work modders have done and are still isn't intended to bend the rules?

A non-negligible part of the NAM itself would be usefull if we stick to this... I specifically think about highways interconnections... They take monstruous space, and if you are to make your city autarcic you definitely will not want to spend so much tiles for unproductive "buildings"....

To my opinion, the point of what you and many others have done for years now is precisely "how to make more and more realistic a game that, at start, is not?"

But, indeed, the situation you describe IS realistic! Communities in a conurbation ARE antagonists, they fight each others for space, jobs, residents, money,............ but they are forced to also function as a collectivity. They are an "organic system" and together constitute the metropolis (on this point, this "organic system" is quite different in North America and in Europe).

I think it is possible to make a quite realistic multi-map metropolis with some limitations. Of course, due to the eternal commuters problem, it is not possible to recreate suche a thing as an accurate-scale New-York City, but by restraining the downtown-center on one map and making a radial network plan in order to avoid commuters circles you could have a real viable community.

Toward this goal, projects like NAM and CAM are utmost. Nam because the network is a key feature here, since it could also be the most "destructive". CAM, because by enlarging the spectrum of building levels it greatly contribute to stick to real life situations (with exception of NYC, no city has hundreds of skyscrappers... in most cases, the downtown skyline is constituted by 12-15 big buildings surrounded by 20-30 of more modest size, but this "hard block" shelters several thousands CO jobs... SC4 wasn't allowing that, CAM does!).

Well, I'll stop here because it is 2 AM here in Paris and my eyes have unilaterally decided to abolish my free-speech right....  
But I am sure  you do understand what is my point.

[bap]

hi all
I'm back at SC4 after a while playing other games and am very happy to see a new NAM sequel. Marvelous work, once again...
I am a bit of a realism fanatic, so the new park&ride thing made my cry of pleasure...  (for this reason, I also chosed simulator B, since I think people are too lazy to walk 7km (16m*43) )

Hi Folks,

I´m bringing this message back to life again as I notice an important mistake. 16x43=688m, not 7km. This is less than 2 laps around a football (americans: soccer) pitch. I would agree that fat, rich sims would not walk that distance to go to work, but normal & poor people easily walk a larger distance to reach work in real cities. I am using simulator A because I think the distances travelled for sim to work are more realistic than in Maxis vanilla or simulator B cases.
Cheers,
Bap

EDIT: fixed the whole message quote - JP

[Pharaon-Kheops]

oops.... my bad.... didn't remember I was drunk when I wrote this post... 

Indeed, this make much more sense, 500m being roughly the walking distance real people tolerate before asking for a bus line.

Sorry for that probably too quick post...

[bwavin]

Excellent work on the NAM, I like the ideas of the Simulation A & B, there are some clever people out there!

My only problem using one of the new simulation types is monorail pollution. This was eradicated in earlier versions (and is still eradicated in the  Simulation D plugins) but with the new A & B, monorail pollution is back and as most of my cities rely on monorail for long distance transportation I have been reluctant to use it. Fortunately looking back in the forum I discovered that the property to adjust in the traffic plugin exemplar is Travel type generates traffic (maybe misnamed by maxis and traffic should read pollution?) However setting the last parameter to false solves the problem if anyone out there is in a similar boat. I will do extensive testing now to see if it does cause unexpected problems and will report back if I find anything.

keep up the good work

B

[Swamper77]

The "Travel Type Generates Traffic" property is used by the game to determine whether or not the particular travel type will add to the congestion of the networks. That is why you can have thousands of buses on a street and not have any congestion at all, or at least minimal congestion at intersections.

Since buses are recommended to cut down on air pollution caused by cars and have it set to "false" for that transit type, it is reasonable that it setting the property to "false" for a particular travel type removes the air pollution for any transit type that has it set to "false".

-Swamper

[bwavin]

Now I know thanks!!

