NAM Traffic Simulator and Data View Support Thread

[z1 566]

I have not seen that before. It's very possible that that's a game bug. However, I also know that some lots that reduce air pollution by huge amounts sometimes have unintended side effects that may increase pollution, although when I've seen this it's been more uniform than in your case. (Sometimes these effects show up only when such lots are demolished.) But there's nothing I know of in the traffic simulator that could produce what you're showing. Pollution generated by traffic is a direct function of the number Sims using a particular travel type, and is actually not related to congestion. It's supposed to be the same across all travel types.

[Lukfi 3]

Well obviously it's not. The same effect shows up in another city where I use GLR.

This is the original thread btw: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=109906&enterthread=y

[z1 566]

Point taken. And since others have noticed this as well, I think we can chalk it up to a game bug. There's certainly no shortage of them. And there's no logical reason that Maxis would make el rail pollute more than other travel types.

As for what's causing the bug, I may have an idea. El rail is actually pathed for both el rail and commuter trains, so that you can use UDI on it. I'd be willing to bet that it's the dual pathing that results in the pollution - I may have even seen this reported somewhere.

[Schutze 0]

I'm using the 'Zimulator' with CAM...you can imagine how hectic that is.

How do you reduce traffic noise with these two put together? It's hard to put up fancy residentials like this.

Ideas (aside from subways)?

Thanks.

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: Schutze

I'm using the 'Zimulator' with CAM...you can imagine how hectic that is.quote>

I sure can - Simulator Z was designed with CAM in mind.

How do you reduce traffic noise with these two put together? It's hard to put up fancy residentials like this.

Ideas (aside from subways)?quote>

Nothing aside from the obvious; I've rarely had problems here.  It really comes down to city design.  You really just have to experiment with different traffic patterns.

[Schutze 0]

well then, pardon the annoying question but,

do you have any links/tutorials/suggestions for the Zimulator+CAM

when it comes to city design?

Id really love it if you could give me some.

[z1 566]

I'd simply suggest looking around the boards here and finding relevant threads, or create your own on an appropriate board. I stick almost exclusively to this board, which is not really the best place to look.

BTW, what you're looking for is really pretty much simulator-independent. If a city will work well in any other simulator, it should work well in Simulator Z.

[totof0306 2]

Dear all,

Simulator Z is great.

In order to use it better I have modified capacities of stations but I don't know how to change capacity of Maxi's stations - especially main central station with capacity of only 10.000!!!

Can s.o. help me please?

Thanks forward.

[z1 566]

Select SimCity_1.data in the left pane of the Reader, then click on the Navigator and find the station you want to change. Use the Reader's Patch facility to create a new .dat file containing just that station. Then you can modify it. I use 50,000 for the Grand Central Station myself.

If you need more detailed instructions on using these facilities, you can find them in the Reader manual, which is on the STEX. But you should probably be able to figure it out from what I've said.

[k808j 0]

Z,

I downloaded simulator Z v1.3 beta 2 but for the life of me I don't know where I downloaded it from. I want to verify if it

is one of your files.

[z1 566]

Yes, that is mine. It's been officially released on SC4D. The release you're referring to contains two changes: 1) Capacity and speed of one-way roads are now 30% higher than standard roads, instead of equivalent. 2) Street capacities have been raised so that they're proportional to road capacities, based on the speeds of the two networks. Change #1 does not break NWM compatibility; I am in close contact with the NWM people on this. (NWM has not been released yet, for those who are wondering.)

The reason I haven't posted this release here yet is that the increase for OWR is still somewhat up in the air; theory and experiment have been telling me that it should be more like 50%. But this may take a little while to resolve, so I'll add the relevant posts and download link to my development thread here very soon - probably later today.

[Fire Lancer 0]

Ive got an elevated highway crossing an avenue. The highway is at around 60% of capacity, and the avenue 80%, in both directions. However on the 4 tiles where the two overlap, the game seems to be adding the traffic volumes for the highway and avenue together, but only considering the avenues capacity.

