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Topic Title: Traffic Simulator Z Development Topic Summary: This thread is for discussing future additions or changes to Simulator Z. Created On: Apr-03-2009 02:41 AM Status: Post and Reply |
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| Although the main work on Traffic Simulator Z is finished, from time to time there will be some development. For those who are interested, the initial development history and many internal details of the Simulator Z implementation can be found in the original Traffic Simulator Z Development thread. Support issues for Simulator Z should be addressed in the NAM Traffic Simulator Z Support Thread. The issue I would like to address right now is street capacities, and especially in the context of SAM streets. Simulator Z has been out long enough now that many people have experience using it with SAM, and streets in general. Do the capacities of the various levels of the simulator seem about right for these streets? Or do people feel they need to be adjusted one way or another? Any feedback you can furnish will be helpful for the next release of Simulator Z. |
I've now created and tested version 1.1 of Simulator Z. It's ready for general use, and should be available in the next NAM update. Until then, you can get it here, at the bottom of this post. It includes thefollowing modifications:
The zip file contains all eight standard versions of the simulator; you should install only one of them. The versions containing "_Z_" in their names are the regular versions of the simulator, while the versions containing "_ZP_" are the Park & Ride versions. |
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Traffic_Simulator_Z_v1_1a.zip (12 KB) |
| After doing extensive testing of the new RTMT SAM stations (which have not yet been released), I made a minor modification to Simulator Z that increases the effectiveness of buses on streets. Nothing else was changed. The new version of Simulator Z can be found at the bottom of the preceding post. |
| I would like to increase the accuracy of Simulator Z a little more by tuning one specific parameter a bit more precisely. To do this, I will have to have a fair amount of data. If you are willing to run some tests using Simulator Z (any version), if you know the basics of Ilive's Reader well enough to change a single parameter, and if you have a city with at least five monorail, HSR, or BTM stations (in any combination) that have decent usage, please send me a private message. Thanks! |
| Some people have responded to my previous post indicating that they were interested in the testing, but didn't know how to use Ilive's Reader. Not to worry! If you can use Windows Explorer, you can use Ilive's Reader. What needs to be done is simple enough that I'll give step-by-step instructions, so that even someone who has never used the Reader before can follow them with ease. |
| No monorail/rail pollution!
And why in Z some of the ordinances being tampered with? |
No monorail/rail pollution! And why in Z some of the ordinances being tampered with? I would actually use the term "adjusted." And there's only one ordinance that was adjusted - the Clean Air Act. Previously, the Clean Air Act did nothing to reduce traffic pollution. This was not a big problem in the original game, but as higher capacity traffic simulators have come into use, the air pollution along traffic routes became disproportionately high. In Simulator Z, the Clean Air Act was modified to reduce traffic air pollution to reasonable levels. |
| ah ok, so it's not like a mega mod tampered cheat? but more like reality?
Hey can you help me, i have this question, im now using modified plugin A medium, can you tell what do i need to change inorder to get rid of monorail/rail pollution? I might later change to Z but for now im sticking with A and I do really hate the monorail pollution. A while back these traffic plugins did not have monorail pollution, but now it's back for some reason. |
ah ok, so it's not like a mega mod tampered cheat? but more like reality? Exactly. I can only recomment that you switch to Simulator Z now. It has no disadvantages and many advantages over Simulator A. Also, for the future, questions about SImulator Z not related to its development should be post in the NAM Traffic Simulator Z Support Thread. |
| Ok i see the sims find their jobs more throughout the city? I see that in A sims find jobs in "blocks" not individually sorta to say.
