RHW (RealHighway) - Development and Support

[Blue Lightning]

Indeed. It started out rural, but do you really see some of this stuff in rural areas?

[Tarkus]

The truly "Rural-only" phase of the RHW was actually a very brief period . . . back in the olden days (2005-2006), even before I was around, qurlix already was regretting calling it that.  The RHW is certainly more conducive to rural settings, yes, but that's not its primary purpose.

As far as co-opting the Maxis Highways as noahclem suggested, there's been some ideas thrown around over the years--probably the closest realization of that is mrtnrln's Highway Re-Styling project (HRS).  There's been other ideas as well, though they haven't gone past a little experimentation.

-Alex

[choco]

Further down the road it would be sweet to see new bridges (like a 2-way RHW-6 version of one of Chaco's 1-way RHW-10 bridges) or maxis bridge refits for such a network.

regarding the Maxis bridges bring "recycled", i've been working on a couple of them for various networks.  im hoping the new reader may help expedite work like this, becasuse its quite tedious and repetitive work.

here's one thats still on-going....



there are 60 individual models in this bridge....at 20 .s3d files per model, thats 1200 .s3d files to edit by hand.  its just slow going at this point, but i haven't given up. 

[jdenm8]

Wow. Pure awesomeness!   

There were some good Maxis bridges (Okay, I think nearly all of them were good) and I for one appreciate the effort you're putting in for us (and for free!).

[strucka]

Awesome choco! 

I also love the Maxis bridges. Seems as if they were the first to be done. They're very nicely done =)

[Glazert]

That bridge looks very impressive - and useful too! All the work you are doing on these will be really appreciated.

[six9nc]

I am full on for this coexistance of RHW and MHW, because in packed downtown's and areas that are more crowded you just have to use the MHW, which actually is also a lot more usable and stuff. And then having the RHW's as they were ment to be... rural. Well I'm just starting to make my HWY's into RHW's, because it was a lot easier to make MHW's by now.

Thank god I read this today.  I thought I was just not creative enough or I was "cheating" by using mhw for high speed interchanges in tight spaces.  I do enjoy building my rhw around the new cities I build.  It gives it a more realistic feel.  However the rhw interchanges I make take up too much room for the amount of traffic I need them to handle.

[fafalone]

Something that would go a long way to making the RHW more useful in tight urban spaces would be off/on-ramps that are also transitions between elevated and ground level- the way it is in real life in a lot of crowded downtowns; rather than have the ramp and then have to add a transition. That would save a lot of space and still be accurately scaled if done properly. Currently in game from start of exit to last edge before intersection is 9 tiles = 144m. In real life, ramps are sometimes as short as 100-120m on downtown major highways (just spent some time looking at sat photos); so if the transition could be cut down to 5 or 6 tiles (80-96m) it would be scaled correctly with the reduction typically found for large downtown structures in the game. That would make it much more useable and visually realistic while not being blatantly out of scale like the 4 tile (64m) Maxis highway exits.
It doesn't seem pieces like that are in development, but if they ever did come along it would be the one of the final nails in the coffin for the Maxis highways. Please don't take this post as being critical or ungrateful, I know the massive amount of work that goes into every piece of things like this and I'm in awe of the NAM team's skill and dedication and what's already out and in development are absolutely fantastic; I just wanted to share one of the things holding me back from using the RHW in downtown skyscraper land.

[ShultzCity]

I'd just like to pop in and say what brilliant work everyone has been doing in the RHW world lately 

While I'm here - is there any RHW FARR pieces coming in V4? I would be over the moon if there was

[Tarkus]

Something that would go a long way to making the RHW more useful in tight urban spaces would be off/on-ramps that are also transitions between elevated and ground level- the way it is in real life in a lot of crowded downtowns; rather than have the ramp and then have to add a transition.

Actually, there has been some stuff done in that direction for 4.0.  It'll be implemented a little bit differently than what you've described, however.  The problem with including the Ground/Elevated MIS transition is that it's a bit too "pre-fab" and would require quite a lot of additional pieces.  The 4.0 solution to this issue has two components . . . one is that I've added a version of the Ground/Elevated transition that omits the "starter drag stubs" on the ends, which gives you the option to reduce the footprint to 1x4 from 1x6, and also makes it easier to place on slopes.

The other component will be unveiled a bit later . . . it's RHW 4.0's "secret weapon" of sorts.  I did something really wild to the ramp interfaces . . .

-Alex

[fafalone]

The ground stub for the transition could already be plopped on the stub after the ramp; would there still be a stub there because of the off/on ramp (only reducing the whole setup by 1 instead of 2)? Or is that information classified top secret? 

[Tarkus]

Well, the "top-secret" bit will actually allow you to drop the stub entirely on the ramp interface end . . . at least in some instances.

-Alex

[mightygoose]

draggable offramps??



in other news... get on with the half height (8m) overpasses....  XD

[Nego]

  Great work on version 4.0.

It's going to be AWESOME!!! I can't wait.

[Shadow Assassin]

A glimpse of what will be available with 4.0...

[ecoba]

Squeals 

I honestly find that evil, Daniel. But, seriously, it looks great; can't wait to see more.

Ethan

[metasmurf]

Nice textures

[jdenm8]

Really only one word to describe that. Wow. 

[Glazert]

Those features will enable us to construct much more realistic acceleration/deceleration lanes.

[riiga]

Awesome textures Daniel! I especially like those proper chevrons instead of just a fill like on Maarten's textures! 

- riiga