As a result these 4 tiles get marked as heavily congested, and I keep getting those traffic messages telling me to upgrade the avenue or build alternative routes...

Is there anything I can do to prevent this, not having any running under elevated highways kind of defeats the point of having elevated highways?

I did try to take a picture but I couldn't figure out a way to do that with the data view, and therefore the congestion overlay up...

[z1 566]

This is a well-known game bug, and unfortunately there is nothing that we can do about it. Essentially, the problem is that the game is not completely 3D, and it treats the overpass as an intersection in certain ways. This is related to the reasons why you can't build double-decker highways.

[slystone2 20]

Just a couple of comments regarding the older discussion about ElRail/GLR and pollution:

    It could be that the increased pollution is mostly being seen with Glr in Road and GLR in Avenue - which makes sense, because you have the pollution from car traffic combined with the pollution from ElRail.

Lukfi's images appear to have GLR in Avenue being the pollution culprits, so that's double road traffic plus light rail - that's a lot of commotion, noise, and general pollution.

it's realistic that growing R$$$ residentintials on these routes would be difficult - they prefer quiter, more secluded locale. And it's my understanding that R$$$ prefer to commute by car rather then public transportation anyway - is that correct? If so, trying to grow R$$$ along GLR in road/avenue doesn't make much sense.

In my experience, it's better to use streets for prospective R$$$ zones, then place standard GLR (not in road/avenue) away from the streets and cul-de-sacs, behind the zones. You can even connect stations to the back of your neighborhoods with short ped malls. That way you avoid the combined effects of the pollution, keep your whole GLR system connected together, and still get R$$$ to grow near mass transport.

don't forget there is a GLR in Road transition to Standard GLR puzzle peice, you can use it to continue your rail system through neighborhoods that require less noise/traffic pollution.

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: slystone2

It could be that the increased pollution is mostly being seen with Glr in Road and GLR in Avenue - which makes sense, because you have the pollution from car traffic combined with the pollution from ElRail.quote>

It's not clear exactly what's responsible for Lukfi's increased pollution, but it's good to remember that every Sim contributes the same amount to pollution for any travel type that pollutes, regardless of what that travel type is.

Lukfi's images appear to have GLR in Avenue being the pollution culprits, so that's double road traffic plus light rail - that's a lot of commotion, noise, and general pollution.quote>

The GLR here is actually not a road network here, even though it appears to travel on the road; it's still an el rail network.  Therefore, it doesn't contribute to road noise.

it's realistic that growing R$$$ residentintials on these routes would be difficult - they prefer quiter, more secluded locale. And it's my understanding that R$$$ prefer to commute by car rather then public transportation anyway - is that correct? If so, trying to grow R$$$ along GLR in road/avenue doesn't make much sense.quote>

Although you are correct on both points, their effect is much less than you might expect.  In reality, R$$$ are fairly insensitive to noise levels; I've tripled these levels in the simulator without any negative effects on my R$$$ populations.  Also, although 80% of R$$$ will travel by car if they are given a choice between car and MT routes that are equally fast, if the MT route is significantly faster, they will take that.  Since the GLR is an el rail network, the trams travel at el rail speeds, so over longer distances, even R$$$ Sims will prefer trams to cars.

