What is Aura simulator?

[cpsof95 0]

In iLives Reader you can mod the parameters of the Aura Simulator. There are different figures for park effect, different pollution effects, school and hospital effects etc.

What do these figures do? Do they have something to do with land value or desirability? Could they possible have something to do with short-term changes in desirability when you plop something (there's some short and long term decay factors too)? (And desirability has parameters to set the magnitude of the transient aura effects.)

[ArchangelMichael 51]

I've never experimented by using any of the aura effect parameters, but from what I understand it is roughly equivalent to your mayor rating and seems to be intended more for city-wide mods than for use in individual lots.  The aura of a city affects the type of development that will grow there, and is a function of a combination of many things such as the benefits - both transient and permanent - that are generated by parks, landmarks, civic buildings, and flora, as well as the amount and type of pollution present in a tract of land, or proximity to high traffic, to name a few.  For example, if what I've learned so far is correct, you could use the aura effects to create an unrealistic cheater mod that allows farms and high-wealth residential to grow even in areas with massive air pollution and heavy traffic.  Thus, the aura/mayor effects were probably a method implemented by Maxis to help fine-tune the simulator's overall realism as it seems it can be linked to almost every aspect of a city.  So, you are correct in assuming that the aura effects are related to land value and desirability, but be aware of the direction of the causality within that relationship: localized pockets of high land value or desirablity witihin a city create a positive general aura, but the aura itself does not cause one city block to be more desirable than another.  Just like in real life, a well-built city will have a good overall character and attract high-end development; a poorly-built city will be a ghetto with a dismal atmosphere.  You can learn a little more about it here.  Read the two posts by RippleJet.  For that matter, if you want to understand how the game really works, read everything you can find posted by RippleJet.  He is most active at sc4devotion.com so if you're not already registered for the forums there, be sure to do so.

Chances are, the reason these parameters are never used in mods is because they would have an impact on every city in your region.  Removal of the mod would then result in a major disruption or imbalance in every city that was built while it was sitting in your plugins folder.  If you need such a radical solution to pollution, for example, it's easier to use specially modded lots to remove air and water pollution in an individual city or neighborhood.  Just remember that if you mod it too radically you must keep that specific lot in its original location in that city because bulldozing or relocating it could result in the entire city being buried in filth.