B

[sffc]

Hello,

I like very much how these new traffic simulators are made to work.  Except for one thing: the transit network capacities.  Overall, even in the hard level, they are set ~5-10 times higher than MAXIS defaults!  Here is my current "setup":

Simulator "C" with 2xCapacity
No CAM
NAM April 2008 with GLR installed
Currently building a city on a large tile; pop as of now is about 25K

So basically, my question is, is it possible to make this simulator with lower capacities?  Perhaps with capacities equal to the 2xCapacity simulator?  For example, Simulator A Extra Hard?  Thank You.

[jplumbley]

Hello,

I like very much how these new traffic simulators are made to work.  Except for one thing: the transit network capacities.  Overall, even in the hard level, they are set ~5-10 times higher than MAXIS defaults!

Network	Hard	MAXIS	Difference
Street:	1000	100	x10
Road:	2500	1000	x2.5
Avenue:	2500	2500	x0
OWR:	2500	2000	x1.2
Highway / El-Highway:	4800	4000	x1.2
Rural Highway (ANT/Dirt Road):	4800	2000	x2.4
Subway / El-Rail / GLR:	6000	3000	x2
Monorail:	6000	3000	x2
Rail:	6000

3000

x2

You will notice from the comparision above that the Capacities of "Hard" are fairly comparable to that of your x2 Capacity Simulator.

-  Streets are the only one that is out of whack so to speak with a x10 Capacity because the MAXIS settings for Streets in many peoples opinions was way too low.  This also allows people to use mods such as SAM more effectively without having Congestion problems because they want a certain look.

-  Roads, OWR and Avenue have been set to the default Capacity of Avenue because the NWM is on its way and when it is released you will have the option to draw 2 and 3 tile wide Roads the will look like an Avenue.  With the old Simulators this would be substantially under capacity compared to drawing an Avenue.  So to make this more effective and useful, these 3 networks have been "equalized".

- The Mass Transit Networks are set to x2 Capacity, because even though a Station Lot has a Max Capacity of 2000, the network itself should be able to hold a higher capacity.  We have been designing some much bigger stations with monster capacities, but those stations would never see such a capacity being met without the network having a comparable setting here.

-  Dirt Road/ANT (RHW) has been given the same capacity as a Highway since we have developed the network to be a Highway.  The x2.4 really shouldnt count in this situation.

-  Realistic calculation....  a normal car is generally 4m to 5m long or so.  A rule I was taught was on the highway there should be a 3 second gap between you and the car in front of you  100 km/h = 83m in 3 seconds.  So, if everyone drove how they I was taught (which noone does) there should be approximately 90m between cars.  If you are travelling at 100 km/h then there can be a capacity of 1111 cars per hour per lane.  The MAXIS Highways have 3 lanes, so there is 3333 cars per hour...  I felt that this capacity was a little too low, so I multiplied by 1.5 which in this case gives you 4999.5 or 5000 cars.   I did the calculation a little differently last time, and got about 4800, but you can see how for highways I got a capacity of that.

Hmmm...  That has me thinking.

Highways = 1111 per lane = 3333 (6666 for two tile width total)
Road = 1063 per lane = 2126
Avenue/OWR = 1090 perlane = 2180 (Avenue for two tile width total 4360)

Trains = 100 per car, 12 cars per train = 1200 x 6 Trains per Hour = 7200 

So... It seems that for something other than Mass Transit, MAXIS had it fairly close to a Real Life Capacity.  With Variations in calculations we easily see that my quick calculations here and the MAXIS ones were similar to what is possible in Real Life for 1 hour.  Of course, there is a to and from commute and that would mean that everything should be x2 for there and back in 1 hour Commutes.