[Lukfi 3]

I am using GLR in Avenue, but there isn't much road traffic. If I build an ordinary GLR track or an el-rail track, I will get the same ridiculously high pollution. I don't know why that is. But there seems to be another "problem" with high mass transit usage (and my Sims, even the wealthiest ones, use mass transit happily): i get a buttload of money from transit fares. So I use cleaner lots which eat both excess pollution and excess money. Problem solved :-)

By the way, I have recently noticed this (I have installed the v2.0 of Simulator Z):

[RAIL0] --------- [RAIL1] ==== TRAM1 ==== TRAM2 ==== TRAM3 ==== [RAIL2] ---------- [RAIL3]

Rail stations 1 and 2 are in the residential zone, there is both a rail track and a tram network connecting them. Trams have stops in the middle, the railway doesn't. On one side, the railway continues to the industrial zone, on the other, to a neighboring city where my also sims go to work. Now, if I lived close to TRAM1 and wanted to go to RAIL3, I would probably return to RAIL1 rather than going by the slower tram to RAIL2. But that's what my sims do - there is absolutely none passenger train traffic between RAIL1 and RAIL2. If trams were slower, would that affect the pathfinding, or is the algorithm too dumb to do that?

[z1 566]

The pathfinder is always supposed to find the fastest route; that's the definition of perfect pathfinding.  However, I recently did an extensive series of tests showing that what was formerly thought to be the setting for perfect pathfinding actually wasn't; instead, I found what the true perfect pathfinding constant was, and it is now part of the v2.1 release, which you can read about and download here.

However, I don't think that's your problem; the previous pathfinding constant was close enough to perfect to fool everyone for years. Instead, it appears that the Sims are doing the correct thing here.  The tram speed is the same as the el rail speed, since the tram network is simply a version of the el rail network.  And el rail speeds are very close to commuter rail speeds.  So it's undoubtedly faster for your Sims to do exactly what they're doing.  Furthermore, standalone tram stations don't slow down trams; for stations built with the Transit Switch Entry Cost set properly, trams travel through them at standard speed.  However, many MT stations (including all Maxis stations) have a TSEC of zero; if your tram stations have such an entry cost, then your trams will zip through them in literally no time at all.  Depending on how close together your stations are, this would make your tram speeds much closer to those of commuter rail, or possibly even faster.

In any case, one way or the other, if you do the calculations, I think you'll find that the Sims are taking the fastest route.

[Lukfi 3]

It's heavy rail, not el-rail. It is probably faster that way, but unrealistic - while you can make commuter trains go at 140 kph, trams certainly don't go 105. Oh well, never mind.

I am wondering though: what does the entry cost value really mean? If for example we have a station 5 tiles long, with a TSEC value of 0 the speed through the station is equivalent to infinite (no time added to total commute time). Let's say we set it TSEC at 1, what's the speed now? How much time will the simulator add to the commute time, compared to traveling one tile through a network with a set speed?

[z1 566]

I understand your commuter rail is heavy rail, not el rail, and your numbers are correct. And yes, it is quite unrealistic. The problem is that we can't create new networks, so the trams have to go the speed of an existing network; in this case, the el rail network was chosen years ago.

Setting the TSEC to 1 means that it will take one minute for trams (or anything else) to cross each square in the station. So that means it would take five minutes to pass through your station at a speed of 0.96 kph, as opposed to the normal three seconds at standard tram speed. That's a long enough delay that you will find that the Sims stop taking your trams completely. To calculate what the TSEC should be for a given speed in kph, the formula is TSEC = 0.96/speed.

Since you can have only one TSEC per station, it affects all travel types. For example, for the RTMT GLR-in-Avenue stations, the TSEC is 0.02, which corresponds to a speed of 48 kph, so that cars can pass through without speeding up. As a result, the trams slow down to car speed while passing through these stations. This does not seem to hurt ridership on these lines. (Of course, the pedestrians walk through these stations at 48 kph, but we can't help that, and it doesn't really seem to affect the game at all.)

[Lukfi 3]

Interesting, thank you.

What I meant to say is that in real life, neither trams nor elevated/subway trains go 105 kph. But I guess that setting the speed to realistic levels would just result in nobody using mass transit at all...

[mmaaattt 0]

Hi I have a problem that after I installed the simulator Z, where ever the train/el train/monorail cross any form of road the sims cant drive on that road and that particular tile where they cross doesnt show light up on the traffic data viewer. Also the when i select train in the viewer the network of tracks doesnt show up in the viewer minimap or light up on the large map. Not sure if this has to do with z simulator or not, but if you have an other thoughts it would be appreciated.

