Highways

[dekiscool 6]

Hey all. It's been awhile! LOL

 

I like to build highways and usually do elevated highways. I would like to start using ground level highways, but are there on ramps/off ramps for this like there are for elevated highways? I am using the default highways that come with SimCity 4...no mods for highways.

 

Thanks in advance

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

Hey all. It's been awhile! LOL

 

I like to build highways and usually do elevated highways. I would like to start using ground level highways, but are there on ramps/off ramps for this like there are for elevated highways? I am using the default highways that come with SimCity 4...no mods for highways.

 

Thanks in advance

Of course! Included in the base game. I forgot what the button's name is called because I'm for RHW instead of unrealistic MHWs, but it should feature a thumbnail of a diamond interchange. Just tab through, and you'll see the ground MHW diamond interchange.

 

(P.S. Ever considering using the RHW? It's a pretty steep learning curve to build RHWs compared to building MHWs, since you have to build interchanges by hand, but the results are pleasing. I discarded MHWs forevermore due to its unrealistic scale, and inflexibility. (I still use it, in favor of the MHW Override, which converts the MHWs to an override similar to the RHW-4, but leave out the default pre-fab MHW interchanges due to its unrealistic scale.) RHWs not only give more realistic and modular highways, but also give wider highways and other goodies. But if you like MHWs better, go ahead. Everyone has their own option. )

[dekiscool 6]

Thanks...but I am not looking for interchanges. Those are easy. I am looking for on ramps and off ramps from highway to road and vice versa. The elevated highways are easy...you just run a road under the highway and it automatically asks if you want a ramp. And as you can see...from the pic below...I have the on ramps/off ramps

 

 

But...I attempted a ground level highway...and I went back to the first town I ever did and noticed I had a ground level highway with roads that went over it and it had on ramps and off ramps. But I tried again today...and as the pic below shows...it just builds a bridge...no ramps

 

 

Any ideas?

[Cheddar 119]

I do believe, if I can remember, you have to plop the ramps for ground. For the avenue going over, you have plop a avenue overpass that includes the ramps. It should be in the highway menu under 'ground highway ramps' or something like that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

It is definitely there.  Generally you need side ramps rather than overpass ramps but they are there also.  Check the third and fourth icons under the highway icon.  You'd be better off if you installed the NAM which adds a wider selection of ramps and, if you like, a black-top option for the Maxis highways.

 

The NAM has a snazzy installer and you can choose what you want to clutter up your menus with.  I don't load RHW nor GLR.  I have found, however, that the improvement with the replacement traffic controller is beyond price.  With all these toys available, you can experiment at your own pace.

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

Thanks...but I am not looking for interchanges. Those are easy. I am looking for on ramps and off ramps from highway to road and vice versa. The elevated highways are easy...you just run a road under the highway and it automatically asks if you want a ramp. And as you can see...from the pic below...I have the on ramps/off ramps

 

 

But...I attempted a ground level highway...and I went back to the first town I ever did and noticed I had a ground level highway with roads that went over it and it had on ramps and off ramps. But I tried again today...and as the pic below shows...it just builds a bridge...no ramps

 

 

Any ideas?

You have to plop the ramps. There's no AutoPlace function for the GMHW.

(P.S. Technically, the default highways are now called MHW, for more in-line acronym to the RHW.)

[dekiscool 6]

Ok...LOL...I have NAM installed. I think that was part of the probably. There was so much to go through WITH NAM installed. I took it out and think I found exactly what I was looking for. Sadly...it doesn't look like it offers ground ramps for avenues...just regular roads. I will fiddle with it some more...

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

Ok...LOL...I have NAM installed. I think that was part of the probably. There was so much to go through WITH NAM installed. I took it out and think I found exactly what I was looking for. Sadly...it doesn't look like it offers ground ramps for avenues...just regular roads. I will fiddle with it some more...

There is actually a piece for avenues. Just tab through the pieces and you'll see the GMHW Avenue Diamond Interchange.

[KonstantinII 1,106]

RHW is always such a hassle. It's not a very good mod.

 

Also this is how I make my futuristic highways.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

RHW is always such a hassle. It's not a very good mod.

Also this is how I make my futuristic highways.

I'd argue it's a very versatile mod and very good (I originally didn't like it due to its high learning curve and trying to retrofit highways), and it's ever expanding options.

