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Most of the time I've seen when people are complaining about all the cims piling in to one lane is because they suck at planning and have a large volume of traffic trying to go somewhere and only have one way to get there
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Apr 10, 2015 19:23
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BallsFalls posted:Most of the time I've seen when people are complaining about all the cims piling in to one lane is because they suck at planning and have a large volume of traffic trying to go somewhere and only have one way to get there Didn't someone say that cars don't do any sort of predictive pathing, they just pick the shortest route and go? If that's true then just giving them more routes isn't necessarily always going to help.
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Apr 10, 2015 19:28
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WarLocke posted:Didn't someone say that cars don't do any sort of predictive pathing, they just pick the shortest route and go? If that's true then just giving them more routes isn't necessarily always going to help. Right, but restructuring the roads after 3 minutes of critical thinking will help.
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Apr 10, 2015 19:32
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WarLocke posted:Didn't someone say that cars don't do any sort of predictive pathing, they just pick the shortest route and go? If that's true then just giving them more routes isn't necessarily always going to help. Right but if you've got a huge arterial road leading to a small road that everyone is trying to use because for some reason it is the only/best available route to the freeway then pathing isn't really the issue. For example, you'll see a lot of screenshots where people have their whole city (including industry) hooked up to an insufficient number of highway on/off ramps, so you get cars traveling clear across town or all converging onto one road and interchange just to get to the freeway. Also they don't just pick the shortest route, they take road speed into account. Cars will take a longer path distance wise if the path goes over higher speed limit roads and would thus be faster all other things being equal. The only thing that the traffic simulation doesn't really do is once a car is in traffic it doesn't look for an alternate route like people in real life might do, it just bears through the traffic - which a lot of people do irl anyway though. It's not like the vast majority of drivers check traffic before they go anywhere. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 19:37
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So is there currently a mod that would allow me to put stop signs only on certain roads in an intersection and not all of them? I'm seeing several traffic mods (and have the stoplight toggle one, but it's all or none).
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Apr 10, 2015 19:42
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meatsaw posted:So is there currently a mod that would allow me to put stop signs only on certain roads in an intersection and not all of them? I'm seeing several traffic mods (and have the stoplight toggle one, but it's all or none). I don't know but I'd love the ability to put 4 way stop signs down instead of a traffic light at most of the smaller residential roads I've got. Yield signs would be great, too, I hate when you get 100 cars lined up behind an intersection because there's a few cars turning left every now and again making the lights turn red and jamming everyone up. Also it seems like the lights work on timers; this is probably not going to happen but letting them work on sensors would be great. The light stays green unless there's actually a car waiting. Not sure though I guess I haven't paid a bunch of attention to that.
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Apr 10, 2015 19:43
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popewiles posted:Right, but restructuring the roads after 3 minutes of critical thinking will help. It really does help. Use the route query tool mod or just watch the traffic. Where are the cims coming from? Where are they going to? Chances are you can find some way to divert a large portion of that traffic through a new arterial road or another highway onramp, etc.
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Apr 10, 2015 19:44
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Moridin920 posted:I don't know but I'd love the ability to put 4 way stop signs down instead of a traffic light at most of the smaller residential roads I've got. There is someone working on a mod like that, a video was posted a few pages back. Unfortunately it looks like they're putting sperg levels of detail into it instead of doing a few basic improvements well, but at least stuff like that is on the horizon. I agree on the signs front, it would be badass if stop lights, stop signs, and yield signs were ploppables that you could configure in whatever made sense to you. Intuitive to understand because it fits into the game's existing mechanics and making it easy to experiment with configurations.
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Apr 10, 2015 19:49
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Here's a few interesting reads if you want to nerd out on IRL traffic hell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%E2%80%93Mogridge_Position
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Apr 10, 2015 19:55
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Theorizing about traffic equilibrium is quite a bit different than traffic engineering. The former is a bunch of PhD's pontificating about some simulation they ran, the latter is some practically minded individuals tweaking signage and timing to make a lovely situation as not lovely as possible. The game needs more of the latter and none of the former. 
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Apr 10, 2015 20:04
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Those drat PhD's, in their asphalt towers.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:13
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I think the people who have the most trouble with the traffic in this game are trying to force the simulation to work the way they want, rather than doing what they want within the confines of the simulation. Getting traffic to run smoothly in this game isn't difficult at all, and it doesn't require you to really do obnoxious gamey type things, either. Just pay attention to where traffic is coming and going to and design your road network around that.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:13
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Hey now, those PhD's managed to solve the SimCity 5 paradox and eliminated all traffic! ...By building a spiral with no intersections, or having the entire city be just homeless hordes walking the streets beneath vacant residential towers. Don't you understand that if all cities were just one long stretch of road there would be no more traffic problems?!