Is the fastest way to get tow work really that necessary? It seems like a cpu/mem hog. Many people do go shops, doctor etc etc on they commute trips. So I guess the fastest between home - work is not that realistic. Maybe ease it up a bit? Find a balance. But yes, Certainly the NAM traffic plugins are improvement of what the unmodified game offers. |
Ok i see the sims find their jobs more throughout the city? I see that in A sims find jobs in "blocks" not individually sorta to say. Yes, that's correct. The reason for this is that Simulator Z uses a more accurate pathfinder than Simulator A, and as a result, sees many more job possibilities than Simulator A does. Surprisingly, it's not, as I mention in the support thread. When the pathfinding algorithms are tuned properly, there are certain exponential behaviors which become linear. In this case, the best pathfinding actually takes less time and less memory. |
No monorail/rail pollution! I think that no monorail/rail pollution may be realistic. In real life, they use electricity often to run (espeically monorail). The pollution comes out of the fact that they're using electricity. The only thing that they will be emitting is noise and the fact that they take up land. |
| "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." - Albert Einstein "Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." - John F. Kennedy Thanks Simtropolis for everything! |
| Is it possible to make the simulator favor more intracity commuting? It would reduce the chance of getting the eternal commuter bug, and it gets insanely annoying when there is about 40,000 commuters going to another city just for a mere 5,000 jobs when there are about 20,000 empty jobs in the city. |
| This could be done, but the negative effects would outweigh anything positive that was gained. Instead, there are simple rules to follow that will prevent the eternal commuter bug from happening (namely, don't create possibilities for such loops to occur). Also, I'll be making a general release of ESURE in the not too distant future; this includes express subways, which will allow intercity travel without risking the eternal commuter bug. |
| ESURE?... Never heard of that at all... |
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Franklin County
--- Three Rivers Region |
| Here's all I could find about it: sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php |
| "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." - Albert Einstein "Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." - John F. Kennedy Thanks Simtropolis for everything! |
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| Some of you may recall that a few months ago, I made a request in this thread for volunteers to test a new version of Simulator Z. People volunteered and did the tests, and my thanks to all of them for their work. At the time, the tests showed no significant difference from the standard Simulator Z. In my post announcing the Beta 1 version of Simulator Z v1.2, I mentioned that the simulator's efficiency combined with the large differences in vehicle speed overwhelmed overwhelmed some of the preferences expressed in some of the simulator's other parameters. But with the speed ranges reduced in Beta 1, I decided to revisit the other change I had been considering. Sure enough, it now had an undeniable effect, although still small. And the setting the had the best effect had been hinted at in the initial results a few months ago. Combined with the speed reductions, there is slightly more road traffic, along with an even greater increase in monorail/HSR/BTM usage. As a result, I am incorporating this change into what is now Beta 2 of Simulator Z v1.2. Aside from this one addition, everything else is the same as in Beta 1, including the new travel type speeds. I expect this to be the last beta for this version of Simulator Z, and I would appreciate it if people would test it out and let me know how it works for them. Don't be surprised if the differences are small enough in some cities not to be noticeable. Please see the end of the first thread on this page (the part after the chart) for how to install and test the beta version. All feedback is appreciated. Thanks! |
| You are making Z way too much bogus. It messed my commute time graph! And now what am I reading? decreased subway speeds...
I think Z is perhaps a good if you use all the RHW HSR etc etc. I want my commute time graph the way it was! |
| Too bogus? To the contrary, much research has gone into making sure that it is becoming more realistic. Simulator Z has the most accurate commute time graph of any simulator. To read the complete technical details behind it, please see this post, along with some of the following ones. As for subway speeds, they were reduced from the game's standard 150 kph (93 mph) to 105 kph (65 mph), which is still quite high by real world standards. Generally, subways don't go much above 80 kph (50 mph), and 112 kph (70 mph) is about their top speed. But that's cruising speed. It doesn't take into account when subways slow down for sharp curves, or more importantly, when they stop at subway stops. Taking all of this into account, subway trains in the Boston subway system have been measured to average 33.3 kph (20.7 mph). In SC4, subway trains never stop; they never even slow down. (It makes for an interesting scene at the subway stations.) So their average speed is their top speed, and the "reduced" speed of 105 kph needs to be compared against a real-world speed of 33.3 kph. So SImulator Z's subways still run about three times as fast as real-world ones. It's the same with all the other travel types in Simulator Z. Their speed, alone among traffic simulators, is now approximately equal to the cruising speed of their real-world counterparts. Why was this done? Not out of some misplaced aesthetic sense, I can assure you. Instead, combined with all the other settings in Simulator Z, these speeds produced the most realistic traffic distribution. And in doing so, they also produced the healthiest cities. Of course, if you want a sick city, it's easy enough to make one in any simulator. Then there's the unintended realism of the evolution of Simulator Z. Subway costs have been rising, while subway service goes down. What could be more realistic than that? Yet the overall result is that cities run better, which is the purpose of all of these changes. |
| The game is not anymore realistic by tweaking the commute time graph and making subways really slow. Maxis/EA did not hardcode the game to be 100% realistic and here you whine about IRL subway speeds,, like it would make the game anymore realistic. Ok, i like it very much that the modding community tries to make the game more realistic, I do that too. But you have to take into account that you cant hardcode the game and it becomes very mixed pile if too much tweaking with the plugin files. You cant take a part of realism and put it in and then forget the other realistic aspects thinking now it's realistic because every road and avenue intersection creates congestion, even when there is lots of capacity available, making the overall commute time grow. You see eyecandy traffic lights but in IRL there is no traffic lights in every corner yet again Z acts the way like there is. I could go on and on!
