Morbx

Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) posted a picture today about a spacecraft that "intercepts" and changes the path of incoming asteroids. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html. I'm surprised nobody saw the second meteor (the one that hit russia) coming. I've read recently about the shocking number of asteroids found to be in binary or even multiple systems, and there's no reason this one had to be any different. I'm thinking maybe it was in a pair with the larger one we DID see coming, 2012 DA 14. Just a thought, though.

I don't understand what you mean..."look around my city". Are you saying you can actually get a street-level view of your city on a UDI mission? If so, I've never encountered that. The very few times I tried doing UDI, I just watched the car from a birds-eye view. For some reason I feel "Closer" to my city if I'm actually driving in it, and even though I'm aware it doesn't do anything more than me zooming in and looking at it manually.

This is Hoag's object, the prototype for ring-galaxies. That ring of black is true empty space, not gravitational lensing or some other weird thing. It's empty, intergalactic medium inside a galaxy.

I hate to admit it, but I do U.D.I. wayyyyy too much. I do some of the missions, but I try to avoid the ones that give you buildings that are too hard to get normally. Sometimes I will do free drive just to look around my city, or go over some huge bridge I just built. Other times, I just use cheats to unlock a tank and drive them around crazy mountains and hills.

Amtrak has free WiFi on all of its trains. And those are really the only train rides long enough for a good game of SimCity. And remember that while there may not be WiFi around now, it a few years that might change completely. (Universal free WiFi, anyone?)

That is the core of the problem. Most people here do not want another SimCity, they want The Simtropolis Game. Outside of this little space, SimCity is and always has been a game, based upon the simulation of a city. It is not about scale models of cities or ultra-realism. Having the best approximation possible of the functioning of a city (which Glassbox is aimed at achieving) is infinitely more important than being able to build 600 square miles of sprawl. Exactly. This is a city simulator. Cities XL is a city builder.

I agree with Xenocity here... The graphics have clearly been optimized for the best performance. And then, for those with the best computers, remember being able to change the graphics options. There will be a lot more processing power required for this game than other SimCitys, and Maxis would rather put that towards the simulations rather than graphics. And could we please stop quoting? Every new post is taking up more and more space on my screen.

On the subject of graphics, its hard to get good realistic graphics at a certain point. Especially in strategy games. I think the Cartoony graphics were a good choice to make the game look visually appealing without trying to do too much or being too hard on computers. Keep in mind that the textures aren't finished yet: They're still adding the finishing touches that will really bring them out.

I agree with you, Tianity. It might not be the dream game that everybody had in mind from SC4, but its still a nice addition to the series. Really, it is hard to go much better than SC4, and we'll have to wait until March to see if this game has or not.

I don't see why you would.... Even if this 1-hour beta is practically a scam, I'm still excited.

I saw that in another image - The one of the skate park. Look at the road in the bottom left corner... I am happy to see that they are using a similar street texture to SimCIty 4.

Not gaps like that. No SimCity has ever been close to the size of a real city, I'm always astonished when I compare my SC4 cities to real life cities, even though my cities do feel quite large. But these gaps are exceptionally bad. I understand the whole problem with making cities contiguous, but somehow I feel Maxis could have atleast patched it up a little bit; make it look a little more realistic.

For sure. I think it's fair to say they like bricks. And Western architecture. Which I personally think to be a bit ugly for the most part. The developments and screenshots looks pretty good. But from what I can tell there's not much cultural diversity in the architecture. It's too bad the only bit of that I can remember was the bonus package from pre-ordering the $80 version on Origin. I'd like to see this city zoomed out in relation to its "suburbs" Quote of the century above. xD I'm going to force myself to live with the new Simcity some way or another, but it would just be SO much easier to live with if cities could have suburbs. They've done some great things to regions with the new game, but only because of the spread-out city tiles, regions are much worse than SC4. Its a shame that something that small is going to ruin region gameplay, but it will. On the bright side, I do like that screenshot very much. It reminds me of all of the brown buildings in SC4, and we haven't seen any slums in the new game yet.

If only the tiles were contiguous to each other.... If only....

Well, they are kind of running out of time to get any serious testing done... March isn't too far away.