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Apr 10, 2015 20:17
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I think they could inexpensively account for traffic in pathfinding. As a car enters a segment it marks game time, and when it exits, it reports it's average speed to the segment which then accumulates these into an actual speed for the segment. When performing pathfinding, rather than use the speed limit, it uses the average speed of traffic. If it is to much calculating, then you can have it perform speed testing on every tenth vehicle and still get a reasonable average. Then just pretend everyone has a GPS and recalculate paths at random to prevent oscillations from occurring.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:25
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Mr. Powers posted:I think they could inexpensively account for traffic in pathfinding. As a car enters a segment it marks game time, and when it exits, it reports it's average speed to the segment which then accumulates these into an actual speed for the segment. When performing pathfinding, rather than use the speed limit, it uses the average speed of traffic. If it is to much calculating, then you can have it perform speed testing on every tenth vehicle and still get a reasonable average. Then just pretend everyone has a GPS and recalculate paths at random to prevent oscillations from occurring. That gets expensive fast. I mean yeah it's a simple sounding solution and is 100% doable, but the game already has fairly high CPU requirements. You have to be careful when adding steps to a routine that might get run hundreds or thousands of times a second, it can really gently caress up performance.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:28
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You're looking at a subtraction and an addition every time a tracked car exits a segment, and then a multiply and divide when the segment wants to update its average speed. I'm pretty sure it could be scaled to not be a huge CPU drain. Segments could accumulate for many seconds before updating, and for heavy traffic roads, you could get away with infrequent measurements and still have a good indicator of the flow of traffic. This would also enable a better traffic overlay: color based on average speed relative to speed limit. That way heavy traffic isn't marked unless it is slowing down from what it could be.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:35
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Fish Fry Andy posted:Just pay attention to where traffic is coming and going to and design your road network around that. "There's a lot of traffic going this way, better put a second road" "Oh god now there's a million intersections"
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Apr 10, 2015 20:36
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My giant rectangle road that connects islands together with the central highway does surprisingly little to ease traffic: I thought it was a brilliant idea when I came up with it  I'm not very good at this game.(The "1st N-S Ind-Com Rd" district is just the main thoroughfare between my industry and commercial with heavy traffic turned off, forcing them to use the rail line I put in.)
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Apr 10, 2015 20:41
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GrossMurpel posted:"There's a lot of traffic going this way, better put a second road" I think the issue is that it's "Oh look, there's a lot of people driving on this road, better build a second road," instead of "Oh look, there's a lot of people driving on this road. I wonder where they're coming from and where they're going and how I can give them alternative routes."
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Apr 10, 2015 20:42
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Fish Fry Andy posted:I think the issue is that it's "Oh look, there's a lot of people driving on this road, better build a second road," instead of "Oh look, there's a lot of people driving on this road. I wonder where they're coming from and where they're going and how I can give them alternative routes." There is weird game things you have to do right now with turn lanes and stop lights (without mods). Turning a road into a 6 lane right before an intersection and back to a two lane in order to force turn lanes, poo poo like that IS gamey as hell.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:47
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KakerMix posted:There is weird game things you have to do right now with turn lanes and stop lights (without mods). Turning a road into a 6 lane right before an intersection and back to a two lane in order to force turn lanes, poo poo like that IS gamey as hell. You don't have to do that at all, though.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:49
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Fish Fry Andy posted:I think the people who have the most trouble with the traffic in this game are trying to force the simulation to work the way they want, rather than doing what they want within the confines of the simulation. Getting traffic to run smoothly in this game isn't difficult at all, and it doesn't require you to really do obnoxious gamey type things, either. Just pay attention to where traffic is coming and going to and design your road network around that. I actually started a new city specifically to concentrate on my traffic flow. I think the base layout might work, but I ran out of money to string power lines (residential is supposed to be over by the roundabout)   e: And I didn't lay any water pipes.  But yeah, the idea is that industrial traffic splits off to the right first, and once in the 'undustrial zone' the roads are all one-way to keep traffic flowing in a circle. There's one breakaway to merge with the outgoing highway (eventually removed for an offramp directly north) and a two-way that connects to the commercial area. Residential is treated the same way, split from the highway, with its own one-way back to it and a looping two-way to the commercial district. WarLocke fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 20:51
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WarLocke posted:but I ran out of money to string power lines This was the problem I had for the first 2 weeks of running this game, on account of my old habits from SimCity 4. Low density zoning and poors don't require water! And what do you mean electricity can't travel through zoned but undeveloped areas?  The latter is actually a pet peeve of mine.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:57
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Just turn on unlimited money.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:59