Although that's a snazzy highway that reminds me of something straight out of F-Zero. Where did you get it?

[KonstantinII 1,106]

It's a highway I use for my future region

 

. Where did you get it?

 

 

(taken from list of futuristic plugins https://community.simtropolis.com/topic/55039-list-of-futuristic-buildings/ )

 

SimMars highway retexture mod

 

SFBT urban highway set

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2315

 

Noise barrier

http://hide-inoki.com/bbs/archives/sc4_0735.html

[zimmie 521]

Here is another similiar set of noise barriers from bripizza if anyone is interested:

 

http://www.bripizza.net/sc4/index.html

[timmie 988]

Here is another similiar set of noise barriers from bripizza if anyone is interested:

 

http://www.bripizza.net/sc4/index.html

 

What a discovery! Thank you so much for this link

[Eryx 17]

Here is another similiar set of noise barriers from bripizza if anyone is interested:

 

http://www.bripizza.net/sc4/index.html

Super cool! Thank you!

[ava92 0]

am i the only one who thinks RHW looks hyper unrealistic?  I've never seen interchanges in real life that look anything like 95% of the RHW stuff i see on here, the textures and straight sections look great but the interchanges look terrible.  The MHW and NAM addons to MHW look way more realistic imo.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

The NAM may look unrealistic if you are comparing it to a lot of the Bay area highways (say San Francisco, etc). But those highways were built a long time ago, before safety standards like hard shoulders as well as larger slip lanes for faster and safer travel were introduced.

I know that the interchanges may seem unrealistically large, but sometimes when zooming through them at 100kph it's easy to forget how large they actually are. Take this local one, a (nearly) full access 4 way stack near me.

http://cdn.caradvice.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Eastlink_TomWillsInterchange-625x417.jpg

Those are all houses surrounding it. Yes the RHW is large, but so are real life interchanges. Maxis highways were designed smaller because of the old constraints I mentioned above, but also to enhance playability for the average player. Many people who bought the game would not want to devote an entire small tile (especially when they would think of a small tile as a full functioning city), whereas people who enjoy creating realistic cities and neighbourhoods will allow the large space for the interchange.

[APSMS 1,892]

Well, for one, I can guarantee you've never seen interchanges as small as the MHW prefabs. That is a fact. secondly, it is true that RHW doesn't necessarily look like real life, but this is a game, and many advanced RHW options alleviate some of the problems (for instance, I find the A1 and D1 ramps horribly unrealistic--see the manual to get a definition; I can't explain here), like the FA ramps and the accel/decel ramps that are available, and when used I find go a long way toward making a much more realistic interchange.

 

Many of the MHW, because they are underscaled and fixed in width, would be unrealistic in RL. Also, the El MHW is at a 15m height, which means that the slope of the off ramp is around 35-40%, which is a bit steep (warnings are usually posted for 7% grades!). A similar problem is found in the ground MHW.

 

Of course, the final factor, and this really is the kicker, is not the realism at all, but the fact that RHW is modular, which means you can make whatever the heck you want, so long as the RUL controller is happy with you. You can, if you spend enough time, make an interchange that spells your name (though in SC4 it would take a considerable amount of time).

 

And yeah, when you have a prefab interchange, it will look sort of realistic. But this is a game after all, and limitations being what they are we can only judge realism by how close we can approximate it, not how close it actually looks (though I think we get pretty close much more often than you suggest). The NWM is more realistic, though I'd say curves in general for any network are pretty unrealistic unless they're smooth curves, which is something Maxis didn't think to include (fair enough).

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

And let's all remember that this is a very unrealistic game.  It has to fit on your computer, and most people don't have the big mainframes that are really needed to simulate a real life city.  The tile size is only 16 Km² max, so any real city is going to occupy a whole region in the game and can only be run in chunks.  When I looked last the City of Toronto was around 20 Km from west to east, which in this game would take five (or six) large tiles, and I am not sure how deep it would have to be if you included the 905 areas.

 

The RHW has been improving over the years but there is a lot of civil engineering to be done to build an RHW thoroughfare just like in RL.  The MHW, on the other hand, is designed to fit in the original game without too much fuss.  In fact you should probably be willing to do some land flattening with both it and ground rail to make it look less lumpy.