You may hear that some 3-lane highways handle 150,000 commuters a day... Well, thats because gridlock is so bad that the Rush Hour is not 1 hour there and 1 hour back... its more like 5 hours of rush hour each way giving 10 hours come Capacity commute a day or more.  So, 1111 per lane with traffic going both ways is 6666 per hour x24 = 159,984 cars capacity per day....  Of course people dont follow the 3 second rule and probably only give 1 second or less and of course people speed, which make capacity higher.  But, in those peak hours, capacity is lower because of the slowdown of traffic.  Therefore, 160,000 cars per day is not out of line with what SC4 has in the simulators.  But, we must remember, SC4 doesnt include those commuters who are going to shop, going to a hockey game or going to the night club....  It only simuates going to and from work, which is probaly only half of the daily commuters.

[sffc]

Wow, thanks for that response.

I guess when I said 5-10x MAXIS values, I was thinking mainly about streets.  One of my "pet peeves" in SC4 is people trying to "cut through" streets rather than taking the road/avenue that is one block further, even if the road/avenue is not congested.  But now that I'm thinking about it, I suppose that maybe the speed on the arteries has a more major part in this than I thought.  I do not know what the default MAXIS values are, but the car speeds in this simulator for streets and roads are 40 and 60, respectively.  Where I live, the average speed limits are 25 mph and 45 mph, which is about 33:60.  But, let's demonstrate the 40:60...



Assume you have a car coming from point "A" and going to point "B".  Black lines are roads and gray lines are streets.  Let's say that blocks are 4x8 tiles.  So, you can either take the road like so:

4 tiles + 8 tiles + 4 more tiles + 2 tiles for the 2 intersections (not counting speed reduction by intersections) = 18 tiles / 60 = .3

Or the street:

8 tiles / 40 = .2

So, assuming that there is no other traffic, taking the street would be calculated as faster.  However, in real life, they would take about the same time on each artery, because turning at a stoplight would be faster than turning without a stoplight (in most cases).  Thus, with such high speeds and capacity, streets can almost be used as a substitute to roads, even though they should, for the most part, be arteries used only at the very beginning and end of a journey.

Again, I do not know how this plays out with MAXIS defaults.  But, with such high speeds and capacities on streets, situations like this will likely happen much more often using this mod.

You have two reasons for the high-capacity streets: they allow for more realism with some SAM textures, and the capacities were set too low to begin with.  While the second reason does have some truth, it seems to me that most of the SAM textures would actually make speed slower: there are 2 dirt roads, a gravel road, a parking lot, a cobblestone street and 2 streets of brick.  All of these, in real life, would have lower speeds.  The only texture that would have increased speeds versus the MAXIS concrete streets is the asphalt street.  Based on the SAM Additions thread, most of the new additions being developed (ex. the new cobblestone street, that bluish green stone street, and the cracked concrete street)  would also have reduced speeds.

Also, one more thing that I noticed regards the two different types of highway (regular and "rural").  Though the rural highway has only two lanes versus three lanes for the regular highway, their capacities have been set equal.  Just something I noticed, though this won't bother me very much.

Other than the street capacity and speed, I like most every other improvement in this new simulator.  After rethinking it, I might replace my "C" simulator with the "A" simulator Thanks for all the work you put into it, as it is much appreciated over the SC4 community!  The NWM/TLA will make this even more true!

[Tarkus]

Also, one more thing that I noticed regards the two different types of highway (regular and "rural").  Though the rural highway has only two lanes versus three lanes for the regular highway, their capacities have been set equal.  Just something I noticed, though this won't bother me very much.

Well, the reasoning behind that is similar to the Road/OWR/Avenue equalization for the NWM.  The RHW capacity had been disproportionally low to start with, and it was necessary for making the Wider RHWs (i.e. the RHW-8) have a higher capacity than the Maxis highways (as they have more lanes).  In addition, the Maxis Highways have extremely narrow lanes.   (They're completely out of proportion with RL and with all the other "vanilla" networks.)

-Alex (Tarkus)

[sffc]

The RHW capacity had been disproportionally low to start with, and it was necessary for making the Wider RHWs (i.e. the RHW-8) have a higher capacity than the Maxis highways (as they have more lanes).

