Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project (Big Dig)

[Alfred.Jones 2]

That looks unbelievabley AWESOME!! Keep it up Blahdy!!

[mightygoose 92]

it is insane, wit this new level of detail i cant wait to see the bunker zakim bridge redone/finished....

[masssc4 3]

Originally posted by: bwatterud 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.quote>

  

if u r talking 2 me thanks, it worked

[blahdy 21]

thanks guys

Road painting and underground tunnel section construction is completed.

The ramp CS-SA is now about 90% completed.  Misc signage/ features/fire-safety systems and vents are remaining on the to do list.

[Frankie_Grove 32]

! faded pavement markings! *faints*

[Cjah 15]

Now that is something I could stare at all day long......

Thta is probably the best ramp I have seen to date...excellent work!!!!!

[Alfred.Jones 2]

Woah!!  I LOVE those road markings!!  I never thought I would ever say that  AWESOME work Blahdy!!!

[Porter 68]

-poink-..... -poink-

Great there went my corneas. True works of art you have there blahdy. Truely amazing. Cornea detaching amazing.

[artforce1 5]

Hey Blahdy quick question,

First, I love this, it looks great!  But, when I try to connect the pieces using the train tunnel, it wont work.  I even went so far as creating 2 seperate large cities with a combined population of 20,000 + sims with only one road seperating them.  I then destroyed the road, put down two BIGD-T3-GHT1 and connect them using 2 tunnels for the 2 different directions.  No traffic goes through and I know that truck/bus traffic wont go through but no cars at all?  I also tried using BIGD-T2A-ONR1 AND OFR1 and nothing.  Any ideas why its not pathing correctly?  Yes, I am connecting the tunnes with one way roads, default ground highways, and anything else I thought might work.

What am I missing?

[blahdy 21]

Originally posted by: artforce1 Hey Blahdy quick question,

First, I love this, it looks great!  But, when I try to connect the pieces using the train tunnel, it wont work.  I even went so far as creating 2 seperate large cities with a combined population of 20,000 + sims with only one road seperating them.  I then destroyed the road, put down two BIGD-T3-GHT1 and connect them using 2 tunnels for the 2 different directions.  No traffic goes through and I know that truck/bus traffic wont go through but no cars at all?  I also tried using BIGD-T2A-ONR1 AND OFR1 and nothing.  Any ideas why its not pathing correctly?  Yes, I am connecting the tunnes with one way roads, default ground highways, and anything else I thought might work.

What am I missing?quote>

The big dig "subway" tunnels actually require at least 1 non-masstransit link to be present between two destinations.  So if you are connecting two areas, you must have a road or something in addition to big dig tunnel.  It's one of the Sim City limitations where at least one non-subway link must be present in order for path to correctly register as valid transit network.

We discovered it long time ago but forgot to add it to the manual, as our QC (quality control) process is pretty inexperienced at best right now.  May be I'll have this piece of info added next time.

This limitation by the way should not make the tunnels useless though.  The Big Dig tunnels are designed to bury your freeway under your downtown/CBD, so it will function as designed with roads present.  Sims just love to use the subways..

-----

New Update:

The CS-SA ramp is now 98% complete in Phase I work.  (Phase I being modelling, Phase II will be LOD and night lights)  Only modelling work remaining is to finish up the SC4 one-way road connection area, clean it up neater and nicer.

Fire safety / valve closet installed:

Ramp Maintenance call-sign ("CS-SA") installed:

Wrong-way sign installed as it is in RL version:

Cool looking update shot:

[Yoman3 5]

Those details are amazing. The start of the white line on the left in the last photo seems rather rough. I doubt you'lll be able to to notice it in game though. I love that last shot and how the tunnel dissapears and gives teh feeling of the real thing! That wrong way sign will help some drivers also

[tommiej 0]

blahdy, those details are amazing, will they be seen in game?? i hope so, because they look awesome!!

[ICFan 0]

Mouth Watering!

[gt6282 3]

Nicely done Blahdy! I'm currently using it for city but I'm still doing some experiments with it.. hehe.

Anyway, I've been thinking about it awhile ago. Since the only way to use it is by using subways, is there a possibility that the subway connection can be modified and look like highway tunnel.

again great work Blahdy! looking forward for your next release of "Big Dig".