[z1 566]

These definitely don't sound like traffic simulator problems.  When you refer to this happening after you installed Simulator Z, did you do it as part of a NAM installation?  If so, I'd suggest posting your question in the NAM General Discussion Thread.  It sounds like there may have been a problem in your NAM installation process.

[mmaaattt 0]

Yes, I did it as part of the NAM. I tried uninstalling the NAM and reinstalling it but that didn't work. Will try in the NAM thread, thanks

[totof0306 2]

Thanks for your help!

[totof0306 2]

Could someone help me by telling me how to change capacity of stations which are included in "construction lots"?

Means stations which are available only after plopping a construction lot as f.ex. S-Bahn.

Also I would like to know how to get sims to use highway with toll... When plopping toll houses on it, sims almost never use it and prefer even using only streets to accross a whole big-sized city!!! That is quite unrealistic...

For info: like usual in France or Italy I have toll houses for entering and leaving the highways. To change the costs of the houses may be sufficient, doesn't it?

Thanks forward.

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: totof0306

Could someone help me by telling me how to change capacity of stations which are included in "construction lots"?

Means stations which are available only after plopping a construction lot as f.ex. S-Bahn.quote>

You just have to use Ilive's Reader to change the capacity of the stations themselves.

Also I would like to know how to get sims to use highway with toll... When plopping toll houses on it, sims almost never use it and prefer even using only streets to accross a whole big-sized city!!! That is quite unrealistic...

For info: like usual in France or Italy I have toll houses for entering and leaving the highways. To change the costs of the houses may be sufficient, doesn't it?quote>

The problem is not the tolls, which the Sims really don't care about.  The problem is that toll booths slow down traffic in a multiplicity of ways:  They have lower capacity than the surrounding network, they have the intersection effect turned on, and they have a 12-second delay built into them.  For these reasons, especially the last one, they slow down the average speed of the highwyay, making alternate routes faster.  So Sims take the alternate routes.

Although this can be fixed by modifying the toll booths, there's a way to creat toll highways without using toll booths.  I'll be introducing this soon, along with a tool to make it easy to do.

[totof0306 2]

@ z1:

You just have to use Ilive's Reader to change the capacity of the stations themselves.

This I made it already! Though traffic capacity of lots are saved with 10.000 passengers stations can only host 4.000 or 6.000!!! But when I re-open the files capacity of 10.000 is still specified...

Reg. toll booths thanks for info but it still sounds strange to me that sims prefer entering freeway by toll booth placed on road than using "free-of-use" part of freeway and then pay last part of traject by passing through toll booth placed directly on freeway itself! (s. picture)

[z1 566]

To be honest, a large part of the problem is that slowing down for toll booths to pay tolls is just so 20th century.  More and more toll booths allow people to drive through them at just a slightly reduced speed and scan the toll from a transceiver based in the car.  I'm going to design a set of toll booths that works like this, which should ease most of the problems you've been coming up against.

[totof0306 2]

Now I have found out the problems: - Time Entry Cost was too high. - Toll Tax was also too much. Reducing them solves these problems and toll booth is functionable...

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=4003

[Indiana Joe 1,752]

Can't answer your question, sorry. But I have something to say that I put in a post somewhere else but then I kinda forgot where that post was so I can't see if anybody replied. If there are 350k members of Simtropolis, and a good 5000 must be good at something involving SC4 programming, why doesn't somebody in the NAM try to do business with Maxis? Surely they would be happy to have 5000 people working on a SimCity 5 for nothing but a garunteed free copy of the finished game?

Oh, I guess this post doesn't belong on this topic, so I'll make it belong. z1, can you please post the exact stats and capacities for Simulator Z Classic? (Without just saying that they're similar to Maxis's?  )