SimCity: Welcome to the Glassbox Simulation Engine

[Vahr 343]

Let's try and keep OS discussions in an OS thread or Off Topic

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I certainly hope it is not locked to DirectX 11 because my current card can only do DX10.GlassBox certainly seems interesting and Simtropolis is certainly faster than it was leading up to my finals.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Maybe we should open a different thread for discussing the graphics elements. We are discussing the simulation engine in this one.

It would seem that because of all the gory detail to be simulated, the Glassbox will limit things to 200K Sims and about a 2Km x 2 Km area in any view. If this is a city, so be it. It would be nice to be able to move to an adjacent city without fuss however, perhaps by just moving the mouse over the border?!

[jacksunny 741]

Maxis has another video and blog post regarding the Glassbox engine. This set discusses economics in the game, particularly the industrial side of things.

The

The blog post.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Well that video was enlightening. Industry creates jobs and products. Wow. You learn something new every day. Best bandwidth expenditure ever.

I think I might just create an educational video about the importance of breathing.

On a more serious note I still don't know what level of detail we will get when the game is released. In theory you could have a simple system- i.e a few goods and services, a small array of resources that are used in an obvious way, and then make it more intricate by breaking these down into component parts. Now from what I've read so far it looks like gas stations won't be able to use magical fuel that comes from nowhere any more, but I wonder just how low the level will be as regards intricacy.

They haven't shown much agriculture yet, but I would like to think that there will be crop resources that climb the ladder until they are served to customers in a processed form. I hope the burgers in the 50s joint are made from individual ingredients.

[~Dee~ 215]

I wish this forum had a funny button to click, your sentence " I think I might just create an educational video about the importance of breathing." cracked me up.

I for one looking forward to this game, it looks very promising I think.

[jacksunny 741]

@Mark: That's being a tad harsh, don't you think?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Having resources to make goods is a first for SimCity though it has been done with Simutrans and LinCity. I hope that upon release, heavy industrial products (petrochemicals, refined metal, etc) from dirty industry, manufactured goods (cars, basic appliances, toys, etc) from manufacturing industry, and high tech products (computers, electronics, aerospace products, gadgets, high tech appliances, etc) from High Tech industry are all treated as unique products bought by different companies and people. For instance, a basic car is sold at a cheap dealership only while a plug-in hybrid with built-in navigation and entertainment units is sold at a high end dealership and only bought by wealthy sims ($$$ and $$$$). To make things easier, a high tech car could be made from a cheap car with added high tech products.

[loerelau 5]

I am afraid that it is going to be a Cities XL engine.

I have a shortage of workers in my city and my powerplant on the end of the map is out of workers. You do provide jobs to all other industries except your powerplant instead of sharing the 'worker shortage' load. They should build something in that an agent will not always take the shortest route.

[Mark Waybill 242]

They definitely need commuting and broader job searching. If Sims just take the nearest job, well that's just stupid to be frank.

[mittfh 7]

Just been thinking about what GlassBox could theoretically be capable of (but probably won't do). For example, on the cars front it would theoretically be possible (although this may be a level or two of abstraction too detailed for EA/Maxis' liking!) to factor in car size (average / maximum number of occupants), fuel tank size (the size of the fuel 'bin') and efficiency (assuming the engine knows how far the car has driven, it should be possible to factor in the number of tiles it takes to use up one unit of fuel). Then you can program in rules about what type of car Sims will drive - namely the bigger their family, the bigger the car they'll use; while the wealthier they are, the less efficient car they'll use. So a wealthy singleton may drive a fancy sports car that can hold a maximum of two and need to visit a fuel station almost every day; while a family on moderate incomes may drive a seven-seater MPV with reasonable fuel economy.

Of course, depending on the extent to which GlassBox is opened up when the game's matured enough for them to allow modding, it may be possible for statistics freaks to implement this kind of detail even if it's not provided natively. Of course, adding too many simulations may cause performance problems if you don't have 32 GB RAM

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

We shall see what we shall see. Remember, there has to be a rather massive amount of code supporting this gadget. If it is nailed down now, then that's great. Let's hope they resist the temptation to make special deals with it the way Microsoft did with their O/S kernel to the long-term detriment of their product line that gave rise to, among other things, the infamous BSOD.

Programs need to exist fully encapulated and tested with a very clear interface with no special deals.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Why not just have the houses consume the fuel? They are given certain cars for the commuter agents and that affects household fuel consumption. That would be far less code.

[mittfh 7]

That's a useful point, and the distance travelled can easily be worked out from the distance between the house and the nearest suitable job - multiply that by 12-14 to get the weekly distance (assuming they work five days a week, that would be 10x the distance - then add a day or two's worth at the weekend to handle shopping / visiting attractions etc.).

