The Noro Cooperative

[romualdillo]

Outstanding work!!!  The bike paths are a great addition!! Both versions look good (I prefer constraining private traffic, but both are great anyway). Have you considered making your bike paths merge with Cataylst's ones? It would be great to have the same bike system in the whole city. 


Thanks! I think tram-in-avenues with bike paths, in whatever form they end up implemented, should at least look fairly good cosmetically alongside those SAM bike paths. Since my plans for them are very limited, presently at minimum to make available a cosmetic mod to override orthogonal TIA pieces to include them but ideally to add one or two orthogonal TIA variations including them as discrete puzzle pieces, it would be very trivial to make a texture variation with the same bike path color as those have. I'm also trying to design these textures to blend well with a variety of other ones intersecting them, whether SAM variations or cosmetic mods to other networks (I think just having zebra crosswalks at the edge of the tile where textures intersect helps substantially).

-Noah

[Earwhyckque]

Hard work is being done here! Great job!

This remark of yours made me wonder:

As for the yellow markings, I made a big mistake not noticing how much wider they are then normal road markings. My guess at their function was to tell traffic not to cross them but for the areas inside them to be accessible by emergency vehicles, buses, etc. Those markings are almost as wide as the narrow concrete medians so TIAs based on them could have essentially the same geometry in either case. See below for my efforts in that area...

Are you planning to send buses over the areas reserved for trams, too? Or would that either be impossible to implement, or too complex to code, for instance in transition pieces? From what I understand, 'buses only' lanes consist of traffic blockers at the start and end of a road so I would expect it involves a lot of extra work... It would be a great feature, though!

Otherwise: good luck with this project and the Cooperative! I'm particularly looking forward to the development of the airport and railways

Thank you very much! I hadn't thought of the bus idea at all but it's potentially brilliant. From what I understand you're right about it needing to be implemented using lots to block non-bus traffic and/or provide paths to access those lanes that wouldn't normally be accessible to traffic. Maybe a set of bus stop/tram stop lots that generated the proper automata, provided appropriate access, and blocked the undesired traffic types combined with plain blocker lots? I don't have any experience with using those types of lots and do have some concern that this wouldn't be possible because traffic on the main lanes and the tram lanes are on the same tile. I wouldn't mind adding car paths to the same place where tram paths (and for some reason also rail paths) now run if this kind of scheme would be workable but someone else would need to take the lead on actually making the lots as there are other things with this project that are higher priority for me (and there's plenty of work to do ).

-Noah

[mgb204]

Outstanding work!!!  The bike paths are a great addition!! Both versions look good (I prefer constraining private traffic, but both are great anyway). Have you considered making your bike paths merge with Cataylst's ones? It would be great to have the same bike system in the whole city. 

Not sure how easy that would be actually, since for starters the bikepaths are a SAM override and SAM does not currently interact with GLR in any way. You could adapt the street connections so they all transitioned to SAM7 instead of regular streets, like the Cobblestone Street connections used for Tram in Street, but this would bring drawbacks of it's own into the equation. I plan to look into a lot-based solution, or maybe to adapt some PedMall pieces to transition some networks, but this may be some time off.

---

Seeing the last few GLR-related posts has me really excited, it's pretty much transformational in terms of looks and I feel the overall it would suit most European styles very well too. This is a huge effort just on the textures, before you look at pathing and the rest  , I will be following the developments here with much interest.


I mentioned my thoughts on the bike paths to romualdillo--and of course I'm looking forward to all the rest of your plans with the bikes and will work to make these play as nicely as possible with them   I'm really encouraged by your kind words on the project! The size of it is indeed intimidating but I'm trying to break it down into small, manageable pieces and I'm also making it a point to work on it when I'm excited about it and not just when I feel like I should--trying to be very careful not to burn out    If things go worse than I hope for than at the very least I'd be able to release altered textures and variable sidewalks without the changed paths, etc, but that's preparing for the worst, I'm planning for the best

-Noah

[Haljackey]

Huh. This is neat stuff! Looks great!


Thanks Hal, great to see you around again!

-Noah

[Gugu3]

It's great to see al the progress you have made Noah!can't wait to see more!


Thanks Guglielmo, much appreciated

-Noah

[belfastsocrates]

Oh those new textures are lovely! I'm a fan of the texture incorporating a wide pavement with one lane of traffic and the inclusion of parking bays or bike lanes. Looking forward to seeing these progress.


@reddonquixote: Loving those new tram stops as well. Nice and modern!


Thanks a lot! I had a scare that it would be too difficult but I think I've figured out a perfect way to implement the version with parking bays, bike lanes, trams, and one lane of traffic--see update   And I can't say enough good things about reddonquixote's models either.

-Noah

[Dantes]

Very impressive! I like to combine the idea on the Avenue parking and bike paths with tram. Very great work!


Thanks very much, glad you liked them!