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Fish Fry Andy posted:You don't have to do that at all, though. Maybe I'm dumb but I can't figure traffic out as easily as you make it appear. WarLocke posted:I actually started a new city specifically to concentrate on my traffic flow. I think the base layout might work, but I ran out of money to string power lines (residential is supposed to be over by the roundabout) Heh, I started building everything with big roads right away because I didn't want to raze half my city when I upgraded the small roads. Ran out of money for power lines as well
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Apr 10, 2015 21:00
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Inspector_666 posted:Just turn on unlimited money. Mah cheevos
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Apr 10, 2015 21:01
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WarLocke posted:Mah cheevos There's a mod for that
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Apr 10, 2015 21:05
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Honestly for the most part I just make a huge grid-ish of 2-lane streets. I don't even bother with 4+ lanes for 2 reasons: they are faster so the pathfinding AI jams everyone on them so they quickly become congested when all the surrounding grid is free, and because 2+ lane roads make traffic lights which slow things down even more. Once that stop sign/traffic light mod is done sure, but right now you can't give the avenue priority as if the side streets simply had a stop sign. You have to go extreme one way or the other. Have an extremely distributed traffic system where you just use 1 road type/speed so no route is better than another and traffic nicely disperses, or go full pathing-sperg and push everyone onto a huge highway system. I'd be fine taking a performance hit or just making smaller cities if it meant a "smarter" traffic ai. \/ I've tried, but every time I start laying highways or avenues everyone rushes to use them instead of the local grid and I have to go full traffic-engineer with overpasses and cloverleafs and poo poo all over the place. It's almost like some induced demand simulation. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 21:05
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Except you can totally have things that are in-between and work fine?
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Apr 10, 2015 21:13
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I don't think the "achievements with mods" mod works anymore, but you can just use SAM to give yourself the achievements you would have earned. There's too many useful mods in this game to forgo them for achievements
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Apr 10, 2015 21:50
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Magnitogorsk. posted:I don't think the "achievements with mods" mod works anymore, but you can just use SAM to give yourself the achievements you would have earned. There's too many useful mods in this game to forgo them for achievements What makes you say it doesn't work anymore? Have you tested it? I thought it wasn't working because the little trophy icon is crossed out in the load menu, but it still works in spite of that.
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Apr 10, 2015 21:54
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It irks me that some building unlocks are tied to making a lovely city. I mean I get that they may be challenging to achieve, I'm just not interested in doing them. I should just use the unlock cheat I guess.
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Apr 10, 2015 21:54
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Baronjutter posted:Honestly for the most part I just make a huge grid-ish of 2-lane streets. I don't even bother with 4+ lanes for 2 reasons: they are faster so the pathfinding AI jams everyone on them so they quickly become congested when all the surrounding grid is free, and because 2+ lane roads make traffic lights which slow things down even more. Once that stop sign/traffic light mod is done sure, but right now you can't give the avenue priority as if the side streets simply had a stop sign. Eh I don't want to be rude but that's not really true. I posted this already but:  100k+ population, barely any traffic problems at all. There's a couple red spots because of very heavy traffic flow but there aren't any actual gridlocked spots (except for near the bottom there by Hillside Square because I ended up starting a new city after getting bored instead of optimizing traffic there). I didn't really go full pathing sperg (I assume you mean gaming the system) and in fact except for a spot in Lilac Hills (you can see the red roundabout a little to the left of the highway) where I used a couple 1 way 2 lane roads instead of a 6 lane to force traffic coming on/off the freeway to go where I want, there's no gaming fuckery at all. Not even 6 lane road sections as turn lanes. And there's a good variety of roads, definitely not a perfectly evenly distributed system or anything like that. For the most part I just see where traffic is clogging up, try to determine why, and provide alternate routes that aren't going to just clutter up an already slammed intersection. KakerMix posted:There is weird game things you have to do right now with turn lanes and stop lights (without mods). Turning a road into a 6 lane right before an intersection and back to a two lane in order to force turn lanes, poo poo like that IS gamey as hell. It would be nice to have turn lanes configurable (or even just have them at all) but you definitely don't need to do that stuff to keep traffic moving okay. Maybe in some specialized spots I'll do that but for the most part all I'm really gaming is upgrading road sections to highways to force lights off (like at roundabouts). Inspector_666 posted:Just turn on unlimited money. But but then how do I know I'm being efficient? GrossMurpel posted:Maybe I'm dumb but I can't figure traffic out as easily as you make it appear. Honestly trying to lay out main roads way in advance is probably what is loving most people up. Think about where you want the main artery leading to the freeway to be, but build in sections. That way if you identify a traffic problem starting you can fix it without having to bulldoze everything and totally rearrange city streets. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 21:56
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Supraluminal posted:It irks me that some building unlocks are tied to making a lovely city. I mean I get that they may be challenging to achieve, I'm just not interested in doing them. I should just use the unlock cheat I guess. Same.
