Show us Your Interchanges!

[MandelSoft 2,769]

So, it took me three hours to get this ready:

A full turbine interchange, using only on-slope transitions and no cheating with sharp bends, steep slopes and Flex-fly (RHW-4 ramps all the way!)

Best,

Maarten

[dubldrop 43]

So, it took me three hours to get this ready:

A full turbine interchange, using only on-slope transitions and no cheating with sharp bends, steep slopes and Flex-fly (RHW-4 ramps all the way!)

Best,

Maarten

Whoa, what a beast

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

We know. The point was that we prefer to only use ramps with accel/decel lanes, but also prefer to only use the fractional angle ones except in specific circumstances that call for a ortho/diagonal ramp.

There's more, however. Orthogonal, diagonal, and Fractional Angle refer to the angle of the actual mainline, so a diagonal Type E1 Ramp, for example, is a completely different thing from an orthogonal Type E1 Ramp. The letter names should be used exclusively for the branch angle, never for the direction of the mainline. That's basically the purpose of having those letter names in the first place. Think about it: what happens if you have a diagonal ramp with a diagonal branch? What do you call that? Hint: NOT a Diagonal Type A1 Ramp.

This is because I'm planning to expand the availability of diagonal ramps in future NAMdev cycles, and standardising the naming convention now (well, it's been done already but very few people outside the NAM Team have adopted it) will prevent confusion later on.

[dubldrop 43]

 

We know. The point was that we prefer to only use ramps with accel/decel lanes, but also prefer to only use the fractional angle ones except in specific circumstances that call for a ortho/diagonal ramp.

There's more, however. Orthogonal, diagonal, and Fractional Angle refer to the angle of the actual mainline, so a diagonal Type E1 Ramp, for example, is a completely different thing from an orthogonal Type E1 Ramp. The letter names should be used exclusively for the branch angle, never for the direction of the mainline. That's basically the purpose of having those letter names in the first place. Think about it: what happens if you have a diagonal ramp with a diagonal branch? What do you call that? Hint: NOT a Diagonal Type A1 Ramp.

This is because I'm planning to expand the availability of diagonal ramps in future NAMdev cycles, and standardising the naming convention now (well, it's been done already but very few people outside the NAM Team have adopted it) will prevent confusion later on.

 

Hmmmm yeah when I said diagonal there I was pretty much referring to the branch angle seeing how the lack of availiable diagonal ramps at the moment leaves me to make most of my ramps orthogonal. Basically that A/B/C ramps are out of the question all together, F ramps are the way to go, except in certain circumstances that call for a D/E ramp.

Diagonal ramp with a diagonal branch would be a Diagonal B1 ramp would it not? Because even though the branch itself ends up being ortho, it branches off at a 45* angle from the mainline. 

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Hmmmm yeah when I said diagonal there I was pretty much referring to the branch angle seeing how the lack of availiable diagonal ramps at the moment leaves me to make most of my ramps orthogonal. Basically that A/B/C ramps are out of the question all together, F ramps are the way to go, except in certain circumstances that call for a D/E ramp.

Diagonal ramp with a diagonal branch would be a Diagonal B1 ramp would it not? Because even though the branch itself ends up being ortho, it branches off at a 45* angle from the mainline.

That's actually wrong. This was a change that went by very silently, but ramp branch directions, as are the mainline directions, are based on absolute direction. They're not based on any angles whatsoever except for the abstract one implied by the SC4 grid. So a diagonal ramp with a diagonal branch, the one where the branch and mainline are parallel, given absolute direction, would be a Type Bx or Dx Ramp, depending on its lane configuration. This is why, if you look at the Type A1 and B1 FlexRamp, you'll see that the one with an orthogonal branch is Type A1 (used to be Type B1) and the one with the diagonal branch is Type B1 (used to be Type A1).

