Travels Down I-85: A MD of the North Carolina Piedmont (Update 9.15.07)

[Eddie]

...perhaps because I'm not on ST anymore and barely even here?

I'm barely on here either, so that can account for it. Now on to analyzing the new update:

-Curved avenue is used realistically (that should look good in region view).

-Nice work on the highschool. Schools have yards! Not enough CJers put the effort into adding accessories in their educational structures. You, however, have included an open grass area, soccer field, baseball field...etc. It looks great (though unfinished).

-Love those middle-wealth maxis residential homes as well. One of the few default maxis buildings I like to play with. It's perfect for suburban/rural neighborhoods.

-Excellent placement of trees.

Well, that's all for today. 

[thundercrack83]

Oilton looks fantastic, my friend! It looks very realistic. I'll be looking forward to see more of your work!

[Pat]

LoL Aaron a great update on Oilton 

[bat]

The town of Oilton is looking fantastic! Great pictures!

[ExiLe]

I love you MD! It's very American-ish looking in a realistic way... from what I can see on GE and on TV, since I have never been to the US my self...

take care,

[pickled_pig]

Hey everyone:

Some more pics of Oilton (including some more detail on the high school and cemetery):







I had a bit more completely unrelated to MDing that was supposed to tack onto this update but decided it was a bit too irrelevant.  C'est la Vie.

-aaron

[Pat]

Aaron either way a great update imho...  that is one massive cementary too

[DFire870]

Great updates Aaron, you are one of the best when it comes to suburban development/sprawl. Although I'd hate to be the janitor that has to stay late at the high school, since it's across from a cemetery...

-- John

[urban]

The cemetary looks greate

[bat]

Wonderful looking new pictures of Oilton! Looking forward to more...

[emilin]

Very nice update. The Wittgenstein High School looks really, really good.

[pickled_pig]

I'm taking an Advanced Placement [link] course in Human Geography over in real life at the moment...

...we were just issued our textbooks today.  I skimmed through it between reading sessions this afternoon and noticed that there were a wealth of rather interesting maps throughout.  Supposedly we're going to have to make maps somewhere in the course and we're going to do a couple of units on urban development.

How fitting.  It should be interesting to see whether the formal education on urbanization - the ivory tower theories, to speak in that vernacular - will get incorporated into the casual pursuit of MDing.

And quickly to shout out to Dfire870 - someone's got to do the job!  Any takers ?

There's no update in the pipeline in the near future.  I have to finish Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, write to the same damned essay prompt I had to write to this time last year, and (yes, this is my assignment ) decorate one of my binders to "reflect my personality".  Good God.

I'll see you back in the Classics section
-aaron

[Travis]

I have to finish Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, write to the same damned essay prompt I had to write to this time last year, and (yes, this is my assignment ) decorate one of my binders to "reflect my personality".  Good God.

You've now thoroughly convinced me never to go to school in North Carolina. 
On my end, I've got to finish a one-paragraph book report. 

Anyway- looking forward to that update, but take your time. It's only after running an MD for 6 months that I can really appreciate and understand all the hard work that goes into this. 

[ryalmighty1]

Thank you for migrating over here to SC4D. I enjoyed your CJ at ST, but since I only use ST for dl's and stay away from the forums, I've missed good CJ's like this one. I love how your MD really does represent the South, and realistically at that. Sometimes it is like looking at SC4 renditions of towns here in Kentucky. Great job!!

[Frankie]

You've now thoroughly convinced me never to go to school in North Carolina.

lol, I quite enjoyed schooling while I lived in North Carolina. I lived in a town of less than 1,000 people, far from any sprawling metropolis. (well Asheville was about 70 miles west of it..if that counts). Talk about small classes, lol.


Anyway, I'm loving the MD! Always great to come back and see more amazing screenshots  I suppose it really takes someone from elsewhere to notice all the details. (maybe that's why I never can think of what to add to my own MD screenies)

[pickled_pig]

Travis - One paragraph book report - you're lucky!  I have an essay test on my summer reading in two days... and I haven't written a critical literary essay in about 14-15 months!  As for going to school in NC - it's a joke.  My school's on the Newsweek rankings and they're pretty much obsessed with nothing but standardized test scores and unless you get good teachers you're pretty much getting a cram-for-the-test education.

ryalmighty1 - Thanks for coming by our SC4D home and commenting, especially seeing the ST version of this MD has been abandoned since April.  I've never been to Kentucky - I'm mostly going by midsized North Carolina towns I've visited (such as Gastonia, Monroe, Shelby) and satellite pics from Google Earth for an overall idea of the landscape.

Frankie - A small class at my school has 25 students.  Talk about everything being relative to each other.  I can see where you're going with the "elsewhere" part - growing up in a place you take your landscape and geography and cityscapes for granted and forget what's different or unique about a place. 
You do an excellent job capturing the South too, so don't downplay yourself.

Thanks everyone for visiting over the past few days.  You're going to have to hang on for a moment as I prepare the next update, which is probably going to be a map update, where we're going to look at some hand-drawn maps and region overviews to see where we've gone and what's next.

I also want to go back to Graham and do some stats on the city.  I mapped out the school system a while back - perhaps that will be another map update...?

Until then, here's a teaser.  We're slowly going to go back into roadgeek mode and we'll probably be seeing some Kurumi Signmaker in use soon.



As for where US-174 goes, we'll be taking a look at that in the map update.  We saw a bit of US-174 back in update 19 and way back in update 13 and we'll be seeing it a bit more as the region gets developed.

-aaron

[Frankie]

Frankie - A small class at my school has 25 students.  Talk about everything being relative to each other.  I can see where you're going with the "elsewhere" part - growing up in a place you take your landscape and geography and cityscapes for granted and forget what's different or unique about a place. 
You do an excellent job capturing the South too, so don't downplay yourself.

Small classes at my school are rare, maybe even non-existent. There are just so many new students that there isn't enough room. When I moved up to the Upstate last year, I had to go to three different schools who all had to turn me down because there was simply no space. The one that finally took me in is nearly 20 miles from my house. It is hands down the worst school in the county, and only the core classes are offered, hardly any extras. This really hampers my options, since at my old school I took 3 years of architectural design all went to waste because the credits didn't transfer.

I remember when I was younger, our trailer washed away in AL, so we moved to NC, it seemed like a totally different world, with trees that change colors with the seasons! (It was my first time seeing something other than evergreens, so you can imagine that i was quite excited when fall came around, lol). So maybe there is significant region differences in the South..

My observation is this; North Carolina tends to be extremely spread out. Kind of like a rubber band...well..that was a  bad example. Anyways, the upstate of SC is the same way, with massive amounts of suburbs spread over several square miles. However, in the Low Country it is much more rural with the effects of sprawl holding tight to the Interstate and rarely gets out of the city limits. (which is a good thing, achieved by strict zoning laws). AL and GA (with the exception of Atlanta) are totally different. But it's rather difficult to explain without comparison pictures..

Anyway I'll get off my rant, and say that you have done a great job with this MD. I like where you have gone with it, and you have improved quite a bit since I originally began posting on it, great job! 



P.S. I requested that my MD be moved to the completed section. I wish to restart for organizational purposes (and so i don't hit my bandwidth limit on photobucket again...). In my honest opinion, I think that my MD still lacks detail..it always seems like I'm missing something.

[Pat]

Aaron that teaser shot is nice, very country feeling to it and Frankie that had to suck going to school only offering basic classes uggh....

[thundercrack83]

Love the teaser, my friend! I'm sufficiently teased and looking forward to the next update!

[bat]

Wonderful teaser! Looking forward to more...