Traffic Noise/Customers Testing...

[the7trumpets 10]

Okay, I finally got a coupple of hours and wanted to make good on my promise to release some findings on customers and traffic noise quirks.  There have been many accusations on what controls this, but no difinitive tests that I am aware of as of yet.

 

 

The set up:

 

Basically got everyone to commute through the same street (or road).  Then placed a house on that street and varried the number of people/jobs on either side of the commute path until I found the approximate number of residents necissary to raise the traffic to a level where the traffic noise goes from low to medium, and medium to high.  I also had no landfills and simply let the garbage build up to eliminate the garbage truck traffic, if it is factored in.  I also made a road from the back of the industrial area to the city edge for freight traffic, to ensure only commuters were going through my test corridor.  Here's the test:

 

 

The test house is next to the windmill in the center.  The following are the results in residents necissary for the denoted level of traffic noise and customers (thanks dirk for tables!!!)

 

	Traffic noise (residential)		Customers (commercial)
	Street	Road	Street	Road
Low	0-850	0-860	0-1800	0-1850
Medium	851-1580	861-1525	1801-2550	1851-2550
High	1580+	1526+	2551+	2551+

 

It should be noted that these numbers are pretty rough because there is no real way to tell exactly how many cars are actually traveling on the road.  In practice, about half the R$ sims work.  Also, this is only taking into account R$ sims, not R$$ or R$$$.  I doubt there is any difference in traffic noise created and customers, but there could be, we'll have to come up with a test to see for sure.

 

Anyway, it is fairly apparent that one idea which has been thrown around, that changing from streets to roads or roads to streets changes traffic noise and/or customers rating is completely false.  They appear to switch over from low/medium/high at the same point (once adjusted for inaccuracy) reguardless of whether it's on a street or a road.

 

 

 

Next, I wanted to see if proximity to a busy road even if the entrance to the lot was not from the busy road would affect traffic noise and customers.  I did the tests for traffic noise and customers, and results were identical, so I will show screens for customers.  The same behavior is true for traffic noise:

 

 

Here, with the entrance onto a side street but the side of the building adjacent to the busy road, customers were still high.

 

 

However, when the business was turned, with the entrance facing the same road tile, customers went down to low.

 

 

When I extended the side road one more tile with the same orientation as in the first test, customers were still high.  Next I decided to test whether the "back" of the lot had a symilar effect as the side of the lot:

 

 

Sorry, I forgot the customers rating window on this one.  It was still high when the back of the lot backed up to the busy road.

 

 

In this case, with the back of the lot one tile away from the busy road, the customers rating went down to low again.

 

 

In all cases one tile further from the busy road than these pics show, the customers rating was low.  There was one more thing to test, and that is whether it adds up all nearby road tiles to get the customers rating, or simply looks to see if there is a road tile with a minimum ammount of traffic:

 

 

In this case, customers were no different than if the business was only touching this road at one point.  I tested this by putting the right number of residents in the map to cause customers rating to be just below high, at the upper range of medium.  Then I routed everyone by two sides of the business to see if the traffic on multiple adjacent tiles adds up or not.  It had no effect, the customers rating stayed at medium.

 

 

 

So, what can we draw from this?

 

Hopefully more tests will come, I'd be interested to see if the effect of highways on customers and traffic noise have a 'radius' of more than one tile.  In the mean time, it is useful to know that the approxomate traffic requirements for customers and traffic noise are as such:

 

	Traffic noise (residential)	Customers (commercial)
Low	0-400	0-900
Medium	400-800	900-1300
High	800+	1300+

 

These numbers were approxomated from the previous table by dividing by 2 (half population works) and rounding pretty liberally.  As you can see, traffic noise is high even before customers gets to medium.  Also, it is impossible to have a building with more than 800 residents who are driving without having high traffic noise.  This means that pretty much any R$$$ high density stage 7 or stage 8 will have high traffic noise since only 20% (I think) of the R$$$ sims will use mass transit (unless you edit the AI in the dat file).

 

I hope this helps spark some further testing and discussion.  I will stop by and offer my thoughts when I can, but I am still incredibly busy this summer, so I can't promise tests like this too often.  Good luck!!!

[The Milkman 1]

I don't really understand your graphs, but if I understand correctly:

 

Placing a commercial building touching a busy road will put the customers high?

[MoJooo 0]

Thanks, that helps with the placement of commercial props.

Good job!

[estroncios 0]

good work...ill send some of my discoveries soon....

 

cya!

[the7trumpets 10]

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On 6/20/2003 3:21:49 AM The Milkman wrote:

I don't really understand your graphs, but if I understand correctly:

 

Placing a commercial building touching a busy road will put the customers high?