And think about it: if we went based by angle, how do you make an FA3 Type C/F1-FA3 Ramp? You can't unless you end up making two different ramps: one with a 36-degree angle with respect to the grid (and requiring FA1.5/FA1.3 to create a ramp with that exact angle), AND one that's orthogonal (either orthogonal, since orthogonal also means perpendicular) with respect to the grid.

[dubldrop 43]

I see, thanks for clarifying that for me

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

And another interchange!

 

 

Inside entrances? I thought you said those were dangerous, you little hypocrite!

[NielsC007 499]

 

And another interchange!

 

 

Inside entrances? I thought you said those were dangerous, you little hypocrite!

 

 

They are, but there are 2 reasons for why I did this:

1: There aren't any 45 degrees elevated smooth curves. So if I were to make that MIS go around that loop it wouldn't have any smooth curves which is unacceptable to me.

2: The road going from North to South is an Avenue, just wearing the RHW jacket, so the speed limit would be around 60/70kph. Not 100/120/130kph as is the case on most motorways. At both ends of that avenue are traffic lights, where this road terminates.

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

 

 

And another interchange!

 

<snip>

Inside entrances? I thought you said those were dangerous, you little hypocrite!

 

They are, but there are 2 reasons for why I did this:

1: There aren't any 45 degrees elevated smooth curves. So if I were to make that MIS go around that loop it wouldn't have any smooth curves which is unacceptable to me.

2: The road going from North to South is an Avenue, just wearing the RHW jacket, so the speed limit would be around 60/70kph. Not 100/120/130kph as is the case on most motorways. At both ends of that avenue are traffic lights, where this road terminates.

 

Yu could extend it by two tiles, just like you told me to. 

[iLoveMusic 66]

The thing I don't understand about RHW freeways and interchanges is all the space that they take up. I don't know about where you guys live, but here, freeways and their interchanges are often very tight-fit. None of them are so spacious like what I am seeing in here. We also lack soundwalls down here, or in areas that have them, they're straight orange/brown brick wall that's right up against the freeway lanes. Otherwise it's a cheap, small guardrail or chain-link fence. Oddly, the Maxis freeways are more realistic to me than many of the RHW ones (most of our freeways, even new ones, are paved with gray cement rather than black asphalt). I'm not complaining about all of yours, in fact I think you've all done wonderful jobs at this stuff that I could never do - but an observation of mine is that they don't quite look like what I grew up seeing.

 

A typical urban freeway in Southern California:

 

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Well, looks can be deceiving. Have you actually measured the size of a real life interchange? It's usually larger than any Maxis Highway interchange. For example, here's a quite tight German Autobahn interchange (with cloverleaf loops where you just barely can manage to get up to 40 km/h / 25 mph). The cloverleaf diagram in the middle is the Maxis Highway cloverleaf at the same scale:

That is just tiny. Just for the fun, I did a rebuild of the MHW cloverleaf and diamond interchange in the CityScape demo once just to see how small these interchange look like from a 3D perspective. The result:

Here you can clearly see how oddly the scale is on the Maxis Highways are. High walls, but very short ramps. If you compare this to any interchange in the world, they will always be bigger; the Maxis Highway cloverleaf is a mere 224 x 224 meters (or 735 x 735 feet) large. Compare this to any cloverleaf interchange you find in the field, and it will always be larger (often twice as large or larger).

But from a bird's eye perspective, looks may be deceiving...

FYI, I live in the densest populated country in Europe, so I do see a fair share of tight interchanges, though I think Germany and the UK builds them tighter. Still they are larger than the Maxis Highway interchanges.