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Mommy does the shopping after taking the kids to school. I rather hope we don't get into that kind of micromanagement.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Random McSim sees a junk brochure slip through his door, reads it, and decides to check out electric fans at Fan Mart down the road. He browses the shop (only along the first two display aisles, as these fit into his budget spectrum) and decides that he might wait and keep using his old fan. On the drive home he notices his lips are chapped a bit, so drops into General Shop for some lip balm. There he meets Betsy Woodtrot, his half sister's cousin's niece, and they discuss the latest financial policies of the Conservative Party.

Possibly there is a line that one could cross.

[Andravius 2]

Anyone else notice how similar in concept Glassbox is to Impressions old city builder games like Caesar and Pharoah.

Water wells provide water for water carriers/walkers who wander through areas providing water to houses and industry.

Industry sending walkers out to find workers in the residential areas.

Farms provideing food for grainries which provide food to bazaars which send out walkers to deliver food to houses.

Not the same but oddly similar.

Apologies in advance if already pointed out.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

There he meets Betsy Woodtrot, his half sister's cousin's niece, and they discuss the latest financial policies of the Conservative Party.

Yes, yes yes, but what colour where her shoes, and did they coordinate with her handbag and glasses? Also were her shoes, handbag and glasses produced locally or at least in the same region... or where they produced in some off-shore, out-sourced, developing Sim-Nation, with 'inferior' labour laws, working conditions, medical entitlements and superannuation? After all we are now all living in a global economy and not some glass box bubble...

[The_City_Builder 299]

This is the first time I've heard someone say this.

Glassbox is it's own engine. The concept behind it may not be new, as you suggest, but it's new because the engine is developed specifically for the new Sim City. If you noticed your reasonings behind why you think it's not new, you would find these concepts in a lot of city building games; if not all. The main difference is that each Sim in Sim City is an agent, that carries these resources around the city. Again, this may sound familiar to people getting water from wells or buying things at markets, but Agents in SimCity are much more complex and can function completely by themselves.

I hope this helped.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

ROFLMAO. I think it will never be run at that level of detail.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

One wonders about the overhead of this rather neat idea. If it is all agents depleting or renewing resources, it is a vast simplification over previous simulations. In which case, 3D or not, using up CPU like a kid in a candy store should not be needed, and one wonders what kind of code optimization they are using. Code in a program like this has to be small, tight, debugged and fast.

[croxis 150]

One wonders about the overhead of this rather neat idea. If it is all agents depleting or renewing resources, it is a vast simplification over previous simulations. In which case, 3D or not, using up CPU like a kid in a candy store should not be needed, and one wonders what kind of code optimization they are using. Code in a program like this has to be small, tight, debugged and fast.

As mentioned this simulation type is not a new concept. Caesar III (and probably 2 and 1, but I never played them) used a similar resource system, although i think it was limited to 256 agents due to performance needs of a 1998 90 MHz so they used an unsigned char. Ignoring multicore and improvements in architecture, cpu speeds improvements alone could do about ten thousand agents using Caesar III system.

We both know they benchmarked the simulation engine and are confident it can handle thousands of agents simultaniously.

[The_City_Builder 299]

ROFLMAO. I think it will never be run at that level of detail.

I don't see why it wouldn't. If you've watched the Glassbox Series videos, they stress that each sim becomes an agent and carries out specific functions in a city.

[Mark Waybill 242]

In theory we could simulate using GlassBox the decision of a snail to turn 67 or 66 degrees, or whether a tree has 5657 leaves or 6445 leaves. I think there are some limits practically speaking to the depth of realism.

[jacksunny 741]

The latest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hro0BEquiPE.

I really like how this works, it's a lot better than SC4.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

It is a good example of the way resources and agents work together. However, it would be nice if they had included an anti-pollution intervention. Overall, it presents a dismal prospect.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

SimCity 4 has groundwater treatment plants -- I plop them independent of my water networks just to get the environment score up (when I have a ton of money) to get that environmentalist from screaming -- and if sewage treatment is another thing (a sewage treatment plant reduces sewage/waste but pollutes the water slightly and you need a filtration plant hooked up to your water pump to get potable water), then you can get a very rich and detailed water simulator without going too complicated for the player.

[NCGAIO 562]

It is simply amazing GlassBox this new engine, is not it??

Now I'll save money until the release to buy a new mobo dual-processor, four new graphics cards to ride quad SLI and some 32 GB of RAM.

It should be enough to discreetly observe the development of an average city with maybe two hundred thousand inhabitants, and see that they are all treated as single agents free to run for my beautiful city, with new 3D graphics and all the infinite movement of all modes of transport also individually treated by this simulation engine phenomenal.

I just hope that the day of use it will not surprise me and have only to repeat John Lennon "The dream is over"

  Edited April 21, 2012 by NCGAIO  

[BIWDC 2,296]

From what I seen in the videos they released it looks like the simulation

engine is going to be advanced.I think the new engine is going to be

a great improvement over the previous versions.

I just hope they bring back the zoning for the airports & sea ports as that

was my favorite feature of sim city 2000 & 3000,you could create one of any

size.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I fail to see what zoning has to do with the simulation engine except that they are part of the map as a special class.

  Edited April 21, 2012 by A Nonny Moose