Scale

[CWLGAMER01 39]

I have searc hed the forum and have not found what I was looking for.  I want to know the scales used in the game.  What a tile equals as for as miles --

What each city size is in sq miles, acres, etc.

I know this has been brought up before but after searching it appears there is not a consoldated version.  If someone will come up with the info -- I can put it in chart form which I think will be usefull to everyone.

Thanks

---

Info I would like to look at:

Tiles:

       1 tile = how many   -- Feet, Miles, Acres
       1 large city = how many Acres, SQ Feet, SQ Miles
       1 Med City = same as above
       1 Small City = same as above

and any other things people would like to see.

[RippleJet 36]

The game is based on metric measurements.

One Tile is 16 m × 16 m = 256 m².

One Small City is 64 × 64 tiles = 1024 m × 1024 m ( or roughly 1 km × 1 km = 1 km² )

One Med City is 128 × 128 tiles = 2048 m × 2048 m ( or roughly 2 km × 2 km = 4 km² )

One Large City is 256 × 256 tiles = 4096 m × 4096 m ( or roughly 4 km × 4 km = 16 km² )

[Poetic 0]

Here's a converter you can use to convert US customary to metric:

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/conversions.html

[soccerkicker266 0]

Thanks for the measurements RippleJet. Now it would be interesting if someone used those measurements to approximate the sizes of various in-game objects such as cars, people, animals, etc and compared them to what they are in real life.

[crazyyaya 4]

everything expect commutes seem to be scaled right in the game

[Frankie_Grove 33]

no offense...but NOTHING is scaled right in the game

[Poetic 0]

I think it's probably a bad idea to go by real scale in this game. I was once going to try to create a real scale version of normal sized city by making the city one region and realized I would have up to large digits of large maps (I think it was anywhere from 40-90). Will Wright realized this fact and purposely made everything to a smaller more user friendly scale. If the huge amounts of work don't discourage you from making a real sized city then I'm sure the repeats would - even with every building from the STEX, there would be a good amount of repeats with cities so large.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Actually, even the sprite representing Sims on the sidewalk are about 2.5m tall.  There is a lot of reality sacrificed here to make the animation work.

[thecross21 3]

that is only 2.5 miles sq. for a large city... that's not realistic... I live in a city of 60,000 and it takes at least 6-7 miles to get across town.

[schm0 27]

As far as conversions go, all you need is google. It's a calculator and converter all in one.

"12 meters in feet" will convert 12 meters into the appropriate measure in feet.

"3 feet in meters" will conversely convert feet into meters.

"4 * 321" will give the result of 4 x 321

"9 / 2" will give you the result of 9 divided by 2

Google can pretty much convert any standard unit of measurement into another similar unit.

As far as 2.5 miles not being scale, every city has small areas which take on local flavor. For instance, in Detroit we have Greektown, Mexican Village, all sorts of small centers of commerce even though the city limits extend 8 miles north and 8(?) miles west. New York City has buroughs that can be divided up into smaller areas , as well. This is what region play was designed to do. Design your region with your large metropolis spread out among several tiles. Surround your city center with suburbs and local growth to feed into the main city. Use region play to your advantage.

As far as scale is concerned, someone needs to come up with a meters to sim-meters (sm, skm, scm?)... it seems the ratio is about 1.2, if I'm correct. So 1 meter in real life is roughly 1.2 meters in SimCity. I'm only about 50% sure on this one, though.

[thecross21 3]

Yeah, I try to do the suburbs and all that, but my main city ends up growing to the capacity and it's only 2.6 or 2.7 million. New York City or Chicago or LA would not be able to work in that size.

I live in Minneapolis and I know driving from the north side to the south side of the city of Minneapolis alone is more than 8 miles, so I don't know how Detroit can only be 8 miles square.

[Tarkus 6,932]

I've personally measured the road networks for scaling.  It seems like everything is very close to exact scale, except for the default Highways which are actually about 50% of actual scale.  The interchanges are even more out of scale.

-Tarkus

[dedgren 830]

I started an extended discussion of scale at my CJ Three Rivers Region here [ linkie ] last fall.  It ran for about a month over a bunch of posts and resulted in my rescaling my region to 40 miles/64 km square.  There's a bunch of tables and comparisons with RL cities.

Check it out if you'd like.

David

[willvette 2]

I use http://www.onlineconversion.com/ for all my converting units.

PS: there are also some fun conversions like human years to dog years

[schm0 27]

Originally posted by: thecross21 Yeah, I try to do the suburbs and all that, but my main city ends up growing to the capacity and it's only 2.6 or 2.7 million. New York City or Chicago or LA would not be able to work in that size.

I live in Minneapolis and I know driving from the north side to the south side of the city of Minneapolis alone is more than 8 miles, so I don't know how Detroit can only be 8 miles square.quote>

Ever see the movie 8 Mile? The architects of the city of Detroit were really creative when it came to naming the roads, and 8 Mile Road is not-so-ironically named because it's 8 miles from the center of Detroit. The roads are in 1 mile squares (roughly) so they extend outwards in increasing numbers. I live at around 24 mile road, although that's not what it's called. Anyways, the city limits extend roughly 8 miles north. I am not sure as to their western borders, however... After that the cities are suburbs and have their own names.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Hey, folks! This is a generic game with no hold on reality. Even the makers of the game have fooled themselves into terramorphing the game onto the Earth, when it has such fantasy items as the Truckosaurus present. It is a nice, open-ended simulation, but cannot be considered to be very realistic. Cool your jets, and enjoy the game.