----------------

Basically, your right.  Sorry that I forgot to include a sort of conclusion on placement as well as ammount of traffic necissary:

 

Conclusions on Placement of buildings for high and low traffic noise/customers rating:

Any building touching a raodway with the afforementioned minimum ammount of traffic traveling through it will experience high customers and or traffic noise.  Additionally, any building oriented with its side parallel with the roadway, and one tile away from the busy roadway will also experience the high rating.  All other orientations will experience low ratings.

It also appears that there is no "gradual" diminishing effect for customers and traffic noise as the building gets farther away.  But, I will do more tests to confirm or deny this notion later.

[TarHeelCP 0]

Good work!! I think you're the first one to show proof that traffic noise and customers are for certain related. (You're the first that I've come across anyway.)

Now to throw a little kink out there. I have noticed that on some streets/roads I can have a R$ home with medium traffic noise and right niext door a R$$$ home with high traffic noise. So does this mean that R$$$ sims are more sensitive to traffic noise? Only more testing will answer.

Thanks, and I'll work on some of this over the weekend too.

[the7trumpets 10]

Well, I'm starting to get a bit more frustrated.  I tried to test R$$, and had mixed results.  Using the same setup, at first I couldn't get traffic noise to go down below high.  I finally got it to go down to medium at 1750, but as I went down to fewer people,  it went back up to high!  Here's a pic of the final situation where the one house is on a dead end road,  and traffic noise is listed as "high".  The traffic is green, and there is no garbage service.  I can't figure out what's going on here...

 

[TarHeelCP 0]

I'd be interested to see what happened if you replaced that dead-end road with a street. Maybe $$ and $$$ sims will always experience "high" traffic noise when living next to a road?

[the7trumpets 10]

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On 6/20/2003 12:11:50 PM TarHeelCP wrote:I'd be interested to see what happened if you replaced that dead-end road with a street.  Maybe $$ and $$$ sims will always experience "high" traffic noise when living next to a road?

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nope, I tried that.  Traffic was still high.

[TarHeelCP 0]

Maybe they're just bothered by the sound of their own car. Maybe we should have the Modd Squad give us an Ear Plug ordinance.

I don't really get it. Why would someone living alone on a dead-end road experience high traffic noise. I must ponder this one for a while.

[Duane 0]

Does it change if the dead-end is a few tiles past the house?

[mxz440fan 0]

once you're done finishing this (i dont know if you consider it finished), can you test highways also? they are extremely freaky, but i like using them and would like to know some stats.

[TarHeelCP 0]

Ok, so here's something interesting that I noticed.  It's not really an experiment, but something that I noticed in one of my cities.  It gives us all something to ponder.

 

In the picture below, the Posh Villa on the left experiences low traffic noise.  The posh villa directly across the street on the right experiences medium.  The road that runs between them has moderate traffic. 

 

 

This would seem to suggest that only the road that a house is facing effects it's traffic noise.  However, the R$$ house across the street from the library experiences medium traffic noise with both roads touching it's lot as green???

 

So I'm not sure exactly how this thing determines traffic noise.  Off to actually try and test.

 

Edit: I got the traffic to green on all roads and the traffic noise for the R$$$ homes is now low.  However, the R$$ home went to high?!?!?!  What the hell is up with that?

[marlin32 0]

I have tried this about four times now and I don't get it. Anyway I build three cities. One city R$. One city R$$. One city mixed R$ and R$$$.

In the R$ city all I can find is traffic noise low. In the Mixed R$ and R$$ city all I can find is traffic noise low. In the R$$ city all I can find is traffic noise high.

I think the noise is comming from R$$ housing.

[Duane 0]

R$ have low expectations, and so do not complain about the noise.

 

R$$ just complain about everything. They are better off than R$ and think they are good enough now to have higher expectations, and they are not as well of as they would like to be, not being R$$$.

Unhappy under any and all conditions.

 

R$$$ can afford better insulated housing, double-paned glass, etc., so they are not bothered by the traffic noise.

 

???

[GrampaAl 76]

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On 6/23/2003 4:25:32 PM Duane wrote:

R$ have low expectations, and so do not complain about the noise.

 

R$$ just complain about everything. They are better off than R$ and think they are good enough now to have higher expectations, and they are not as well of as they would like to be, not being R$$$.

Unhappy under any and all conditions.

 

R$$$ can afford better insulated housing, double-paned glass, etc., so they are not bothered by the traffic noise.

 

???

