Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project (Big Dig)

[blahdy 21]

tommiej: thanks, yea, 3ds max performs a lot faster than gmax in all grounds, no matter how much detail i put in, it renders wicked fast as if it's nothing hard   a lot easier to work with.

Traffic Surveillance Camera:  Even in SC4 zoom level angle, the camera looks more real-life than before.

Remaining road sign going up:

[patriots_1228 51]

OMG dude that looks just like boston. cant wait for this 2 b up!

[kbooms1w 1]

Freakin' ridiculous

[GMT 389]

wonderful!

[toxicpiano 125]

What the?! Kbooms is back?! Wow, very realistic indeed, it's a shame that so much detail is lost in the render eh? I hope you are enjoying that texture site!

[SC4luv2 0]

Wow!

[artforce1 5]

Ok, that does it! I think Simtropolis should open as a business. There is no way that this thing is going to stop in the next foreseable future since there will be a simcity for release and simtropolis will be there right along helping the way. I mean, if every simtropolis user donated (or paid) a yearly subscription fee, like $25 or something, there is a multi-million dollar business right there. We cannot afford NOT to pay these people for their great work any longer.

[LivingInThePast 364]

Right. And then the userbase would plummet and we would all bring our downloads elsewhere. Simtropolis would become like IGN, where everyone hates it, and the other sites distribute bootleg NAM copies. The community would shatter forever. Then, when we talk about it, they'll say "it's artforce1's fault!"

[CltcDrgn 0]

*DROOL* Wow, this is seriously rockin'! You guys should have been working on the real Big Dig, probably would have brought in on time and under budget!

[blahdy 21]

thanks all

kbooms1w: glad to see you're back! i packaged some files you requested long time ago....  i just need to get the texture, etc maps gathered.  will talk to you online when you're on

artforce1: fortunately, there are some uses outside of sim city for these models, so we get best of both worlds

cltcdrgn:  thanks for the complients   i'm not a civil/structural engineer so probably not though ..    Speaking of cost overruns... there's some long story there indeed heh..  Looking back at the history however, significant cost increases of the big dig was due to differing site conditions (engineering term for construction site being far different than what customer/client's design request and RFP claimed it was, rendering construction impossible or extremely dangerous unless additional costly work is performed to clean up and prepare the area first). 

The original $2.8 billion proposal by the state (before Big Dig contractors' involvement) in 1980's lacked a significant number of required designs and even site surveys to analyze the structural integrity and environmental impact potentials on proposed construction areas.  But I can't blame the state government for screwing that up either, because when they started constructing, there have been a lot of utility lines and old abandoned elements that were simply not documented anywhere -- only way to discover them was to starting digging and open up the pandora's box.  So it was very difficult to come up with more accurate price tag ahead of time.

Additional issue was, the $2.8 billion proposal completely lacked Charles River Crossing specific design proposals (i.e. Zakim Bridge was not even on the proposal), only to be figured out and added starting in 1994 and onwards.  Yet another significant price bloat there.   This is only one of the few examples of course.

The coverage by local media (Boston Globe in particular) over time has been quite unfair against the big dig contractors, often citing incorrect factual data or making assumptions.  There is no doubt, there have been significant number of negligence and mistakes by contractors (as evidenced in July ceiling collapse, etc) but in terms of cost recovery efforts, there are additional facts that are often overlooked.

For example, the Globe's claim that 1 million dollars of taxpayer funds used by Bechtel to correct "missing Fleet Center in design" issue is quite misleading.  The actual cost was only quarter of that and section design consultant (SDC) who made the design was put on notice to fix it without further reimbursement.  The rest of ~3/4th of the 1 million dollars cost was due to old aging MBTA segment removal right within Fleet Center area at the same time, totally unrelated to "missing Fleet Center in design" issue as alleged by the Globe.   In conclusion, in my view, the local gov't and Mass. Turnpike Authority are just as guilty as Bechtel and contractors in poor worksmanship and incompetent project management over the past 20 years

Anyway, back on topic heh... some new pictures..

Ramps CS-SA and CN-SA use black chain-link fences surrounding them (quite ghetto).   So we do the same here.  Alpha textures are being used to model the chain-link fences quickly (many thanks to Glenni for helping out on that matter).

SC4 Zoom Level 5 (South Side) Preview.  Don't let the picture fool you: the ramp is still far from done.  But when it is done, it will look beautiful in game

[tommiej 0]

it already looks beautifull!!

keep it up blahdy!!

[van1357 15]

These new models are absolutely amazing Blahdy! The renders look like photos. Can't wait to see them released...

[masssc4 3]

nice job blahdy, i just downloaded the set of exits with the leveret connector and they have a block in the middle of them, did i download the wrong one?

[Yoman3 5]

I see you've gotten the connection to SC4 streets to match up. What a damn sharp turn.

[josefmayor 8]

bro you are too good at this lol!

[bwatterud 7]

I think the block you're describing is where you connect the subway tube. To get rid of it, switch to underground view (water pipes or subway), then back to standard.

[blahdy 21]

yoman3: yup, it takes 360 degrees circular turn (the RL version)   This ramp was precision-modelled using satellite pictures and construction blueprint, so curvature scale is pretty realistic to that of the real-world counterpart

josefmayor:  glad to see you here, thanks!!