-Noah

[kelis]

WOW Noah, you are in the next level right now !! I like so much those textures, I hope some day those mods are available. A Melbourne recreation always could be something interesting to do...


Thanks Jonathan! I'll do my best to share them as soon as I can   They're roughly based on Melbourne but it seems every tram network is different and I also feel these should be at home in European-style cities or anywhere really. Texture variations are always a possibility later too 

-Noah

[noahclem]

I would never have expected such an enthusiastic response--thank you all so much!

Since the last post I've tried tackling perhaps the toughest piece I haven't messed with yet but plan to: OrthoxDiagonal TIA. Staying with the same footprint and connectivity of the original piece I got this:



Arranging all the 45 degree crossings to allow trams to flow opposite directions and never cross paths while leaving room for car traffic on the edges was a bit of a challenge--the fractional angled straightaway and two curved section worked nice but wasn't the simplest. The bigger problem though was the 135 degree curves. Part of my plan for this project has always been establishing some kind of minimum turning radius, not unlike what RRW did, and the best I can do with these piece just falls too far short. I don't know if any tram could realistically navigate it, even if it's a bit of an improvement over the original piece's turning radius. My original thought was to use overhanging textures to attain a suitable turning radius without need a whole new (huge) puzzle piece.



I built the textures (I only need to do half and then rotate it even with OxD pieces) but then realized there wasn't a way to handle paths that would need to overhang. I don't have any desire to create the larger puzzle piece that would be needed to make the appropriate radius textures work, mainly because the 45 degree connectivity, or none, would make a whole lot more sense then the 135 degree curves which would also make it an incredibly difficult piece to make as a first one.

I do have some more positive news though. I've been thinking hard about the best way to offer as many variations of tram/road arteries as possible while minimizing the amount of effort needed per network and think I may have figured out a nice way to use the textures I showed earlier with, per side, 1 lane of parking, one bike lane, one general traffic lane, and one tram lane. If I arranged the paths like this could I stick with the same intersection piece that exists now for TIA with two lanes of traffic per side?



The thick, turquoise paths represent my planned additions while the white "X"s hover over paths to be removed.

[memo]

If I arranged the paths like this could I stick with the same intersection piece that exists now for TIA with two lanes of traffic per side?

I imagine the intersections would work even if you removed the turquoise paths from the straights (this would have to be tested). The turquoise paths would make the automata move in a weird way on straights – if you left them out, automata would move weirdly on intersections only. I'm not sure which option should be preferred.

That said, your textures are beautiful. Truly impressive!

[Gugu3]

That DxO intersection looks impressive Noah!looking forward to seeing what you come up with

[art128]

That looks fantastic, Noah!

I've done another bunch of work on the airport. It's almost ready, just needs an interchange and some more little details. On this subject, how do you guys think we should make the grass between the taxiways/runways/apron? What would be the best looking solution?
(click the pictures for full size)




The general aviation terminal. It is still lacking some parking garages. The ATCT can be seen.


The airport can also welcome VIP planes such as Iron Maiden here. But also presidential planes.


The maintenance area. I'm looking for a building that can be used as an auto repair garage (for the Loaders, stairs, push-back tractors and general cars) any idea?


The freight area. Still lacking some parking garages too. On the top right you can see the special gate which is specifically made to support very heavy cargo planes such like the Dreamlifter (pictured), Airbus Beluga or the AN-225. (the central runway was made extra long for this last one)




Refueling station. I've also used JENX airport fences which look quite badass in this airport.


I've also changed the service road style when on grass. I'm using the rural road plugin and I have to say I quite like the result!


And finally a view of the end of runway 27C/09C, the longest of the airport with one of the four de-icing areas.

[compdude787]

The airport is looking nice so far! I like how you even have a special spot for DreamLifters!

You mentioned you needed to put in more parking garages over by the cargo area. Is there really going to be so many people parking there that you need several parking garages for all of them? All you need is just a parking lot for the employees and pilots to park at.

[romualdillo]

The airport looks fantastic!! As I don't know much about airports I only can say: It's HUGE!! 

[gn_leugim]

great work, all of you!    

[vester]

That is one huge and good looking airport.


Good to see people joining the project.

[Durfsurn]

I'm no airport connoisseur but shouldn't there be a small town/suburb filled with hotels, fast food chains etc? Maybe some hotels close to the main terminal? 99% of my airport knowledge is based of Melbourne Tullamarine Airport, which includes such things pretty much within the airport.

Otherwise one of the best airports I have ever seen!

-Billy

[noahclem]

Beyond outstanding 

The Dreamlifter is such an excellent touch! Would be great if we can twist someone's arm into making the other oversized planes or even the Buran- or shuttle-carrying planes with their cargo.

[reddonquixote]

Yes, truly the most amazing airports I've ever seen. Such attention to detail! 

[Simcoug]

Can't wait for the Iron Maiden concert