[gt6282 3]

Double post. Sorry

[blahdy 21]

gt6282:  Yea, ardecila and I talked about doing that in the past, and I'm told it's not too hard to do so.  But the issue with that is, it will overwrite the texture for all subways, so even your train tunnels will look like highways.  Given that people use the Big Dig in limited locations (i.e. CBD/downtown, etc), typically a city would have more train subway tunnels than a highway sub tunnel, so I ended up deciding against changing the texture for now... Unless ofcourse there is a way to distinguish the two which I doubt..

[nycsc4 5,250]

this is amazing!! I can't wait for this to come out in Beta. The small signs and details look amazing!!!

[bwatterud 7]

@blahdy-you might be able to do it through overrides, like the RHW, so that when two subway tunnels are dragged next to each other, they would show up as highway. I'm not sure if it is possible with underground networks, but it's worth looking into.

[patriots_1228 51]

wow you are doing some incredible work dude. Cant wait to get my hands on this!

[Haljackey 17,398]

Wow, just had to give you my support, blahdy!

These ramps in your project are just fantastic! Keep it up! Can't wait to try the new ones out!

[blahdy 21]

bwatterud:  hmm... sounds like a great idea actually.  Is anyone up for that modding experiment challenge?

patriots_1228, haljackey: thanks!

New Update:

The last remaining gmax import segment is the sign-lights and light holders under the road signs.  So they are re-made in 3ds max with latest detailed modelling standard:

Drive-thru:

The sign looks more cleaner now in SimCity zoom level angles:

[Filasimo 1]

all i can say is BLAHDY 3:16

[Tarkus 6,933]

blahdy, these new ramps are as amazing as always.  As far as what bwatterud was talking about with the modding, I've already been toying around a little with making them compatible with the RHW:

I actually have a puzzle piece I've been working on with the RHW that is actually 15m underground as well that I may test with this a little later.  (I removed the Subway conversion from the Transit Enabling).  The biggest problem I've been facing with that is controlling the puzzle pieces . . . they're invisible right now since I haven't been able to trick SC4 into going underground view when they are plopped.

As far as doing an RHW-style override involving adjacent subways, it might be possible, but it's uncharted waters.  Not too many people in the modding community that I know of have really messed with the Subway network, other than BATing/modding stations.  The tricky part with doing such a conversion is not so much that the network is underground as much as it is 3D. 

However, it is possible to drag 2D networks (Roads, etc.) underneath 3D networks (like the Elevated Highways and Elevated Rail), and it's possible to drag 3D networks under other 3D networks (Ground Highway under Elevated Highway), so there is somewhat of a precedent for it already.  

With these types of conversions, I always try to make sure that the thing that I'm converting to is more useful that the thing I'm replacing.  For example, with the 7-lane Turning Lane Avenues I've been working on, the conversion I have set up involves placing 3 Roads side-by-side.  I don't really know how often people place two Subways directly adjacent to one another, but as far as I can guess, no one really needs to.  There may also be a way to trick the game into going underground with draggable above-ground networks, but that may also be EXE coded too . . .

I'd be more than happy to assist if you're interested.

-Tarkus

[SimNation 139]

This new one looks great. Love the Fence's, the traffic scanner light and deffinetaly the guard rails are great. Truely cant wait til the entior big dig project is done so I can pan out the whole network in one of my big cities. Ill continue my experiments with it for my medium sized areas though.

[blahdy 21]

tarkus:

that looks awesome man.  certainly i'm happy to work with you and will appreciate your help   btw, i can make tunnel entrance transitions for RHW if you want.  The on-ramps are undesirable for RHW connection, b/c they have overhead sign at the beginning segment where road connects; and that overhead sign is more designed for street-level environment.

[tommiej 0]

looks awesome blahdy!! as always! it's nice if there's the a way that you can use your ramps for the RHW!! because now it's al seperated but if you can join two projects so there completely compatible with each other and when the transitions are realistic, it would be totally amazing and very usefull for thethat would be amazing and very good for the community!! really looking forward for more of this new idea!!