Also.... the importing of 90-degrees angled sign-posts from gmax still results in damaged vertexes which seems to continue to screw up light reflections on the texture (b/c the sign post is all banged up with vertex surfaces going everywhere).  Since the sign post looks more like circular rounded stick, it cannot be allowed to look like that for the current ramp and all of future works to be conducted in 3ds max.  So it's been remade with same scale, below.

Ignore the crappy ghetto looking rusting steel picture, it's temporary.

Painted black:

Now, we're talking   The white light reflection on the sign post follows precisely its outline, instead of intruding on surfaces.

The color tone on the black sign-post gantry surface is quite perfect now:

Next step is to create powerbox and finish the underground tunnel section...later on..

[Alfred.Jones 2]

WOAH!!! This is amazing blahdy!! You are taking this game to a whole new level of realism... yet again!!

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Lovely.

Keep in mind, though, what you see in 3dsmax isn't necessarily what you can expect in SC4. For instance, the camera may lose some minor details, but otherwise will be okay.

[tommiej 0]

it looks awesome!! just one question Blahdy, will the ramps make your comp slower, because of the size?? i'm planning an underground highway using your ramps and if i use a lot of the (more than 20 perhaps) will this influence performance??

keep it up blahdy!!

[SimFox 804]

to see in 3ds max EXACTLY what will be during export just set your render output window WIDTH to 795 pixels! and you'll get 100% accurate (size and everything else view for all cameras.

To get night view just enable all the lights and set Tint value in environment and effects to these values: RGB 128,128,191

 you could also benefit great deal from using more advanced Lighting, material and rendering setups.

Art the moment , for instance all the parts in the shadow have absolutely same illumination that eats away any perception of the shape.

btw the grass texture you use, is it one from the game itself?

[blahdy 21]

Originally posted by: tommiej it looks awesome!! just one question Blahdy, will the ramps make your comp slower, because of the size?? i'm planning an underground highway using your ramps and if i use a lot of the (more than 20 perhaps) will this influence performance??

keep it up blahdy!!quote>

Not likely...

The Big Dig ramps certainly do require more computing power than a simple building lot, because the 2.0 ramps use LODs that are far complex in nature than a simple box fit to size.  But even so, the given smaller size of the lot still brings it down to a manageable level where chances are, you probably won't even notice any difference in performance on most newer computers.

Typical size for a post-2.0 Big Dig ramp is on avg. between 7 and 8 tiles long, to allow gradual descent to underground, and between 2 to 3 tiles wide.  2 tiles wide for moderately curved ramps, 3 tiles for heavily curved ramp.  Of course there are exceptions to this, where simple Type-1 straight ramps are 5 or 6 tiles long and 1 tile wide.

Also, the newer (post 2.0) Big Dig ramps are designed to fit inside greenway-space constraint of 5 tiles width.  So, for those of you trying out a Boston CJ or a CJ with similar setup to Boston's Big Dig, it is important to remember to design your greenway to have 5 tiles of garden space between each leg of one-way roads that act as your surface roads.  All curved big dig ramps are designed to be able to fit within 5 tiles width of space when two of them are placed side by side.

SimFox:  Thanks for stopping by;  Yea, I currently have my renderer set to 795 pixels wide and 600 pixels high.  (Let me know please if height of 600 should be changed otherwise though i doubt it).

This is how things look currently in West/Side views, they look fine as expected so far.

[josefmayor 8]

Looking Excelent I'm excited for this! Your textrues are perfect. I swear it looks like you worked on the project IRL. Are you an engineer? lol.

[SimFox 804]

Height could be anything you desire it doesn't affect scaling of the camera view.

[qwerty_sim 0]

blahdy, If i downloaded the Big Ding lots, would it still work because i have a LHD version of the game? anyway, great work on the Big Dig

[bwatterud 7]

Holy crap, you even put bolts on the sign gantry!!!!

[patriots_1228 51]

yea same asw bwatterud, im amazed that you even did the bolts. they look so realistic, no matter what they do to my comp its an automatic download.

[blahdy 21]

qwerty_sim:  The on and off-ramps should work without a doubt, since one-ways have uni-directional paths.  The highway transition portal in big dig 1.0 release back in July '06 was never tested though (unless someone already did) and whether or not it works with LHD in my opinion is questionable.

simfox: roger that, thanks for clarification.  regarding the grass texture, yes it was taken from the game, I got them from Swamper77.

bwatterud, patriots_1228:  yup.  and it was modelled faster than the first sign-post set initially made back in gmax    thanks;

josefmayor: thanks;  heh, no i'm not an engineer, but structural engineering projects always intrigued me since i was born   needless to say, i need to order up the whole dvd set of discovery's Extreme Engineering show.

[Traff 4]

Wow. Your work is very impressive.

The models are very detailed, and I I have put some to great use.

The CS-SA ramp looks amazing. I cant wait.

[blahdy 21]

New update:

All power boxes and black perimeter chain-link fencing has been completed.  Perimeter fences stop here instead of fully surrounding the ramp, b/c right next to this curved CS-SA ramp, there is supposed to be another one called CN-SA (See Diagram for more info on what I'm talking about).  Since this lot will only contain CS-SA curved ramp, fences will need to prematurely stop in the middle.

Ramp's road surface texture UVW mapping has been fixed, now it looks like a road instead of melted plastic :-P