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> Traffic congestion seems to make sense. Did you read the article? The congestion makes no sense. And to the best of my recollection previous versions of Si

by revscat 14y ago

> Traffic congestion seems to make sense. Did you read the article? The congestion makes no sense. And to the best of my recollection previous versions of SimCity were able to handle traffic just fine. I certainly do not remember them suffering from the congestion problems this version seems to be afflicted by.

Fargren 14y ago
Sim City 4, which I think was the only previous one that actually modeled traffic, had some congestion issues. I don't remember them being as bad as this, however.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Traffic has been "modeled" since SimCity 2000 way back in the 90s. Back then it was a simple capacity measurement depending on nearby buildings, though. There was definitely no concept of a road network and flow. SC4 was the one that actually tried to model traffic flow throughout your city to locate bottlenecks. The pathfinding algorithm used looks like a variant of A, with the caveat that it would never explore nodes that weren't between you and your destination. This resulted in a lot of finicky behavior - things like your sim not taking the subway to work because he had to walk back a single block to catch it, and insisting on joining the gridlock instead. This is largely fixed with the NAM mod though, which restored proper pathfinding. The nice part about SC4 was that you could actually zoom in and see the gridlock. Sure, these weren't actual citizens in their cars, but it is a correct visualization of the simulation's traffic analysis. I for one will gladly give up the ability to follow a sim home for a faster, more scalable, more accurate simulation.
  - encoderer 14y ago
    > This resulted in a lot of finicky behavior - things like your sim not taking the subway to work because he had to walk back a single block to catch it, and insisting on joining the gridlock instead. Reminds me a lot of most consumer GPS today that avoids backtracking whenever possible, even if that means a more congested or convoluted route. I've seen this behavior too many times, from systems ranging from Google Nav to TomTom to the OEM Nav in my Mercedes.
    - ars 14y ago
      I think they do that not because they don't want to go backward, but because it's too computationally expensive to calculate on a small GPS.
- 46Bit 14y ago
  SimCity 4 has it's share of bugs, even with mods like NAM/CAM/etc installed, but not normally to this extent.
gizmo 14y ago
That's rude. I read the article and already acknowledged there are bugs. In previous versions of SimCity traffic was completely unrealistic. Cars would just fade in and fade out a few seconds later. There were no congestion problems like in SimCity 5 in older versions because individual cars didn't try to get from point A to point B. edit: clarity
- kevinnk 14y ago
  "There were no congestion problems like in SimCity 5 in older versions because cars didn't try to get from point A to point B." That's not really true. Sim City 4 did have congestion problems and it did simulate Sims going from point A to B. It wasn't as granular as SC5 simulating individual cars, but it did simulate groups of Sims traveling to and from work. It was also infamously buggy (something the modding community spent a lot of effort fixing) but it still was better than what we have now.
  - chao- 14y ago
    >It was also infamously buggy (something the modding community spent a lot of effort fixing) but it still was better than what we have now. Indeed. For the amount of time I spent playing Sim City 4 with the Network Addon Mod (the one that changes the pathfinding and tweaks transportation usage to be more sane), I was taking for granted that Maxis would learn from those mistakes, and even take a nod from the community in terms of what is believable transit behavior.
- ripter 14y ago
  It's not rude, you said: "Cars drive with purpose from one place to another. Traffic congestion seems to make sense." But the videos clearly showing that cars take nothing other than shortest path into consideration. They don't even check if their destination is still valid. This does not make sense. So asking if you read the article is not rude because your quote seems to be in direct conflict with the article.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  The entire purpose of the article was to demonstrate that Traffic Congestion doesn't make sense. Your initial response made it appear that you were referring to a different article - I was wondering which one you had read as well.

by revscat 14y ago

Fargren 14y ago

Sim City 4, which I think was the only previous one that actually modeled traffic, had some congestion issues. I don't remember them being as bad as this, however.

potatolicious 14y ago
Traffic has been "modeled" since SimCity 2000 way back in the 90s. Back then it was a simple capacity measurement depending on nearby buildings, though. There was definitely no concept of a road network and flow. SC4 was the one that actually tried to model traffic flow throughout your city to locate bottlenecks. The pathfinding algorithm used looks like a variant of A, with the caveat that it would never explore nodes that weren't between you and your destination. This resulted in a lot of finicky behavior - things like your sim not taking the subway to work because he had to walk back a single block to catch it, and insisting on joining the gridlock instead. This is largely fixed with the NAM mod though, which restored proper pathfinding. The nice part about SC4 was that you could actually zoom in and see the gridlock. Sure, these weren't actual citizens in their cars, but it is a correct visualization of the simulation's traffic analysis. I for one will gladly give up the ability to follow a sim home for a faster, more scalable, more accurate simulation.
- encoderer 14y ago
  > This resulted in a lot of finicky behavior - things like your sim not taking the subway to work because he had to walk back a single block to catch it, and insisting on joining the gridlock instead. Reminds me a lot of most consumer GPS today that avoids backtracking whenever possible, even if that means a more congested or convoluted route. I've seen this behavior too many times, from systems ranging from Google Nav to TomTom to the OEM Nav in my Mercedes.
  - ars 14y ago
    I think they do that not because they don't want to go backward, but because it's too computationally expensive to calculate on a small GPS.
46Bit 14y ago
SimCity 4 has it's share of bugs, even with mods like NAM/CAM/etc installed, but not normally to this extent.

gizmo 14y ago

That's rude. I read the article and already acknowledged there are bugs. In previous versions of SimCity traffic was completely unrealistic. Cars would just fade in and fade out a few seconds later. There were no congestion problems like in SimCity 5 in older versions because individual cars didn't try to get from point A to point B. edit: clarity

kevinnk 14y ago
"There were no congestion problems like in SimCity 5 in older versions because cars didn't try to get from point A to point B." That's not really true. Sim City 4 did have congestion problems and it did simulate Sims going from point A to B. It wasn't as granular as SC5 simulating individual cars, but it did simulate groups of Sims traveling to and from work. It was also infamously buggy (something the modding community spent a lot of effort fixing) but it still was better than what we have now.
- chao- 14y ago
  >It was also infamously buggy (something the modding community spent a lot of effort fixing) but it still was better than what we have now. Indeed. For the amount of time I spent playing Sim City 4 with the Network Addon Mod (the one that changes the pathfinding and tweaks transportation usage to be more sane), I was taking for granted that Maxis would learn from those mistakes, and even take a nod from the community in terms of what is believable transit behavior.
ripter 14y ago
It's not rude, you said: "Cars drive with purpose from one place to another. Traffic congestion seems to make sense." But the videos clearly showing that cars take nothing other than shortest path into consideration. They don't even check if their destination is still valid. This does not make sense. So asking if you read the article is not rude because your quote seems to be in direct conflict with the article.
ghshephard 14y ago
The entire purpose of the article was to demonstrate that Traffic Congestion doesn't make sense. Your initial response made it appear that you were referring to a different article - I was wondering which one you had read as well.