Best,

Maarten

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Well, looks can be deceiving. Have you actually measured the size of a real life interchange? It's usually larger than any Maxis Highway interchange. For example, here's a quite tight German Autobahn interchange (with cloverleaf loops where you just barely can manage to get up to 40 km/h / 25 mph). The cloverleaf diagram in the middle is the Maxis Highway cloverleaf at the same scale:

 

<snip>

That is just tiny. Just for the fun, I did a rebuild of the MHW cloverleaf and diamond interchange in the CityScape demo once just to see how small these interchange look like from a 3D perspective. The result:

 

<quadruple snip>

Here you can clearly see how oddly the scale is on the Maxis Highways are. High walls, but very short ramps. If you compare this to any interchange in the world, they will always be bigger; the Maxis Highway cloverleaf is a mere 224 x 224 meters (or 735 x 735 feet) large. Compare this to any cloverleaf interchange you find in the field, and it will always be larger (often twice as large or larger).

But from a bird's eye perspective, looks may be deceiving...

FYI, I live in the densest populated country in Europe, so I do see a fair share of tight interchanges, though I think Germany and the UK builds them tighter. Still they are larger than the Maxis Highway interchanges.

Best,

Maarten

 

Only you would go through all the trouble of recreating SimCity 4 Vanilla content into a whole different program only to prove a point. Good going, Maarten!

[iLoveMusic 66]

-post-

 

You're right about the small size of Maxis interchanges, I didn't say those were accurate myself. But I did say that a lot of the RHW interchanges are very spacious, taking up so much land and I never see that in real life, at least here. We do have one freeway in L.A. that has interchanges even smaller than the Maxis ones however, it was built in 1943 and trucks and other large vehicles are not allowed on the route because of the narrow lanes, blind curves, low overpasses, and impossibly tight exit ramps. Of course, most of our freeways aren't this tight. Many of our freeway interchanges are roughly the same size as the German one you posted.

 

This freeway onramp in South Pasadena is similar to the Maxis one.

 

[Compdude787 916]

But the Pasadena Freeway/ Arroyo Seco Parkway is really an exception to RL freeways, considering it's so old and hasn't really been upgraded. It would never be considered a real freeway today, but it still retains its original character. I really don't think Maxis was very concerned about keeping a consistent scale for objects in this game; there are lots of things that do not fit the scale really well. Also, it is worth noting that the cars are actually overscaled!

[MandelSoft 2,769]

That ramp does seem to be a bit longer than the one I posted. It looks like more than 10 vehicles can stand end-to-end from the bridge to the merging point, something that doesn't fit on the Maxis Highway diamond interchange.

The reason why we build such large interchanges has usually two reasons:

- These are usually rural interchanges, where space is not an issue.

- Smooth curves and slopes restrictions. This makes the interchanges larger, since the possibilities of both are limiting.

The RHW does allow you to build more compact interchanges. Take a look at the following interchanges I built in the past:

There is a difference between what is possible and what we find aestetically pleasing. Personally I find it fun to challenge myself with extra restrictions, because the end result often looks pretty good.

Best,

Maarten

[NielsC007 499]

I should add that buses clip through the concrete walls at the side of the MHW, so you better make sure drive in straight line, because there's not a lot of room for error!

[Terring 6,473]

The Maxis-made highways are not only underscale and unrealistic, but also lethal for the drivers. There are no acceleration-deceleration lines in the interchanges and the concrete walls at the sides of the highway makes impossible for the drivers to see other cars. If you're going to use a Maxis-made interchange, consider yourself dead.



If you really want to build Maxis-made highways, do your Sims a favor and give them smart cars with advance navigation systems. Those systems are under development and allows the cars to communicate with each other, preventing collisions and traffic jams. This is not science fiction anymore, but a coming up reality. Heck, self-driving cars are starting to appear, so why not?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Well, Maxis didn't restrict city tile size just for the giggles. Likewise, the standard regions rarely if ever feature the biggest possible size (large) for the same reasons: system specs at the time the game was released. They knew computers would have a hard time handling all the simulation and the huge amount of texture data, so they limited the maximum tile size. This, in turn, caused them to compromise scale integrity for better "playability": they figured that average players would prefer seeing a full-blown metropolis (skyscrapers, motorways and all) over strictly uniform scale, which in turn would result in precisely what we are seeing now: motorway interchanges that may occupy nearly the entire surface of a small city tile! Guess they didn't reckon with all the road geeks out there.