[Tarkus 6,933]

@blahdy:  Thanks!  Glad I can be of assistance, and I look forward to working with you as well.  I've basically just been using the Leverett Connector for my initial experiments, but if you want to go ahead and produce an RHW Tunnel Transition, and it's not too much trouble, that would be great.   I've looked over the paths on the most recent Big Dig lots, and it appears that they only go down to about -10 (-9.875 specifically), so I may redo my puzzle piece to -10m instead of -15m.

If things work out with the underground RHW, depending on how we implement it, it might be quite easy to just adapt all of that over for the other networks as well (Roads, Avenues, etc., plus the new wider networks jplumbley and I are working on, like the 5-lane One-Ways and 7-lane Turning Lane Avenues).  At least through puzzle pieces, it may be possible to take it down even further underground (20m below), such that fully underground interchanges would be possible.

-Tarkus

[rickmastfan67 0]

Originally posted by: Tarkus @blahdy:  If things work out with the underground RHW, depending on how we implement it, it might be quite easy to just adapt all of that over for the other networks as well (Roads, Avenues, etc., plus the new wider networks jplumbley and I are working on, like the 5-lane One-Ways and 7-lane Turning Lane Avenues).  At least through puzzle pieces, it may be possible to take it down even further underground (20m below), such that fully underground interchanges would be possible.

-Tarkusquote>

 

Underground RHW that is UDI compatible?  That would freaking rock!!!!!  I know that underground UDI Heavy Rail rocks and I use it all the time now since it came out with NAM20.

[blahdy 21]

Tarkus:  awesome, thanks!  

Regarding the paths, yea, most Big Dig tunnels, starting with 2.0 tech series are designed with tunnel entrance clearance level of between 6 and 8 meters.  For on-ramps, the overheight detection equipments are modelled with 6.5meter height in mind, so they would trip at 6meters (not that it makes any difference for Sim City, since overheight detectors are purely eye candy)

The ramp picture you posted btw was the first big dig 2.0 test on-ramp, more of a proof-of-concept test, so its descent angle to underground is improper to what I'm modelling lately.  All the latest big dig models, including the Atlantic Avenue Onramp (ramp A-CN) and the current ramp CS-SA model have very gradual descent-- i.e. if you check the paths on them, you will note that even underground section is slanted on a downward descent, instead of straight levelled road parallel to ground surface.  In real-life, the tunnel would continue on a downward descent inside the underground section, until it reaches main highway tunnel elevation level.  So with that, you could make low-level tunnels for connecting with on and off-ramps, and mid-level tunnels further below ground for main tunnels, etc based on how you see them fit.

As for RHW connector transition ramp: I'm thinking of modelling after real-world ones in Boston's South Bay Interchange.  For 2-lanes RHW pieces, I can make the official I-90 tunnel entrance (picture1 below).  For Elevated RHW piece or split-SC4 highway connection, I can make I-93 northbound tunnel entrance (picture2 below).  Let me know if the RL pictures of what I'm talking about look good for RHW, then I'll add them to my todo list.

But in any event, i think there are good possibilities of doing even more together.  I'm willing to help, so don't hesitate to tell me what you guys need modelled and I'll see if i can do it/have time to do so.  My skillset is on modelling, not modding, and I think that's where I can best-serve anyway.

Picture 1 (Suitable for 2-lane ground RHW, I-90 east bound tunnel entrance):

Picture 2 (Suitable for elevated RHW or split SC4 elevated highway; I-93 northbound tunnel entrance near Kneeland Street and South Station) (NOTE: This tunnel entrance transitions from elevated via-duct to underground, not ground level highway):

[Tarkus 6,933]

@blahdy:  Thanks for the pathing/modeling info.  That really gives me a better idea of how to line things up.  Of those two ramps you showed, I think that the I-90 EB entrance probably would work best right now, as it can interface directly with the current Ground RHW. 

With the I-93 NB one, it will eventually be possible to get a 3-lane-per-direction version of the RHW in there (the RHW-6), but I just started that project, and there's still a fair amount of work to do on that. 

I might do some more initial testing with the Atlantic Avenue ramp as well, since that one is more representative of your recent work. 

I'm really quite excited about this project, too, and I'm glad to help.  There's a lot of potential for this.

-Tarkus