 

Ask any civil engineer and he'll tell you of all the blasting and bulldozer work that is needed to get proper grades for roads.

[Lost Realist 762]

am i the only one who thinks RHW looks hyper unrealistic?  I've never seen interchanges in real life that look anything like 95% of the RHW stuff i see on here, the textures and straight sections look great but the interchanges look terrible.  The MHW and NAM addons to MHW look way more realistic imo.

 

You might be. As it's been mentioned, the MHW is seriously underscaled and if you take a look around google maps and follow some highways, you'll find that they are very, very likely to resemble RHWs more closely than MHWs. In the end it's obviously down to personal preference, but for a coherent, uniform look in your transportation network, there's no way around using the RHW really.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Speaking of the scale of MHW interchanges...

That blue diagram is the actual scale of the MHW cloverleaf compared to the smallest cloverleaf interchange I could find. Saying that the RHW is overscaled and the MHW interchanges are properly scaled is utter nonsense...

[Cob92 360]

 

am i the only one who thinks RHW looks hyper unrealistic?  I've never seen interchanges in real life that look anything like 95% of the RHW stuff i see on here, the textures and straight sections look great but the interchanges look terrible.  The MHW and NAM addons to MHW look way more realistic imo.

 

You might be. As it's been mentioned, the MHW is seriously underscaled and if you take a look around google maps and follow some highways, you'll find that they are very, very likely to resemble RHWs more closely than MHWs. In the end it's obviously down to personal preference, but for a coherent, uniform look in your transportation network, there's no way around using the RHW really.

 

 

MHW may be severely underscaled, but in my experience, its aesthetic more closely matches a typical urban freeway than the RHW. RHW is nice and flexible, but it is too flat, wide, and grassy to fit in with a congested downtown area. Plus it doesn't support frontage roads well, which means no Texas-style freeways.

[Kuewr665 40]

The RHW-4 C1 inside ramp should work for that.

[Tarkus 6,932]

 

MHW may be severely underscaled, but in my experience, its aesthetic more closely matches a typical urban freeway than the RHW. RHW is nice and flexible, but it is too flat, wide, and grassy to fit in with a congested downtown area. Plus it doesn't support frontage roads well, which means no Texas-style freeways.

 

 

 

The RHW-4 C1 inside ramp should work for that.

 

Indeed, inside ramps like that should help.  The idea of better supporting frontage roads has been on the drawing board for awhile now, and the main difficulties are figuring out the best geometry of the OWR/NWM OWR interfaces that would be receiving the connection from the RHW, and how to handle the implementation matters, as we're trying to move away from static puzzle piece ramps and toward FLEXRamps.  As far as the "urban" side of things, part of that could be combatted with clever lotting at present.  We've discussed some other ideas, though nothing definitive.  New networks are off the table, however, as crosslinking is already nightmarish at present.

 

I also think that some of the RHW's critics may want to give the QuickChange system in NAM 32 a chance.  It'll still be a rather basic offering--diamonds and the inner portions of parclos--but that's going to be one area we'll keep expanding in future NAM releases, and it provides a more accessible way into the RHW.

 

-Tarkus

[UndercoverNinja12 176]

 

 

MHW may be severely underscaled, but in my experience, its aesthetic more closely matches a typical urban freeway than the RHW. RHW is nice and flexible, but it is too flat, wide, and grassy to fit in with a congested downtown area. Plus it doesn't support frontage roads well, which means no Texas-style freeways.

 

 

 

The RHW-4 C1 inside ramp should work for that.

 

Indeed, inside ramps like that should help.  The idea of better supporting frontage roads has been on the drawing board for awhile now, and the main difficulties are figuring out the best geometry of the OWR/NWM OWR interfaces that would be receiving the connection from the RHW, and how to handle the implementation matters, as we're trying to move away from static puzzle piece ramps and toward FLEXRamps.  As far as the "urban" side of things, part of that could be combatted with clever lotting at present.  We've discussed some other ideas, though nothing definitive.  New networks are off the table, however, as crosslinking is already nightmarish at present.

 

I also think that some of the RHW's critics may want to give the QuickChange system in NAM 32 a chance.  It'll still be a rather basic offering--diamonds and the inner portions of parclos--but that's going to be one area we'll keep expanding in future NAM releases, and it provides a more accessible way into the RHW.