[Haljackey 17,270]

RHW 5.0-era mixmaster

 

_{Click for full size}

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

The Maxis-made highways are not only underscale and unrealistic, but also lethal for the drivers. There are no acceleration-deceleration lines in the interchanges and the concrete walls at the sides of the highway makes impossible for the drivers to see other cars. If you're going to use a Maxis-made interchange, consider yourself dead.

IMAGE

If you really want to build Maxis-made highways, do your Sims a favor and give them smart cars with advance navigation systems. Those systems are under development and allows the cars to communicate with each other, preventing collisions and traffic jams. This is not science fiction anymore, but a coming up reality. Heck, self-driving cars are starting to appear, so why not?

Oh gosh, I never actually considered that... Still I feel like drivers in my area do that and dart out blindly!

[mrsmartman 200]

I guess RHW is more suitable for modern ground highway. RHW-4 looks a bit wide for legacy urban elevated highway which often lacks emergency lanes.

[WiiGoGetter 65]

I wanted to replace a diamond interchange in a very tight area. This is what I came up with

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Looks good apart from the crossing bit. Why don't you use ramps?

[Compdude787 916]

Something else that's worth noting about many real life interchanges is that they are pretty huge when they're four-way junctions. Often they are between 1/2 to 1 mile long, even in LA. Given that they take up an entire small city tile (which measures 0.63 miles square) in SC4, I'd say that's pretty realistic.

[henrys1996 127]

Adding to the fire, note that Maxis ramps are REALLY steep; they go up/down 15m (49.2 ft) in some 3 tiles (48m/157.5 ft.) or so, which comes out to a angle of 17.4 degrees (which is almost the same angle as FA-3 networks), or a grade of 31% (or 23.8% if you account for how SC4 squashes height), which is absolute MADNESS!!! This is comparable to Baldwin Street in New Zealand, which is famously dubbed to be one of the world's steepest streets (if not, the steepest). Now how will Sims safely get on a ramp this steep (especially coming off an elevated highway) from traffic moving at 60+ MPH? This hints, too, that default Maxis overpasses are too HIGH (even though height is shrunk down by a factor of approximately 1.3). Typical highway overpasses in the US have clearances between 14-16ft (4.3-4.9m), which is a main reason that many RHW users prefer using L1 elevated highways and overpasses (shrinking 7.5m by a factor of 1.3 comes to about 5.7m/18.9ft.; still a tad high, but much more realistic). Also remember that the original Maxis highway has no shoulders on the right or left of each carriageway, which can be very dangerous for high speed traffic, especially when the right shoulder can easily be used as an emergency lane for vehicles under situations of high congestion. Just my 2¢.

[Haljackey 17,270]

New 3-way interchange!

 

Click images for full size.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

Tweaking to get rid of the large elevated section and add smooth curves

 

Zoom in:

 

Side view:

 

Location in region:

[Koenvh 14]

I thought, let's just do it the other way around for once. It connects to a RHW6C -> RHW4S + RHW2 transition piece above.

Petersstad-29 Jan., 001414795991 by Koenvh., on Flickr

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

I thought, let's just do it the other way around for once. It connects to a RHW6C -> RHW4S + RHW2 transition piece above.

 

<snip>

 

Interesting idea!

[Haljackey 17,270]

Two 3-way interchanges within 24 hours!

 

 

New 3-way interchange!

 

First one:

 

---

 

Second one. Click images for full size.

 

Connecting a diagonal RHW to a new bridge crossing.

 

Some tweaking mid-build

 

Final configuration:

 

Side view:

 

This is the first time I have ever used the FARHW 'boomerang' curve and the fractional-angle MIS splitter:

 

Zoom out:

 

Full zoom out for context:

 

Location in region:

[cmdp123789 710]

Very nice Haljackey.. I always enjoy your interchanges.. and one thing I specially enjoyed was the Building a City from Scratch series... =)