But, Im now using plugin A and I copied some Z values to it. Im liking it now. My commute time dropped because I got rid of the red squares. What I really would like is I want my commute time graph the way it was! like hardcoded one! I want to know what Maxis thinks my commute time is not what you think it is. Not every aspect in the game can be realistic to the max. OK maybe you get IRL speeds at subway curves but does that really make the game more IRL in overall? No. If you want more realism go with both -> Maxis realism and IRL realism. Do you know where this custom content community started to measure the realism in the game? By looking at the lenght of the automata car vehicle. Everything was based on that. And in IRL, people dont go always the fastest way tow work/home. They go to like doctor and shopping and post office etc etc on the way. It is very un-IRL to force them go 100% fastest route. You are trying too much with Z and you are ruining a perfectly good traffic plugin. I like Z but I dont want red squares on eye candy traffic lights! on every corner! Anyway im now back to A and my commute time graph is messed up! What all the values add to the commute time graph showup? |
| I'm afraid that you have completely missed the point of Simulator Z. There is way too much that you obviously misunderstand about the workings of traffic simulators for me to address here. But there are a few points worth mentioning. If you're using a modified version of Simulator A, then you've got the original Maxis commute time graph. Maxis intentionally lies to you here, though. Um, no. The game scale is based on the fact that a large tile is four kilometers on a side. At lower levels, such as the car automata, the scaling is inconsistent. If you look in depth at the BATting threads, you'll see this. Based on the game's innate scale, the maximum commute time allowed in the unmodded Maxis game is three minutes one-way. If you take more than three minutes to get to your job, you're fired. Does your commute time graph always show commute times below six minutes? No, it doesn't, because Maxis scaled it up. Meanwhile, the maximum commute time for Simulator A is acutally 8.5 minutes one-way. Simulator Z treats commute time in a more realistic way; for details, you'd have to read the thread I referenced above. I'm sorry that you don't like Simulator A, but it's clear you're judging it based on a faulty understanding of what it's doing. So use your hybrid simulator and enjoy the game! |
| The game is not anymore realistic by tweaking the commute time graph and making subways really slow. Maxis/EA did not hardcode the game to be 100% realistic and here you whine about IRL subway speeds,, like it would make the game anymore realistic. Ok, i like it very much that the modding community tries to make the game more realistic, I do that too. But you have to take into account that you cant hardcode the game and it becomes very mixed pile if too much tweaking with the plugin files. You cant take a part of realism and put it in and then forget the other realistic aspects thinking now it's realistic because every road and avenue intersection creates congestion, even when there is lots of capacity available, making the overall commute time grow. You see eyecandy traffic lights but in IRL there is no traffic lights in every corner yet again Z acts the way like there is. I could go on and on!
But, Im now using plugin A and I copied some Z values to it. Im liking it now. My commute time dropped because I got rid of the red squares. What I really would like is I want my commute time graph the way it was! like hardcoded one! I want to know what Maxis thinks my commute time is not what you think it is. Not every aspect in the game can be realistic to the max. OK maybe you get IRL speeds at subway curves but does that really make the game more IRL in overall? No. If you want more realism go with both -> Maxis realism and IRL realism. Do you know where this custom content community started to measure the realism in the game? By looking at the lenght of the automata car vehicle. Everything was based on that. And in IRL, people dont go always the fastest way tow work/home. They go to like doctor and shopping and post office etc etc on the way. It is very un-IRL to force them go 100% fastest route. You are trying too much with Z and you are ruining a perfectly good traffic plugin. I like Z but I dont want red squares on eye candy traffic lights! on every corner! Anyway im now back to A and my commute time graph is messed up! What all the values add to the commute time graph showup? |
| The game is not anymore realistic by tweaking the commute time graph and making subways really slow. Maxis/EA did not hardcode the game to be 100% realistic and here you whine about IRL subway speeds,, like it would make the game anymore realistic. Ok, i like it very much that the modding community tries to make the game more realistic, I do that too. But you have to take into account that you cant hardcode the game and it becomes very mixed pile if too much tweaking with the plugin files. You cant take a part of realism and put it in and then forget the other realistic aspects thinking now it's realistic because every road and avenue intersection creates congestion, even when there is lots of capacity available, making the overall commute time grow. You see eyecandy traffic lights but in IRL there is no traffic lights in every corner yet again Z acts the way like there is. I could go on and on!