----------------

R$$$ sims don't like traffic noise at all, but unfortunately they they are also older for the most part and they have noise cancelling hearing aids, so don't complain as much.

[rbchaffe 9]

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On 6/23/2003 4:39:51 PM GrampaAl wrote:

R$$$ sims don't like traffic noise at all, but unfortunately they they are also older for the most part and they have noise cancelling hearing aids, so don't complain as much.

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Are you speaking from personal experience, Grampa Al?

[the7trumpets 10]

I feel I must point out that these mini-theories put forth must be false, and our testing must be incomplete.  Reasoning:

 

In my tests,  R$$ experienced high traffic noise between 0 and about 1200 sims, medium traffic noise from about 1200 to 1750, and high traffic noise above 1750 sims.

 

This looks to me much more like an inconsistancy either in my testing, or in the programming.  It is impossible for the R$$ sims to always experience high traffic noise, because they did experience medium.

 

 

So, if anyone has any bright idea on other tests we could do, please be my guest   Until then I'll continue brainstorming on how to figure out this weirdness.

[TarHeelCP 0]

7, since your numbers seem to back up what happened to the R$$ home in my city the only thing that I can think of is that it is some sort of bug in the programming.  But, because the R$$ homes don't abandon when the traffic is below capacity and the home displays that it has high traffic noise, that the bug is on the display side rather than the actuall games AI side.

 

So what I mean is that the game actually believes that the R$$ home is experiencing low traffic noise, yet the display says it is high traffic noise.

 

Therefore, my conclusion would be that this is only really a nuisance and not a real problem.  The only way that I could think of to truly diagnose it would be to delve into the exemplars and see if there is anything of value that could be found.  Personally, I haven't got the patience to mess with the exemplars and since it only seems to be a nuisance, then I don't really know if it's worth anyones time.

 

I think we should mention it to Maxis and let them look into it.  It would take them far less time and they could fix it in some future patch.  Anyway, that's my gut feeling on this.  I really have no hard numbers to back it up.  Let me know if anyone thinks otherwise, I'm open to suggestion.

[Screwballl 196]

ok with all these mods and help files and such, why am i able to get a large map of 300K have traffic liek this? i have almost all roads (higher traffic density) some rail and highways, the industry is along the outer edges and almost no abandonments... but also no growth, i wonder if my road layout has limited the population or if its soemhting else, ive tried parks, plazas, almost everything and my city stays right were it is

 

[the7trumpets 10]

I can't tell for sure, but from the screenshot, this is what I would guess:

 

R demand (of some wealth) is pretty high, with C and I demand negative.  That means that there are unused jobs.  No more growth in C and I because there are not enough workers.  The fact that R is not growing could be due to two considerations:

 

1. residential area not desirable enough for middle/high class, if that is what the demand is for.
2. not enough residential areas zoned
3. the existing residential zoned areas are too far from the available jobs.  Driving at road speed unmodded, 3.1kph means they could travel up to 3.1 km to work, or about 3/4 the distance of a large map.  So, this could be part of the problem if all the available jobs are on one side of the map.

 

Can't think of anything else right now, but if none of that is possible, and you're sure demand caps for R have been breached (stadiums and/or skateboard parks are great for this), than I guess I'm off base, and please ask again.  But, this might not be the best thread for this.  I'll be happy to help out if I can though.

 

[Abby Normal 0]

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On 6/20/2003 10:04:17 AM the7trumpets wrote:

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On 6/20/2003 3:21:49 AM The Milkman wrote:

I don't really understand your graphs, but if I understand correctly:

 

Placing a commercial building touching a busy road will put the customers high?

----------------

Basically, your right.  Sorry that I forgot to include a sort of conclusion on placement as well as ammount of traffic necissary:

 

Conclusions on Placement of buildings for high and low traffic noise/customers rating:

Any building touching a raodway with the afforementioned minimum ammount of traffic traveling through it will experience high customers and or traffic noise.  Additionally, any building oriented with its side parallel with the roadway, and one tile away from the busy roadway will also experience the high rating.  All other orientations will experience low ratings.

It also appears that there is no "gradual" diminishing effect for customers and traffic noise as the building gets farther away.  But, I will do more tests to confirm or deny this notion later.

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Hi 7!!

Apparently I am back!

Interesting stuff. About time someone did some tests to prove that changing the roads to streets in commercial areas doesn't do a damn thing to help commercial desireability. Feh! A couple ideas:

Maybe do a check at different times during the sim day/night cycle to make sure that doesn't affect the traffic noise attribute. I would hope not, but it's possible and if it does it would account for the discrepancies. It's also very odd that the job being parallel to the roadway would shoot down the customer/traffic noise rating.