Yes, but the RHW-8 would be 4 tiles wide, right?  That means that the 4800 would be doubled anyway.  It seems to me that a capacity of about 3600 would be more realistic.

In addition, the Maxis Highways have extremely narrow lanes.

So, three narrow lanes have the same capacity as two wide lanes?  Also, there are several textures in the NWM that have 3 lanes squeezed into 1 tile.  Are those lanes wider than the highway lanes (perhaps because of the highway medians)?

Thanks for the response.

[jplumbley]

You have two reasons for the high-capacity streets: they allow for more realism with some SAM textures, and the capacities were set too low to begin with.  While the second reason does have some truth, it seems to me that most of the SAM textures would actually make speed slower: there are 2 dirt roads, a gravel road, a parking lot, a cobblestone street and 2 streets of brick.  All of these, in real life, would have lower speeds.  The only texture that would have increased speeds versus the MAXIS concrete streets is the asphalt street.  Based on the SAM Additions thread, most of the new additions being developed (ex. the new cobblestone street, that bluish green stone street, and the cracked concrete street)  would also have reduced speeds.

Well, the Street network was probably set low by MAXIS in the first place to make it so that the Street network would be at a disadvantage by becoming "over congested" much earlier.  Unfortunately, this still isnt "perfect" so to speak.

We would like the Simulator to prefer to stay on the "major" roads and avenues, but the way pathfinding engine that is used by MAXIS is designed it wont always look for the route that is the "least amount of time".  It is designed to look for the shortest possible distance first and then start looking at some possibilities that are not "too far" out of the way for comparable speeds.  I dont know how far is "too far", but I would assume that it is not set high enough for the result you are looking for.  Of course, I cannot do anything about it because there is no known property that would allow for editing something like this and I would assume there will never be one.  The problem with a property such as that, it would mean that the pathfinding engine will start comparing too many routes.  Every route is a calculation and a calculation equals time that the Processor must do.  Already with what we have the Simulator probably already makes several million calculations for a city of around 500k sims.

Basically, the best thing to do is make your Streets a longer path than your major arteries.  Grid, major arteries and try to use winding roads and dead end streets for your suburbs.

Too be honest... When I am driving through Downtown Toronto, I look for the side streets because side streets have less traffic and I dont mind stop signs.  Id rather be on a side street than get cut of by some jerk cab driver trying to get one car ahead at a stop light.

[flyinbird93]

hello,
I've revently began playing sc4rh and am trying these nam and cams out.  I kind of want maybe some insight from others if I've gone with the right traffic sim.

My test!  all results are based on my sandem city... pop ruffly 750k at time of testing.  all test done with cam in full effect.  $$$ at a 11% tax base to help with job/pop ratio.  90% of test city is completely (very) with ferry, monorail, train, and especially bus/subway for mass transit.

Test 1: perfect pathfinding, 5x(max?) capacity.

results were "ok" I was very pleased for awhile.  however traffic congestion was a bit of a problem around hiway on off ramps (ave, or road didn't matter they all bottlenecked up).  strangely commute times per building were all decent (medium to short) most $$$ having long commute but few abandons.

Test 2: simulator A easy

pop drop to ruffly 710k and stuck (over course of couple years).  abandonment abandonment abandonment.  nearly every building was @ medium at best commute, long being the norm.  a few short show up on my off base island.  my city was dieing from long commute time.  lots and lots of traffic congestion.

Test 3: simmulator B easy

best results imo.  nearly every building has gone back to medium/short commute and the abandoning stoped and grew like crazy (850k by end of test).  some buildings were long commute but on a much more managable scale.  mass transit was used more frequently than that of test 2.  the farm town was not tested in the other 2 test.


after seeing some pretty happy results with test 3 I jumped to my farm town of about 400 people.  where I was told to improve my culdesac main drive to a road.

anyone else thinking that given my circumstances sim B is best for my region?