But, Im now using plugin A and I copied some Z values to it. Im liking it now. My commute time dropped because I got rid of the red squares. What I really would like is I want my commute time graph the way it was! like hardcoded one! I want to know what Maxis thinks my commute time is not what you think it is. Not every aspect in the game can be realistic to the max. OK maybe you get IRL speeds at subway curves but does that really make the game more IRL in overall? No. If you want more realism go with both -> Maxis realism and IRL realism. Do you know where this custom content community started to measure the realism in the game? By looking at the lenght of the automata car vehicle. Everything was based on that. And in IRL, people dont go always the fastest way tow work/home. They go to like doctor and shopping and post office etc etc on the way. It is very un-IRL to force them go 100% fastest route. You are trying too much with Z and you are ruining a perfectly good traffic plugin. I like Z but I dont want red squares on eye candy traffic lights! on every corner! Anyway im now back to A and my commute time graph is messed up! What all the values add to the commute time graph showup? |
| Oops. Dont know how that happened. Delete the dubble posts. |
People have probably noticed that my changes to Simulator Z at this point fall into the area of fine tuning - I don't think there's a lot more to be done to improve the basic simulator. However, there's a whole area of customization that can be opened up, allowing people to tune the simulator to their personal preferences using a special configuration tool (most likely, GoaSkin's NAM Tool). It became clear from a discussion in the version of the NAM Traffic Simulator Poll at SC4D that a lot of people would be interested in this type of customization, so I am now tentatively planning to implement it. Such customization would include the following:
Comments are welcome. |
| The Beta 3 release of Simulator Z v1.2 is now available. It has already been through widespread testing, and will most likely be the final release of Simulator Z v1.2. Like each of the previous two betas for this version, this beta optimizes a different part of the simulator. Beta 3 specifically adjusts a parameter that directly affects commercial and residential demand; the result should be a better balance. The biggest change was made to the Ultra version of Simulator Z; successively smaller changes were made to the High and Medium versions; and no change was made to the Low version. This change also appears to result in a slight increase in car usage. Combined with the previous two betas, whose changes are incorporated here, this version of Simulator Z has produced a noticeably better traffic simulation for many people. If you use Simulator Z, I would strongly recommend that you download the attached zip archive, and replace the version of Simulator Z in your Network Addon Mod folder with the identically named file from the zip archive. This version of Simulator Z should become standard with the next NAM release. The attached file contains versions for the Bullet Train Mod, as well as for the standard Simulator Z. |
| And now for something completely different. Some people have found that Simulator Z (Low) is too easy for them, and they want something more challenging. For these daring souls, I present Simulator Z Classic
This version of Simulator Z has the low capacities of the original Maxis simulator, but without the bugs. The capacities have been adjusted slightly so that the simulator is completely compatible with NWM; it is compatible with RHW as well. Since the bugs in the original Maxis simulator are not present here, you no longer get situations where users exclaim, "My Sims are so stupid, they couldn't find a job if their lives depended on it!" Instead, if you run this in a big city, you get traffic jams. Big traffic jams. HUGE traffic jams. In fact, this simulator allows you to create the worst traffic jams of any traffic simulator in SC4. Why is this? In all the other low capacity simulators, excessive congestion leads to abandonment. So you can't have really big cities with low capacity simulators; Sims will abandon them. But does bad traffic lead to people abandoning Los Angeles in droves? Or New York? Or Chicago? Or London? Or Paris? No, people just sit in traffic all day. And now your Sims can too! Watch your transportation advisor go absolutely apoplectic as your streets turn to red, your roads turn to red, and your avenues turn to red. And yet your city will still function, just like the major cities I listed above. Of course, how well it functions depends on you. So for those who like a challenge, check this one out! And for smaller cities and towns, the NAM Tool will allow even lower capacities. Until then, you can have quite a bit of fun with Simulator Z Classic. Please let me know what you think of it. ![]() |
| This is what I've been looking for for.....well, ever. I don't want a city with 50 bazillion people. I just want a traffic simulator that improves my commute time, but doesn't raise the speed limits or capacities of my networks. This is perfect for my 180,000 pop. city!!! I am a cautious person, however. Just how does it 'slightly adjust' the capacities? And what is this about lowering them in smaller cities? Maybe this is too much of a challenge. If anyone knows more, please let me know. For more info on what I'm looking for, please read my original thread here. |
| A penny saved is another one to lose in the couch. |
| The road capacities have been adjusted to be compatible with NWM ( the Network Widening Mod, currently under development by the NAM), and also to fit common sense as well. The biggest adjustment has been made to the avenue capacities. In the original simulator, a single lane of an avenue had 2.5 times the capacity of a single lane of a road. This only made sense if avenue traffic traveled at highway speeds, which it doesn't. I think that one of the reasons Maxis made the avenue capacities that high was that the original pathfinding engine was set to such an imprecise level that that extra capacity was needed to keep the game working at all on a large scale. So avenue capacities have been cut significantly, while at the same time road capacities have been raised slightly. Avenues now have a capacity about 17% higher than roads. For a typical city, total road and avenue capacity should be about the same as before. But this capacity is much better utilized than in the original Maxis simulator, and traffic flows much better. Most importantly, those No-Job Zots are essentially eliminated; you should never see any unless your city population is in the seven figures, and even then, they should be extremely rare. (This assumes that you have enough jobs for your Sims, of course.)
I have recently fine-tuned this simulator's capacities to the point that I just described, and I uploaded the version of Simulator Z Classic containing them just a few hours ago. This version also has somewhat higher one-way road capacities than the previous version, although less than Maxis' which were too high. |
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