BTW: Have you confirmed that these two ratings are essentially identical? Are the customers just a commercial version of traffic noise?

TarheelCP also had an interesting comment about the $, $$, and $$$ possibly having different tolerances for traffic noise. But does it actually change the traffic noise that they hear or is there tolerance just an internal game mechanics thing? i.e. Is a low traffic noise rating for $ equal to a high traffic noise rating for $$$?

Em. I have to work now. Nice to be back!

[the7trumpets 10]

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Hi 7!!

Apparently I am back!

Interesting stuff. About time someone did some tests to prove that changing the roads to streets in commercial areas doesn't do a damn thing to help commercial desireability. Feh! A couple ideas:

Maybe do a check at different times during the sim day/night cycle to make sure that doesn't affect the traffic noise attribute. I would hope not, but it's possible and if it does it would account for the discrepancies. It's also very odd that the job being parallel to the roadway would shoot down the customer/traffic noise rating.

BTW: Have you confirmed that these two ratings are essentially identical? Are the customers just a commercial version of traffic noise?

TarheelCP also had an interesting comment about the $, $$, and $$$ possibly having different tolerances for traffic noise. But does it actually change the traffic noise that they hear or is there tolerance just an internal game mechanics thing? i.e. Is a low traffic noise rating for $ equal to a high traffic noise rating for $$$?

Em. I have to work now. Nice to be back!

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GREAT TO SEE YOU BACK ABBY!!!!

If anyone doesn't know, I credit abby with most of the props for getting me hooked on this site.  His enthusiasm and hard work on 'travel time testing...' inspired me, and we learned alot through that.  Hopefully now that he's back, we can team up once again, for AMAZING DISCOVERIES!!!  

But, I would love to answer your questions.  Unfortunately I've been removed from this experiment for a couple of weeks (was working on the realistic scale regions project) but I'll try to recall and catch you up so we can work together - yea!!!

As to your question of traffic noise/customers being the same thing, with different tollerances, I think you are correct.  However, it is difficult to prove an "always" condition, so I can only say that I have not observed any behavior that leads me to believe otherwise.  I still have no idea what causes it to behave differently based on which way the lot is oriented.  It's just weird.  My goal is to gain enough understanding about this that we can actually help people know how to place Residential lots for lower traffic noise and commercial lots for higher customers.

Until next time, good luck.  I'll start thinking about this again and maybe get some tests done in a bit

[the7trumpets 10]

Okay, here is how the customers/traffic noise engine works, after the new update

 

 

• The entire map is divided up into 4x4 grid square areas, with 16 grid squares in each area.
• For each commercial and residential lot, it searches within the 4x4 grid square area(s) the lot resides in, plus a two tile buffer surrounding the area(s)
• Within the search area, the highest traffic volume tile for morning commute is added to the highest traffic volume tile for evening commute.
• The result is multiplied by property 0x0CAAAEB8 in the Traffic Simulation Exemplar, and returns an internal value between 0 and 255, which is then used for desirability ratings.

 

The reason it was previously thought that traffic noise/customers was dependant on traffic congestion is that the morning and evening commutes were added together before the highest traffic volume tile was found.  This meant that a road tile with 500 morning commuters and 500 evening commuters would have a value of 1000 commuters, while an avenue would only return a value of 500 commuters, since its morning and evening commuters were separated into different tiles.  Also, the coefficient that was used to multiply the result by was the capacity of the road network, which meant that modding the road network capacity changed your customers/traffic noise ratings.

 

Many things go to maxis for seeking to understand and fix this gameplay issue.  Horray for the new update!!!

[Equinox 1,209]

This is extremely interesting, I'm really glad you posted your findings here!
*takes notes copiously* Interesting way to do it, but it makes sense!

[Biekko 2]

Yeah this seems like a sensible way to approach the traffic noise/customers factor. Do we know if it is only automobil traffic that contributes to noise/customers or do other commuters also contribute? It would make sense that buses and traffic on the rail networks would also contribute to noise for residents while pedestrian traffic would realisticly add to commercial customer levels.

[the7trumpets 10]

I don't know for sure, but I immagine it's controlled by the same 'adds to congestion' property in the traffic exemplar.  Testing would have to be conducted to verify this though.

[Mallozzi 0]

So don't use avenues or any 2 laned transportation in a commercial area? Got it

[humanpixel 0]

This is some great information. It would be even better if the images were not broken.

[Lord Chuckles 0]

the images are broken because this post was made in 03, 6/20/2003 1:27:59 AM to be exact. Thx for digging up old posts