tf923

Sorry to break this to ya, but grid is not the most efficient layout. Grid type layouts work well in areas where high connectivity is desired, such as where jobs are located and excess traffic is actually desired. The most efficient method is to first separate residential from commercial/industrial districts. Then use a system of dead-end roads coming off of avenue connectors for the residential areas, forming a sort of tree where avenues and highways form the trunks and roads/streets form the branches. The reason is this: Grid increases connectivity at the expensive of using more land area, but sims have no need to go to other sims' houses. They only need to get to their jobs and back. So, using grid for residential areas wastes a lot of land giving extra connectivity to areas that don't need it or want it. In addition to the land wasted to unnecessary connectivity, the grid system itself actually increases traffic flow past each lot, which increases traffic noise, which decreases the capacity of all your residential buildings. This worsens the efficiency of grid systems even further. On the other hand, commercial areas don't want traffic efficiency. They actually want more traffic than is required to service them. So grid is actually perfect because you get the increased traffic flow plus good connectivity that grid offers. The reason all the big cities use grid isn't because of efficiency. It's because all major U.S. cities were designed in the days of horses and buggies. There were no cars, and when cars came around they did not bother to smash all the buildings and redo the city layout. They also didn't bother to do any traffic studies either, until it was far too late. Today, new cities that are laid out from scratch use loops and cul-de-sacs because that system uses the least amount of land area for roads. Long straight roads are only used for collectors that connect residential neighborhoods with commercial/industrial areas. Grids are still used for new downtown areas just as they always were.

Date: 8/19/2005 12:04:29 PM Author: ryanb_sc4 tf923 - Where exactly is ' here ' ?quote> I live in Florida. But there's no state income tax here either, so the state is more budget-conscious, and simple things like road paint are often considered significant items to cut back on. I'm old though, so I do remember when they used to have only painted here. If you wanna check it out, you can load up Google Earth and check out the Tampa area. The resolution is so good you can actually see the arrows painted on the roads! I love that program.

I did some local investigating, and found they actually have stopped painting ONLY here too, mainly due to budgetary reasons. Now they just paint the arrows and call it a day.

I think there's a problem with the avenuexDiagonal road intersection. The signal lights are all facing the wrong directions. (This is US right-hand drive version.) I'm not sure if this is a known issue or not so here's a pic:

I thought we were going for realism. For the most part the local transportation departments in the US don't really care that there are people who don't speak english. All the signs in America are in english. The symbols that you see on American roadways were originally for english-speaking Americans who are illiterate, not for the [few] non-english speakers. Only reason I'd possibly avoid the 'ONLY' is because screen resolution would probably make it look more like an ugly yellow blob than a word.

I liked the one by Simcity5. It's not listed here but it was submitted so I'm voting for it anyway. Consider this my write-in ballot: TF

I was joking. By the way, I like Simcity5's the best so far. And I'm wondering why nobody uses actual road textures in the logo? Seems like that would be cool too.

I think all these NAM logos should be required to be submitted in FSH format.

Yeah I did that and it doesn't work very well either. Mostly the buttons either do nothing, or generate various unhandled exception errors.

Ok one more question. Is it possible to search for all exemplar files containing property 0xE90E25A1? Seems I can search for all files by TGI, but not by any specific property they contain. oops nevermind, figured it out Well I tried out DatGen--actually several different versions of it. Apparently the main difference between DatGen and Reader is that the Reader actually works. DatGen promises a lot of neat things, but when you go to actually use them they don't work. I mean, 80% of the buttons in DatGen don't do anything at all. You push them and they do nothing. Of the remainder, half work and half just produce errors, corrupted files or other less-than-useful results. With the Reader, every single button does something useful when you click on it. I like that.