 

-Tarkus

 

 

So is QuickChange like ploppable interchanges....but with RHW? Similar to what MHW has?

[Cob92 360]

The RHW-4 C1 inside ramp should work for that.

 

Problem with that is that you can't zone on RHW. I'm not sure if you've been to Texas, but the major cities here use a configuration where frontage roads are lined with commercial and residential development with driveways opening directly onto the frontage road. The frontage roads in turn are squeezed as close to the freeway as possible (at least in Houston; Austin seems to prefer more green space) so that development is able to come right up to the freeway corridor. What you need for this in SimCity would be a FARHW that connects to OWR running parallel to the freeway main lanes.

 

 

 

MHW may be severely underscaled, but in my experience, its aesthetic more closely matches a typical urban freeway than the RHW. RHW is nice and flexible, but it is too flat, wide, and grassy to fit in with a congested downtown area. Plus it doesn't support frontage roads well, which means no Texas-style freeways.

 

 

 

The RHW-4 C1 inside ramp should work for that.

 

Indeed, inside ramps like that should help.  The idea of better supporting frontage roads has been on the drawing board for awhile now, and the main difficulties are figuring out the best geometry of the OWR/NWM OWR interfaces that would be receiving the connection from the RHW, and how to handle the implementation matters, as we're trying to move away from static puzzle piece ramps and toward FLEXRamps.  As far as the "urban" side of things, part of that could be combatted with clever lotting at present.  We've discussed some other ideas, though nothing definitive.  New networks are off the table, however, as crosslinking is already nightmarish at present.

 

I also think that some of the RHW's critics may want to give the QuickChange system in NAM 32 a chance.  It'll still be a rather basic offering--diamonds and the inner portions of parclos--but that's going to be one area we'll keep expanding in future NAM releases, and it provides a more accessible way into the RHW.

 

-Tarkus

 

 

I'm looking forward to seeing that. I like the RHW more and more as it develops, and I'm starting to look for more ways to incorporate it into my cities. The problem is that I'm essentially having to start a new region from scratch because the only truly RHW-based regions on my PC have succumbed to eternal commuter bugs and spiraling unemployment problems despite a lack of C and I demand.

[UndercoverNinja12 176]

Perhaps you could temporarily transition to MHW and use the ground MHW to ground road on/off ramps? Just a though.

[Tarkus 6,932]

 

So is QuickChange like ploppable interchanges....but with RHW? Similar to what MHW has?

 

 

Somewhat.  They're larger, ploppable items that consist of a large portion (but not all) of an interchange, built entirely using FLEX technology, such that a single piece works for numerous networks.  They're designed to be just enough to ease use, while providing enough flexibiliy so that we can get a lot of mileage out of each individual piece.

 

 

The RHW-4 C1 inside ramp should work for that.

 

Problem with that is that you can't zone on RHW. I'm not sure if you've been to Texas, but the major cities here use a configuration where frontage roads are lined with commercial and residential development with driveways opening directly onto the frontage road. The frontage roads in turn are squeezed as close to the freeway as possible (at least in Houston; Austin seems to prefer more green space) so that development is able to come right up to the freeway corridor. What you need for this in SimCity would be a FARHW that connects to OWR running parallel to the freeway main lanes.

 

If done correctly, it's possible to quickly transition from that inside ramp to an OWR, which does support development.  You'll still get a patch where you can't have development, but it's a minor step in the right direction, at least until OWR ramp interfaces are available.

 

-Tarkus

[UndercoverNinja12 176]

Are QuickChanges in the current, public NAM, or is it in a future NAM release? (Sorry I get the numbers mixed up )

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Are QuickChanges in the current, public NAM, or is it in a future NAM release? (Sorry I get the numbers mixed up )

For Network Addon Mod Version Thirty-Two (NAM 32), aka a future release; Network Addon Mod Version Thirty-One-point-Two (NAM 31.2) is the current public version.

[UndercoverNinja12 176]

 

Are QuickChanges in the current, public NAM, or is it in a future NAM release? (Sorry I get the numbers mixed up )

For Network Addon Mod Version Thirty-Two (NAM 32), aka a future release; Network Addon Mod Version Thirty-One-point-Two (NAM 31.2) is the current public version.

 

 

Thanks!