EDIT: Park & Ride was never used.   my mass transit deals with enough as it is without forcing more traffic into it.

[xxdita]

Determining the best traffic sim for you is your own call really. Each one requires a certain amount of adjustments, to keep commute times acceptable, while trying to keep your Sims working in the same city they live in.

So you have to choose the one that works best for you. Depending on your city planning, you may have to adjust to a different traffic Sim, or at least a different difficulty, for each city.

Good to see you taking them all out for a spin though. 

[flyinbird93]

the thing I found oddest was I thought sim A:easy would help my largest city the most with the extended walking and driving capabilities but I was completely wrong.  which means everyone should experiment with them all.  your "guess" may not always work with your over all "plan"

also can someone help me find out how to open the new traffic congestion view?  I can't find it in the game.  I installed it but on my map overlay of traffic its still the old style

[xxdita]

As it should be. The new Traffic View only alters the color depth, and the congestion level for each.

[jplumbley]

the thing I found oddest was I thought sim A:easy would help my largest city the most with the extended walking and driving capabilities but I was completely wrong.  which means everyone should experiment with them all.  your "guess" may not always work with your over all "plan"

also can someone help me find out how to open the new traffic congestion view?  I can't find it in the game.  I installed it but on my map overlay of traffic its still the old style

Thanks for helping out xxDita!

Thanks for your feedback its always nice to know.  To be totally honest, for an existing city you should test out and find what works for you best.  When you are starting out though, it is probably best to start with either Simulator A or B : Hard.  When you start from the begining it is easier for you to plan your city to be adaptable and work with any Traffic Simulator rather than work "against" one.  I my self use Simulator A: Hard and have no problems with abandonment, so there must be a sort of city planning that you use that disagrees with Simulator A.  xxDita tested Simulator A: Easy for me in a medium city tile and was able to reach a population of over 2.5 million sims.  So, you *can* make it work with large populations.

In Simulator A, it restricts congestion much more tighter than all the other Simulators, the problem that may be occuring is that you simply have too much populations together with not enough "capacity" (routes) for them to get from point A to point B over long distances.  Meaning you probably have bottlenecks.  Simulator A, seems to allow for between 175% and 200% capacity before the penatly to congested roads becomes too great for them to be used efficiently.  One way to help your city would be to add busses and make jobs closer to home because pedestrians and busses do not add to congestion on Roads.  But, if work is too far away and there isnt enough bus support then you will begin to get abandonment due to the distances people have to walk and if the Roads are already over congested then people will refuse to drive aswell.

About the Traffic Congestion Data View.  This already exists in the game with the rest of your Data View maps.  The thing I have changed was when the colors show up.  Originally, when a road became yellow with congestion it was already at 200% Capacity and the effects of traffic in the Simulator were already fullblown.  Now, the roads show yellow when they are at between 90% and 110% capacity.  This is when your roads begin to suffer the consequences of being over capacity and it allows for the Traffic Congestion Data View to be used as a more accurate tool rather than an inadequate tool.

It is easier for you to now identify when a road needs to be upgraded or when it starts having issues.  The side effect of this is that your Roads will never be in pristine condition from a Congestion stand-point and I have obviously had to contend with some people complaining about that... But, it is what it is and this is only from the numbers that the game uses.  All I did was make it more accurate.

[paroch]

Thanks for the info in this thread - helps me understand how the new NAM works.

I only recently installed new NAM and found that the commute speeds x10 option had disappeared, which was the one I used.  I selected Simulator A - Hard as the description sounded the best for my style of play. 

Now reading this thread I can see that when I build a larger city then I may need to change this to the "Medium" version, or even "Easy".  My question is how do I get these versions?  Can I just download the simulator I want or do I have to reinstall NAM and tick the relevant box each time I want to change simulator version.

Thanks in advance,

Paul