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Apr 10, 2015 21:58
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Lady Gaza posted:It's not the best screenshot but there is an offramp too, it's just that no-one is using it. I think it's because cars coming from the bottom-right highway connection is trying to get to the far left of the screen (where the majority of the residential buildings are), and the quickest route is to go down my 6-lane road and then take that connecting ramp, which gets backed up since it leads directly into small streets. If I remove that ramp and try and get the cars to enter the residential zone later, they instead go into my industrial section on the bottom right and clog up those roads. Everything I seem to do just moves the problem to a different section. You still need ramps for the other side of the highway Most of your traffic is going top left to bottom right. Those cars have no choice but to use the clover leaf
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Apr 10, 2015 22:03
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Moridin920 posted:
I once tried to find out where all the dudes were going, had a guy driving to university which was 2 blocks away from his house but he was on the other side of town on the highway.
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Apr 10, 2015 22:04
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Anyway instead of trying to make an evenly distributed system of roads I really recommend people use the concept of arterial road design. Highways lead to big artery roads, which have smaller collector roads (this is where your grid will be, most likely) feeding the artery. You should strive to have as few intersections as reasonable/possible on the artery road, as it is supposed to basically be highway-light - traffic should flow as smoothly as possible. If you have a red light every city block it's going to get totally hosed. These artery roads called expressways in some parts of the world. Interchanges where the artery meets the highway should similarly be as easy and efficient as possible to navigate. Yeah it looks cool/funny having a crazy multistack interchange of 2 lane roads going everywhere but it isn't efficient at all and is likely increasing traffic woes for your cims. GrossMurpel posted:I once tried to find out where all the dudes were going, had a guy driving to university which was 2 blocks away from his house but he was on the other side of town on the highway. Yeah sometimes I get people that drive some really strange paths. More often than not the culprit is a 1 lane road somewhere preventing an easy drive; the university is 2 blocks away but the one lane road between the house and the school is going the opposite way and now you have to make a huge circle to get there. What will also gently caress you are the 4 lane roads because they have a center divider. Where on a 6 lane road a driver will just cross the center to turn around, they have to drive all the way to the end of the 4 lane to get around the center divider. An intersection by itself seems like it would work but they also seem to prevent U-turns sometimes so you get some very wonky paths. I like to use the bus line tool and lay down a line just to see how the traffic will be forced to go - I don't actually lay the line down. If you do that you'll catch some very hosed up 4 lane road intersections preventing traffic from flowing easily. Usually I try to look at overall flow versus individual drivers though, I feel like you get a better idea of what is happening then. For example you'll notice a huge part of your grid feeding into an artery going to a freeway, and you can alleviate traffic there by creating on/off ramps on the other side of the grid so people don't have to go just that one way to get to the road they want. \/\/\/ Right but they aren't necessary for good traffic flow most of the time. Notice I say good and not optimal (give me real turn lanes!) Also one of the reasons traffic is such a nightmare in LA is because many (most?) of the surface streets don't have turn lanes or even left turn signals. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 22:05
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Fish Fry Andy posted:You don't have to do that at all, though. You do if you want dedicated turn lanes.
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Apr 10, 2015 22:10
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GrossMurpel posted:I once tried to find out where all the dudes were going, had a guy driving to university which was 2 blocks away from his house but he was on the other side of town on the highway. He might have been visiting a shop or park across town
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Apr 10, 2015 22:11
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Subyng posted:You do if you want dedicated turn lanes. But you don't have to have dedicated turn lanes. My original point was that you don't need to do any gamey poo poo to have smoothly flowing traffic, and the majority of the complaints that I see are the product of people trying to force the game to work the way they want, rather than playing along with the game and the simulation's rules. Dedicated turn lanes don't exist in the base game, and you also don't really need them.
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Apr 10, 2015 22:14
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